On this episode of Rant, MyronGainsx is on a mission to take over the world on Rumble, but first he has to figure out what's going on on Fresh and Fit. He calls in a special guest to help him out, and he's not bad at it.
00:04:51.000First and foremost, some housekeeping things.
00:04:53.000If you guys want to get involved in the show, the main way to do it, three main ways.
00:04:58.000If you want to get Super Chat in, you got right there, right here actually, if you look at your screen, Super Chat at MyronGainsX.com, Super Chat there, or you could go donate a Rumble rant, if you're watching on Rumble, whether it's Fresh or Fit or Myron Gains X, the accounts are connected, so it's fine, or you could use...
00:05:18.000Castle Club chat when you're in Castle Club because I'm streaming on four different platforms right now.
00:05:23.000Two on YouTube, two on Rumble, and then obviously Castle Club.
00:06:59.000So, okay, with that said, what we're going to do here, guys, is we're going to watch this video because I don't think a lot of you guys are familiar with the actual facts of this case.
00:08:12.000And then if we have time, we'll watch the other one too.
00:08:15.000And then we'll get into what went down today.
00:08:16.000Because I think for you guys to understand this, you guys have to kind of know the facts of the original case versus what's happened today where he got sentenced.
00:08:24.000And we're going to spin all this back together.
00:08:27.000And I've actually covered this case on FedReacts like twice, guys.
00:08:32.000If you watch FedReacts, you guys already know that we covered all of Trump's criminal cases.
00:08:38.000case actually we've covered them on fed reacts but obviously i'm on fresh air right now uh on both rumble and youtube so you guys probably might have not seen it so just a refresher for the memory because this shit happened almost damn near a year ago falsifying business records in the first degree now as we'll talk about later And I think it's also important for you guys to understand that this was the first case where Trump was actually arrested in a criminal investigation and the first time that a U.S. president or former U.S. president has ever been arrested at all.
00:09:07.000So Trump is the first president to get arrested and indicted.
00:09:32.000A number of felony counts is not a good proxy for the seriousness of the crimes, especially here where it looks like everything relates to the same nexus of facts.
00:09:40.000But first things first, this is the first time in history that a former president of the United States has been indicted, although it's worth remembering that the justice system actually frequently holds elected officials accountable.
00:09:50.000Vice presidents have been charged with breaking the law.
00:09:53.000Governors, congresspeople, mayors, and all sorts of other politicians have all gone to prison for committing crimes because in America, no one is supposed to be above the law.
00:10:01.000Of course, if you live outside of Illinois, your odds get way better.
00:10:05.000Nevertheless, Trump posted that he was shocked that he was treated like some regular Joe.
00:10:10.000He posted, Though Trump did get a little special treatment because he was allowed to forego the usual perp walk and mugshot, which anyone else would have had to go through.
00:10:26.000But the timing of the indictment caught most...
00:10:28.000And you guys already know, New York loves to do their fucking purpose.
00:10:31.000If you guys don't believe me, remember Luigi Mangione?
00:10:34.000When they arrested him a couple weeks ago?
00:10:52.000News sources had just reported that the grand jury was going on hiatus until May without indicting Trump.
00:10:56.000So, score one for the confidentiality of the grand jury system.
00:11:00.000But now that Trump has been arrested, arraigned, and released on bond, the indictment and statement of facts are public, so let's think like a lawyer and break it all down.
00:11:07.000Now, Donald Trump has been indicted for 34 counts of falsifying business records.
00:11:10.000And during our last video about the New York case, we discussed the possible facts that would give rise to an indictment for falsifying records.
00:11:16.000Every New York business is required to keep certain business records, and New York Penal Law, Section 175.10, makes it a crime to delete, alter, or make a false entry in the business records of an enterprise with the intent to defraud.
00:11:28.000To get a conviction for falsifying business records, the government must prove that Trump either made or caused someone else to make a false entry to his company's business records.
00:11:35.000And a defendant who requests that someone else do the actual work of recording a false business record is just as criminally liable as if they did it themselves.
00:11:42.000Now, according to the Manhattan DA's indictment and the attendant statement of facts, the DA is alleging the following facts.
