Trump legal challenges expected after arraignment, Chinese spy balloon update: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Donald Trump expected to unleash wave of legal challenges after arraignment

USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Kevin Johnson looks at the wave of legal challenges former President Donald Trump is expected to unleash. Plus, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis eliminates conceal carry license requirements, a Virginia teacher shot by a 6-year-old student files a lawsuit, 'The Last Ride' podcast looks into the disappearance of two men in South Florida decades ago, and the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down in February gathered information from multiple military sites.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Tuesday, the 4th of April 2023. Today, a look at the legal challenges former President Donald Trump may carry out after his arraignment today. Plus, Florida dumps concealed carry license requirements, and a podcast looks into the disappearance of two men in South Florida nearly two decades ago.

Former President Donald Trump arrived in New York yesterday ahead of his unprecedented arraignment this afternoon, but it's likely only the beginning, as he and his team prepare a series of legal challenges. USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Kevin Johnson explains. Hi there, Kevin. Thanks for coming on 5 Things.

Kevin Johnson:

Sure, glad to be with you.

Taylor Wilson:

I want to start with the possible challenge to holding trial in Manhattan. What are legal analysts saying here, Kevin?

Kevin Johnson:

Well, I think right out of the box they're calling that a steep hill to climb, mostly because Trump is going to be well known wherever he goes and carries with him whatever biases or support that folks have. One of the analysts suggested that they could put the trial in Manhattan or Prague and you'd pretty much have the same effect. The judge has a lot of discretion in deciding whether or not that threshold has been reached and whether or not a fair trial can be held in Manhattan.

Taylor Wilson:

Kevin, you mentioned the judge here. Trump is already talking about the judge in this case. Is he going to be a major focus for the Trump team?

Kevin Johnson:

We saw the posts that he made last week soon after we learned the indictment had been returned, indicating that he was not a fan of the judge. Mainly because the judge presided in a case late last year involving Trump's two companies, which resulted in convictions. He also oversaw the sentencing of former Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg.

Trump has obviously decided that this judge is biased against him, but there was nothing in the trial and the sentencing of Weisselberg that indicated that. In fact, there were parts of the case where the judge seemed to go out of his way to make sure that folks understood that Donald Trump was not on trial in the case of his two companies. So yet to be seen whether or not they'll go after the judge, but Trump has certainly signaled that that might be a strategy.

Taylor Wilson:

On the charges themselves, how might Trump's lawyers argue about the statute of limitations once these come out?

Kevin Johnson:

Yeah, that's another possibility. Because the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, to silence her about an affair years and years ago came in 2016, lawyers might be looking at a challenge that these transactions took place so long ago that they are out of the statute of limitations. Which in New York, falsification of business records are typically two to five years, depending on which charge they elect to go with. Although former prosecutors there indicate that there are exceptions to that statute of limitations that would favor the prosecution in this case.

Taylor Wilson:

Could the defense push for a delay related to the upcoming election?

Kevin Johnson:

They could. That was one possibility that was raised by the former District Attorney in Manhattan, Cyrus Vance. He was the prosecutor who first launched this investigation, seems years and years ago, 2018. It is something that he suggested that the Trump team could possibly do.

What is almost certain is that the defense will no doubt take close aim at Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney, who has always been the central witness in the investigation against Trump. He's gone to talk to prosecutors, by his count, 23 times to discuss the case against Trump. We will, I think, see a challenge one way or another to Michael Cohen.

Taylor Wilson:

Kevin Johnson, thanks for your insight here. Really appreciate it.

Kevin Johnson:

Thank you.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis quietly signed a bill yesterday that eliminates licensing requirements for Florida residents to carry a concealed firearm in most places. Florida now becomes the 26th state that does not require a concealed weapons license. Under the legislation, Florida residents who can legally own a gun will be allowed to carry one without a permit, and training and a background check will not be required to carry concealed guns in public. A poll from the University of North Florida's Public Opinion Lab found that 77% of Floridians do not support allowing people to carry a weapon without a license. That includes 62% of Republicans.

♦

The first grade Virginia teacher who was shot by a six-year-old student has filed a lawsuit. The suit seeks $40 million in damages from school officials in the city of Newport News. Abby Zwerner accuses the district of gross negligence for reportedly ignoring multiple warnings on the day of the shooting that the boy had a gun and was in a violent mood. Ms. Zwerner was shot in the hand and chest in January as she sat at her desk reading to the class.

♦

Nearly two decades ago two young men of color, Felipe Santos and Terrance Williams, vanished just three months apart on the same road in the early 2000s. Now, their case is being explored in a podcast called The Last Ride, based on reporting from the Naples Daily News and Fort Meyers News-Press of the USA TODAY Network. Here's a peek.

Mother of one of the victims:

I just had this feeling all over me and I just started praying. I knew something was wrong. A mother knows.

