Barbara McQuade: Questioning Pence Is ‘No-Brainer’ For DOJ

All right, sometime this week legal experts believe the tax scheme trial against the Trump organization could actually come to an end. That theory comes after prosecutors rested their case faster than expected. We also know that prosecutors reversed an earlier decision to call Donald Bender. As one of the Witnesses, he worked for years as an outside accountant for Trump and the company. Lawyers for the Trump organization tried to argue, they said, that Bender was responsible for failing to alert executives that the tax plan was illegal. Joining us now is MSM. I'm an illegal analyst, former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade Barbara, as always, it's great talking to you about this stuff.

Do you feel like, as we're coming to a close to this, did the prosecutors present their case and did they actually do that? right, what does that look like for a possibly guilty former president, a guilty Trump organization, and the former president's children? Well, it's always difficult to know the way a case came up in a courtroom, you know, we can, we can read about it, we can see it. in the media, but unless you're sitting in the courtroom not only listening to all the testimony and seeing all the evidence, but also watching the body language and all those things that are necessary to evaluate someone's credibility, but just reading about it, it seems so.

They did make their case, what they have to show is that the people in leadership positions knew the law required one thing and they did another in this case, giving all these expensive benefits to employees that didn't count as income and then it seems who have brought that case, the defense continues and the defense seems to blame the accountants for this, you know, it was the bill, the accountants should have alerted the leaders of the organization and they didn't, so we'll do it. See if the jury accepts that now. I imagine that, as you said later this week, the jury will understand the case and begin their deliberations and, ultimately, the consequences could be fines for the Trump organization, you know, when it is an entity instead of a person that is on trial in a criminal case, the entity cannot go to prison and usually what happens is that the entity is fined, but it is usually the amount of the tax loss plus additional fines that is the goal. a prosecution like this is really about deterrence, about letting people know that you have to follow the rules, uh, and if you don't, there will be consequences, um, I want to pivot if we can, Barb, while I invite you to talk a little bit about the Justice Department special counsel investigation.

Those Mar-A-Lago documents that were actually seized and what I found was interesting. I think many of us saw this in our Thanksgiving broadcasts: Jack Smith issued this letter while he was working on essentially a Thanksgiving holiday. to point out to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals this inaccuracy that he feels was exposed by the former president's lawyers, what does that tell you about Jack Smith's role in this whole matter going forward? Yes, it seems to have picked up the pace. very quickly, it doesn't seem like it's going to take weeks and weeks to read everything and try to catch up.

He is proactively involved in the case right away. That's his reputation, so I guess we won't see. only there is no delay, but maybe even an acceleration and although you know, I was certainly one of those who thought that a special counsel was not necessary in this case, I think that it still can be somewhat beneficial to the case because when you think in all things that Mayor Garland has on his plate balancing, you know, voting rights and violent crime and other threats to the American public. His ability to pay attention to this case is much more limited for Jack Smith.

He has two cases, Mar-A-Lago and January 6. that's all you have to worry about, and because of that approach, I think we can see the case moving forward even faster than it would have without special counsel. Let's quickly talk about the request for former Vice President Mike Pence to testify for the grand jury and I want to read for people the tweet that he posted

questioning

Pence is a no-

brainer

for the Department of Justice. This step is essential to understanding what happened between him and Trump. Executive privilege will certainly be outweighed by the important national interest in the attack. in the capitol subpoena we know that Pence essentially told my colleague Chuck Todd that he's weighing whether or not he's going to testify, we know that trumps the January 6 investigators who asked him to testify before Your Congressional Investigation, what do you think of the former vice president's possible testimony?

I think the Justice Department certainly wants that testimony because we know from the reports that there were cases where only Pence and Trump were in the room talking about this plot to subvert the election, so Mike Pence is an essential witness that the justice department just needs to speak up, if it's helpful, it's an important witness, if it's not helpful, it's important to know that, fix that testimony and understand what their understanding of the issues is. where I imagine you could assert executive privilege, but since it is only a qualified privilege, as we saw in the Nixon case, it can be overcome when there is a greater national interest and the Supreme Court has already held that the January 6 investigation had more weight than the executive. privilege when it came to the National Archives' production of White House documents for the committee this idea that he's deciding whether he's going to testify, you know, I guess it's something the Justice Department should explore if he can come voluntarily. and maybe work. set some parameters as to the issues and whether it will be by video instead of having them appear before the grand jury, that's fair, but at the end of the day, if he refuses to testify, the Department of Justice has subpoena power and will force your testimony Barbara McQuaid as always thank you thank you foreigner