00:11:48.000The record's concerned A catch and kill scheme with AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer.
00:11:53.000The idea was that the National Enquirer would help Trump win the presidential election by finding negative stories about him and then buying the rights to those stories.
00:12:00.000The plan was for AMI to then conceal those stories rather than publicizing them.
00:12:04.000According to the New York indictment, the scheme went from August of 2015 to December of 2017. The first one was to pay off a doorman who worked at Trump Tower.
00:12:13.000The man claimed to have a story about Trump having a secret love child and AMI paid him $30,000 to keep quiet.
00:12:18.000The statement of facts says, quote, AMI purchased the information from the doorman without fully investigating his claims, but AMI CEO David Pecker directed that the deal take place because of his agreement with Trump and Michael Cohen.
00:12:29.000The party subsequently decided that they thought the doorman was lying.
00:12:33.000The second incident involved playboy bunny Karen McDougal, who the statement of facts refers to as woman number one.
00:12:38.000AMI arranged to pay McDougal $150,000 in exchange for the right to her story about an alleged affair with Trump.
00:12:45.000AMI told McDougal that she would get to write articles.
00:12:52.000As we discussed in our last video, link below, AMI CEO David Pecker had a conversation with his lawyer about the scheme and promptly backed out of the deal.
00:13:00.000AMI entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the New York DA where it admitted to unlawful conduct including making false business records to conceal the purpose of the $150,000 payment to McDougal.
00:13:12.000Now that being said, the doorman and McDougal payments don't seem to be part of this indictment because they're outside of the five-year statute of limitations.
00:13:19.000And although Pecker and AMI stopped participating directly in exchange of money, they continued to broker deals for Trump, including facilitating the settlement of the Stormy Daniels payment.
00:13:27.000David Pecker allegedly told the grand jury that he brokered an NDA between Daniels and Cohen.
00:13:32.000"Shortly after the Access Hollywood tape became public, the AMI editor-in-chief Dylan Now, Stormy Daniels is going to be the center of this, guys.
00:13:47.000We see that during Trump's campaign, he was focusing on trying to mitigate any type of bad press that might come his way, that might hurt his chance of becoming president.
00:13:56.000And, you know, we're talking about the National Choir.
00:14:00.000But the big thing to focus on, guys, is Stormy Daniels.
00:14:04.000She met Trump, I believe, in 2006. And the Hollywood tape that they're talking about, that's when he said, he famously said, grab her by the pussy.
00:14:13.000While he was married, Pecker told Howard to notify Michael Cohen.
00:14:16.000Dylan Howard testified that he communicated with Cohen about Daniels and also helped Daniels find lawyer Keith Davidson.
00:14:23.000And according to the DOJ's filings against Cohen, Howard and Pecker contacted Cohen through an encrypted app to let him know that Daniels was close to a deal with a media outlet to spill the beans about her affair with Trump.
00:14:33.000And the National Enquirer head honchos then negotiated the $130,000 settlement and also confirmed the NDA with Davidson.
00:14:47.000Statement of facts confirms that Cohen and AMI admitted guilt in connection with the payoffs of McDougal and Daniels in the federal matters.
00:14:54.000Now, 12 days before the general election in 2016, Cohen drew down $130,000 on a home equity loan deposited...
00:15:00.000And if I'm not mistaken, Cohen was the key witness against Trump in the trial, guys, because Trump actually ended up taking this to trial, as you guys know.
00:15:08.000...into a shell account and then paid Daniels off.
00:15:11.000After the election, Trump started paying back the initial $130,000 payment to Cohen, but he increased the amount to a total of $420,000.
00:15:20.000Now, these checks apparently came from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which was created in New York to hold the Trump Organization's assets during his presidency.
00:15:28.000Later checks came from Trump's personal bank account.
00:15:30.000In total, 11 checks were issued for phony purpose, legal services.
