Welcome to beg to differ the Bull Works weekly roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation

across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I'm Mona Charen,

syndicated columnist and policy editor of the Bull Works and I'm joined by our regulars Bill

Gostin of the Brookings Institution in the Wall Street Journal, Damon Linker, who writes the

sub-stack newsletter notes from the middle ground and Linda Chavez of the Nyscanon Center.

Our special guest this week is noted attorney and legal commentator George Conway.

Welcome one and all. Well, we do have the third indictment has come down and it is about the

January 6th events. The former president is going to be arraigned. We're recording this

on Thursday. The former president is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon and he had the option

of doing it remotely but he wanted the theater of being the martyr and so he is going to show up

in person and it will be the beginning of a really historic and nervous making series of events.

But one of the things that was just amazing is that the Secret Service had to do a sweep

of the courthouse prior to Trump's arrival and so you have this bizarre situation that marks where

we are as a country that because he served as president is entitled to have the Secret Service

sweep the courthouse. He is also the defendant and he is also perhaps a criminal. So there we are.

It doesn't get more bizarre than that. But let's dig into the nature of the case. George,

I'm so glad to have you with us. One of the things that the Trump lawyers are saying already and

the Trump defenders is that this is an illegitimate prosecution because the president was merely

exercising his first amendment rights to express an opinion about the election. How do you respond

to that argument? Bill Barr. Last night he was interviewed by Caitlin Collins at CNN and he was

asked basically that same question and he said basically that's he didn't use the word BS but

that was essentially what he said. I mean every fraud that's prosecutable whether it be securities

...