Janine Zeitlin:

In 2003 and 2004, two young men of color disappeared from Naples, Florida, a small coastal town on the Gulf of Mexico. The men vanished just three months apart under eerie and similar circumstances.

Taylor Wilson:

I caught up with host Janine Zeitlin to learn more about the case and what exactly the podcast aims to achieve. Hi, Janine. Thanks for coming on 5 Things.

Janine Zeitlin:

Hi, thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So I want to start here. What made you think we should look more into this case in the first place? What was off to you?

Janine Zeitlin:

The main facts of the case are that two men disappeared after last being seen with a Collier County Sheriff's Deputy. That deputy was never charged or arrested and no one has been charged or arrested, and the men haven't been found. It's a case that has left a lot of scars in the community because there hasn't been anyone who has been held accountable for the disappearances, and there has been no resolution for the families.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. The sheriff's office clearly ignored certain aspects of this case for a long time. Was this a case of circling the wagons or is something else at play?

Janine Zeitlin:

I think initially they believed their deputy. So when the first man went missing there was a complaint by the brother of the man who went missing, Felipe Santos, that Deputy Steven Calkins, he could have done something wrong. So they made an internal affairs complaint. And basically the sheriff's office went to the deputy and said, "What happened," and they essentially believed the deputy.

In the first case it was really disbelieving the deputy over the men's families. They did check into whether the deputy's story could be backed up by witnesses or surveillance video, because the deputy said he took the man to a Circle K and dropped him off there, and they couldn't. And despite of that they didn't dig further. They just said, "Did you take him anywhere else but the Circle K?" The deputy said no, and that was it.

Taylor Wilson:

While there seems to be a lot of blame to go around in this case, you indicted the media itself at times in the podcast, I'm going to play a clip from the first episode.

Janine Zeitlin:

I saw what media bias looked like in my own community, my own newsroom. It took even longer for the cases to make a ripple outside of Naples, as Perry told it.

Tyler Perry:

I had a reporter to tell me, an actual reporter from a major network when I called trying to get attention, saying, "Well, the victims aren't sympathetic. They aren't sympathetic." Those are the exact words that was said to me. So they didn't want to run the story, but you have the power in here to help the story get out.

Janine Zeitlin:

Honestly, I was surprised that a reporter for a major network would be so blatant in their indifference.

Taylor Wilson:

Okay, so that's a pretty strong indictment, Janine.

Janine Zeitlin:

It is, it is. And he's right. In the beginning, I think because the individuals were men and because perhaps of Felipe Santos's documentation status and because Terrance Williams was Black as well, I think biases were at play in terms of how much coverage they got at the beginning of the case.

The Naples Daily News, the local paper, really didn't cover the stories very well at the beginning, even though Terrance's family was basically begging for the media to cover. The News-Press did cover it. And then the family of Terrance Williams, they begged for national media attention for years. They wrote emails and letters to national media outlets, and the cases really didn't get a lot of national media attention until Tyler Perry got involved.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah, I'm happy you mentioned Tyler Perry because that was my next question. What has his role been in all of this?

Janine Zeitlin:

He learned about the case on a cable show. And as soon as he learned about it, he reached out to an advocate for Marcia Williams, who is the mother of Terrance Williams, and offered his help. So he came to Naples for two press conferences since 2013. He's offered $200,000 in reward money. And he's also produced a couple of documentary episodes on the disappearances that were on Paramount+.

Taylor Wilson:

The two men have been missing for nearly two decades. What are the family members saying at this point?

Janine Zeitlin:

Both men are presumed dead by their families, to the point that the mother of Terrance Williams has had him legally declared dead. They don't think their family members, their relatives are alive. They haven't heard from them.

Investigators have reached out to various family members, looked into sightings. None have panned out. They've looked into other potential bodies that turned up and they compared their DNA evidence and there have been no matches. So they don't have hope that the men will be found, but they do still have hope that there will be some kind of justice at some point.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Janine Zeitlin with a difficult story, but some fantastic reporting in The Last Ride podcast. We look forward to listening. Thanks, Janine.

Janine Zeitlin:

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Taylor Wilson:

You can find The Last Ride wherever you get your podcasts.

♦

The Chinese spy balloon that flew across the US earlier this year was able to gather intelligence from several US military sites and transmit info back to Beijing in real time. That's according to a report from NBC News. The report citing two current senior US officials and one former senior administration official said the high altitude balloon made multiple trips over some of the sites before it was shot down on February 4th. The FBI continues to assess materials recovered from the balloon after it was shot down. And the Pentagon maintains that measures it took to prevent China from acquiring intelligence from sensitive military sites mitigated the balloon's effectiveness.

And before I go today, the Connecticut Huskies are national champions. UConn won the men's basketball college championship last night, smashing San Diego State 76 to 59. It's UConn's fifth men's basketball championship since 1999

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every day of the week right here, wherever you get your audio. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump legal wave expected, Chinese balloon update: 5 Things podcast