00:15:36.000And according to the indictment, each check was processed by the Trump Organization And illegally disguised as a payment for legal services Rendered pursuant to a non-existent retainer agreement In total, 34 false entries were made in New York business records To conceal the initial covert $130,000 payment And the indictment concludes that the participants in the scheme took steps That mischaracterized these documents for tax and election-related purposes To conceal the true nature of the reimbursements And to hide the reimbursements in total
00:16:02.000So, why 34 counts, and what records did Trump allegedly falsify?
00:16:06.000Well, prosecutors charged each false entry as a separate count.
00:16:17.000This New York hush money case, the state of New York knew that Trump was going to be charged in other jurisdictions.
00:16:23.000So I think this was a very rushed case to get Trump arrested so that they can have the title of being the first district to arrest the former president.
00:16:32.000Alvin Bragg campaigned on this, the district attorney for New York.
00:16:47.000He campaigned on going after Trump to become district attorney.
00:16:50.000So they had a hard-on for Trump from the beginning, man, because this is a very frivolous case, to be honest with y'all.
00:16:56.000No one gets charged for stupid shit like this, but they wanted to send a message.
00:17:00.000Counts related to a single payment that was made to Cohen on Valentine's Day in 2017. Each count related to a different document or business record.
00:17:08.000The first was related to an invoice for that payment, quote, The defendant made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise to wit an invoice from Michael Cohen dated February 14th, 2017, marked as a record of the Donald J. Trump revocable trust and kept and maintained by the Trump organization.
00:17:25.000The second count related to that payment was for the making of a "false entry" in the detailed general ledger for the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, bearing voucher number 842-457 and kept and maintained by the Trump Organization.
00:17:38.000The third count, and I promise we are not going to go through all 34 of these stupid things, was also for a false entry in the general ledger.
00:17:45.000The fourth count related to that payment that was when Trump, quote, made and caused a false entry.
00:17:50.000The business records of an enterprise to win the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust account check and check stub dated February 14, 2017, bearing check number 0001. So, the business records for that one payment are the check and the check stub, an invoice from Cohen, a voucher for that account, and a voucher for another account.
00:18:11.000The DA basically uses the same pattern for all of the other counts.
00:18:15.000It's basically one count for every check or invoice.
00:18:18.000Now, this isn't required, but it's also a totally normal way to charge someone.
00:18:22.000Now, there has been a ton of breathless reporting, about 34 felony counts, but...
00:18:30.000They're not required to list out every single act that was part of a general criminal scheme.
00:18:35.000But by the same token, it's also a totally normal way of going about writing an indictment, and it's done all the time.
00:18:43.000So basically, you can't conclude anything from the fact that there's basically three dozen different felony counts.
00:18:53.000Now, an additional wrinkle here is that for a charge of falsifying a business record to be a felony in New York state, it has to come with an additional requirement of intent to defraud.
00:19:02.000Okay, this is important, guys, because this is what makes it the felony, and that's what the state pushed for.
00:19:09.000This charge is normally always charged as a misdemeanor, but the state of New York tried to get it...
00:19:16.000To a felony, so they had to prove this part.
00:19:30.000When the defendant acts for the purpose of frustrating the state's power to faithfully carry out its own law.
00:19:36.000In layman's terms, that means that the government doesn't need to prove that Trump falsified business records for the purpose of depriving someone of money or property.
00:19:43.000The government only has to show that Trump did something to frustrate the regulatory authorities of New York.
00:19:49.000And New York courts have found such intent when a defendant did things like making covert contributions to a political campaign, covering up an alleged sexual assault, misleading a patient's relatives.
00:20:03.000But this is certainly a point of controversy, and it's likely a legal issue that will be dealt with by the judge before the factual questions ever reach a jury.
00:20:12.000But the statement of facts does try to justify the charges.
00:20:14.000The most significant evidence that Trump knew what Cohen was up to with the intent to defraud was a conversation he had with Cohen about the McDougal payments.
00:20:22.000Quote, But the prosecutor will need to prove that Trump knew about the Daniels payments too and
00:20:52.000that he agreed to Cohen's payment scheme.
00:20:55.000The statement of facts alleges that Trump didn't want to pay Daniels directly, so he asked Cohen to do it.
00:20:59.000Quote, Trump did not want to make the $130,000 payment himself and asked Cohen and Weisselberg to find a way to make the payment.
