The Daily Show with Jon Stewart took on the politics surrounding the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial last night, interviewing former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York David N. Kelley.

“Why do we really need trials? I mean people are just going to get mad, is it really worth it?” Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac asked Kelley.

“I think the people who are getting mad are ill-informed,” said Kelley, siting on the witness stand in a courtroom the Daily Show rented out. “There have been 195 or more terrorist tried in federal courts in this country without any disaster.”

Cenac jokingly asked Kelley to if KSM could theoretically turn off the courtroom lights and climb out the window of the courtroom. Kelley said that’s a scenario security personnel would have to prepare for.

According to his profile Kelley “led the investigations of the Millenium bombing plot and the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and participated in the investigation of the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He prosecuted Ramzi Yousef for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia acting as co-lead prosecutor of ‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh.”

The video is embedded below.

A Southern District of New York terrorism prosecutor will likely have another opportunity to handle a 9/11-era case, The New York Times reported today.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin is expected to head the Justice Department team that will prosecute self-identified 9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known in law enforcement circles as KSM, and four other suspected terrorists when they leave Guantanamo Bay for a trial in Manhattan, according to the newspaper.

Raskin previously assisted in the successful prosecution of al-Qaeda operative  Zacarias Moussaoui in Alexandria, Va. Moussaoui was convicted of a 9/11-related conspiracy to crash airplanes into buildings.

Eastern District of Virginia Assistant U.S. Attorney John Davis will also work on the KSM case, according to The Times. Davis aided in the successful prosecution of John Walker Lindh, an American who was captured with the Taliban in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The Justice Department has not announced who will lead the case against KSM and the four other suspected terrorists. But Attorney General Eric Holder said prosecutors from the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia will handle the case.

The Assistant U.S. Attorneys and their offices declined to comment to The Times.

Raskin and Davis have recently stepped down from key leadership posts in their office to focus their attention on the case, the newspaper said. The SDNY prosecutor led his office’s terrorism unit. Davis headed his office’s criminal division.

“They’ve each got a very strong compass and a very even keel,” former Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney David N. Kelley, who led the government’s 9/11 probe and has worked both of the prosecutors, told The Times.