00:21:05.000After discussing various payment options with Weisselberg, Cohen agreed he would make the payment.
00:21:10.000Before making the payment, Cohen confirmed with Trump that Trump would pay him back.
00:21:13.000The statement of facts alleges that Cohen made the payment through a shell company with Trump's blessing.
00:21:17.000Quote, on or about October 26, shortly after speaking with the defendant on the phone, Cohen opened a bank account in Manhattan in the name of Essential Consultants LLC, a new shell company he had created to effectuate the payment.
00:21:36.000$31,000 from his personal home equity line of credit into that account.
00:21:40.000On or about October 27th, Cohen wired $130,000 from his Essential Consultants LLC account in New York to Lawyer B to suppress Stormy Daniels' account.
00:21:50.000Now, the statement of facts also goes into detail about Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg agreeing to pay back Cohen more money than Cohen paid out so that Cohen could characterize the payment as income on his tax returns instead of reimbursement, and Cohen would be left with $180,000.
00:22:08.000Finally, Weisselberg added an additional $60,000 as a supplemental year-end bonus.
00:22:12.000So the statement of facts indicates that Trump knew about his arrangement with Cohen.
00:22:16.000Quote, Trump, Weisselberg, and Cohen then agreed that Cohen would be paid $420,000 through 12 monthly payments of $35,000 over the course of 2017.
00:22:24.000Each month, Cohen was to send an invoice to Trump through Trump Organization employees, falsely requesting payment for $35,000 for legal services rendered in a given month of 2017 pursuant to a retainer agreement.
00:22:36.000At no point did Cohen have a retainer agreement with Trump or the Trump Organization.
00:22:40.000And the part about no retainer agreement is key since Trump may argue that he was simply paying Cohen for legal services, which is what he indicated in the business records.
00:23:20.000After the election, they could avoid paying altogether because at that point, it would not matter if the story became public.
00:23:26.000This could end up being a key allegation because it shows that Trump's motivation was to influence the election, not to protect his family from disclosure.
00:23:32.000Finally, the statement of facts alleges that Trump tried to pressure Cohen to lie about their arrangement.
00:23:36.000The pressure campaign included Trump tweeting at Cohen to stay strong and not flip, and the DA also says that a different unnamed Trump lawyer approached Cohen about representing Cohen in his criminal case, offering to help him maintain a, quote, back channel of communication to the defendant.
00:23:50.000In June of 2018, the lawyer wrote to Cohen urging him not to cave by pleading guilty, but Cohen did in fact plead guilty in August of that same year.
00:23:58.000And he even went ahead and was one of the main witnesses of the case against him.
00:24:01.000Now, as we talked about, these are only felonies if there is an intent to defraud, and also an intent to commit another crime or to conceal a commission of a crime.
00:24:09.000So, what's the second crime in this case?
00:24:11.000Well, the indictment and statement of facts don't say, and New York law doesn't require that the prosecution identify the second offense at this stage.
00:24:17.000However, you can bet that there will be some motion practice to force the government to issue a bill of particulars to actually identify what these crimes are.
00:24:24.000However, in a press conference, Alan Bragg identified three general areas of law that he alleges that Trump intended to break.
00:24:30.000The scheme violated New York election law, which makes it a crime to conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means.
00:24:38.000The $130,000 wire payment exceeded the federal campaign contribution cap.
00:24:44.000And the false statements in AMI... And let's be honest, that's a stretch.
00:25:27.000But that's why it's good to have good lawyers.
00:25:30.000I'm sure his legal team argued that as well.
00:25:32.000...candidate and in-kind contributions are counted the same as a cash donation.
00:25:36.000So the $130,000 would be way over that limit.
00:25:39.000As we covered before, there's a controversy about whether a federal crime can be used as a predicate for an underlying crime in New York State.
00:25:46.000And then there's also the state conspiracy allegation.
00:25:49.000New York Elections Law Section 17-52 covers conspiracy to promote or prevent an election.
00:25:55.000Section 17-52 requires proof of a conspiracy among two or more people to promote the election of a particular person.
00:26:05.000And there was also a suggestion that they falsified records for the purpose of tax fraud.
00:26:16.000So we'll see how this unfolds in the coming months.
00:26:18.000But it's also important to note that even if the felony enhancement is bounced by the judge or an appellate court, it's still likely that the misdemeanor charges for falsification of business records would remain.
00:27:35.000If Mother Teresa had gotten her fixer to pay a porn star to keep quiet in the run-up to an election, then covered up the payment through a series of false invoices and checks, she, too, would probably have been found guilty of 34 felonies.
00:27:47.000But if Mother Teresa ever did do any of that, she managed to keep it on the down-low.
00:27:52.000Trump, however, is not a keeping it on the down-low.
00:27:55.000Well, she didn't want to keep it on the down-low.
00:27:57.000That's the whole reason why they had to pay.
00:27:58.000She didn't want to keep it on the down-low.
00:28:02.000At the Celebrity Golf Tournament in 2006, where the encounter allegedly took place, he managed to get his picture taken with Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who had been sent there to represent her production company, Wicked Pictures.
00:28:14.000And he reportedly boasted about their brief sexual encounter the next day.
00:28:18.000But ten years later, when he decided to run for president, he was decidedly more circumspect.
00:28:23.000Trump, whose notorious philandering had been a subject of the New York tabloids for decades...
00:28:32.000But nobody says anything about Kamala Harris being a 304....himself to evangelicals as a faithful family man who just so happened to have five children by three wives and to have appeared in a pornographic video and to have bragged about wandering into the changing room while beauty pageant contestants were getting dressed.
00:28:48.000And so he enlisted his longtime friend David Pecker, the owner of the National Enquirer, to burnish his image.
00:28:54.000Pecker, who was the first witness at the trial, testified that just days after Trump announced his candidacy, he was summoned to a meeting at Trump Tower where Pecker promised to help Trump's campaign by publishing positive stories about Trump, negative stories about his opponents, and alerting him through Michael Cohen when Pecker came across damaging information, particularly regarding women.
00:29:16.000Pecker bought up two stories, including one from Playboy model Karen McDougall, who was paid $150,000 for her account of a relationship with Trump a decade earlier.
00:29:25.000Pecker testified that he'd buried stories for other celebrities before and even for politicians, but his lawyers convinced him that selling McDougall's story to Trump might look like a campaign finance violation.
00:29:38.000Then, Stormy Daniels came forward and Pecker testified that he refused to pay her out of fear that the association with an adult film star would upset Walmart, the National Enquirer's biggest distributor.
00:29:49.000And even after Cohen threatened that the boss would be furious if he didn't do the deal, Pecker wouldn't budge.
00:29:55.000So Cohen negotiated to pay Daniels $130,000 to sign a nondisclosure agreement, aka an NDA. Except that Trump kept putting the deal off in hopes that he could delay until after the election and avoid paying her altogether.
00:30:08.000Then on October 7, 2016, the Access Hollywood tape dropped, with Trump bragging about grabbing women by the genitals because...
00:30:14.000When you're a star, they let you do it.
00:30:25.000...testified that the tape went off like a bomb inside the campaign, knocking a Category 4 hurricane out of the news cycle, at which point Trump told Cohen to make that deal with Daniels happen, and he didn't care how, because Stormy Daniels telling her story in the press would be the end of his presidential campaign.
00:30:38.000So Cohen borrowed $130,000 against his house and put together an NDA for David Dennison and Peggy Peterson to sign, where they all agreed never to speak about the matter again.
00:30:47.000And on November 1, the agreement was signed, and Trump went on to win the White House.
00:30:51.000During their opening statement, prosecutors revealed that on election night 2016, Daniel's lawyer Keith Davidson messaged Dylan Howard, then the editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer, asking, what have we done?
00:31:02.000Howard texted a family member speculating that maybe Trump would pardon him for electoral fraud, which strongly suggests that everyone involved in the Daniels' payoff thought that their schemes had put Trump in the White House, and they strongly suspected that what they had done was against the law.
00:31:14.000Michael Cohen, who had hoped for a job in the administration, perhaps even as White House chief of staff, soon found out that he was going to be fobbed off with the title of personal attorney to the president and very little else.
00:31:23.000And while that honorific allowed him to pitch himself as a sort of lobbyist, it didn't come with a paycheck.
00:31:27.000In fact, the Trump Organization actually cut his Christmas bonus that year and kicked him off the payroll in January of 27. And that's why he got so mad, because obviously he got brought into this thing, and that's why I think he ended up turning into the state witness.
00:31:39.000By December, Cohen was furious that he hadn't been repaid the $130,000, and he even prevailed upon Pecker to intervene with Trump on his behalf, which Pecker did, and according to his testimony, Trump said, don't worry about it, I'll take care of it.
00:31:51.000And the way that he took care of it was through a series of monthly checks for $35,000, supposedly paying Cohen for legal expenses.
00:32:01.000If only there was someone who were really good at explainers.
00:32:03.000Throughout the trial, Trump Org Comptroller Jeffrey McConney was shown Exhibit 35, a bank ledger documenting that Michael Cohen had wired $130,000 through an LLC to Stormy Daniels' lawyer, Keith Davidson.
00:32:18.000On the ledger, though, there were also handwritten notes, presumably by Cohen, adding $50,000 to the tally for money paid to a company called Red Finch to rig an online poll that CNBC was running on the most famous businessmen because Trump was frustrated that he was in ninth place.
00:32:32.000So that brought Cohen's out-of-pocket expenses to $180,000.
00:32:37.000Now, on the left side, there were notes by Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg documenting that they would have to...
00:32:46.000Gross up the payment to $360,000 to account for the fact that Cohen would owe taxes because he was calling it income to keep the reimbursement secret.
00:32:54.000If it were publicly a reimbursement, the money would come into Cohen and then out, and he would call it an expense and wouldn't be taxed on it.
00:33:00.000But because they were going to be keeping it a secret, he would have to declare that as income.
00:33:03.000And then on top of that, they added a $60,000 bonus, presumably just because, like at this point, Cohen knew a lot, so they should keep him happy.
00:33:22.000Exhibit 36 was Makani's own notes from the meeting confirming that the $180,000 would be doubled for taxes and wired monthly from DJT in increments of $35,000.
00:33:34.000And that's how you end up with the 34 counts, Chad.
00:33:37.000He even included a helpful note that Cohen would be removed from the Trump Organization's payroll in January of 2017, after which Mike was to invoice us the $35,000 a month, which he did.
00:33:49.000And to top it all off, these notes were on Trump Organization's stationery, because none of these geniuses had ever heard of the Stringer Bell rule.
00:33:57.000Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?
00:34:03.000Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche argued that Cohen had actually been doing legal work in 2017 to earn those monthly payments.
00:34:10.000In his closing argument, he made the bizarre claim that Cohen secretly paid off Daniels as part of a plot to take advantage of Donald Trump.
00:34:17.000Quote, He would be able to get that credit.
00:34:34.000And that might have been persuasive if the prosecutors were simply asking the jury to take Michael Cohen's word for it.
00:34:40.000After all, Cohen was convicted of tax fraud and lying to Congress.
00:35:03.000You can't work in law enforcement if you've ever been convicted of perjury or making false statements.
00:35:08.000Pecker testified that he had also leaned on Trump to pay Cohen back.
00:35:12.000And Makani confirmed that he took Cohen off the payroll and routed those invoices through bookkeeping rather than through the legal department.
00:35:19.000Exhibits 35 and 36 showed that the Trump Organization's bean counters were doubling the debt to cover Cohen's tax liability, and Hope Hicks practically laughed on the witness stand when prosecutors asked if she thought Cohen was the kind of guy to secretly make a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels out of the kindness of his heart.
00:35:36.000She said, He's the kind of person who seeks credit.
00:35:43.000There's also the fact that Trump tweeted repeatedly that he'd reimbursed Cohen for the Daniels payout.
00:35:48.000And not for nothing but Rudy Giuliani, Trump's own lawyer, admitted it on air.
00:35:52.000And that's crazy they put that on Twitter.
00:35:54.000Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties known as the NDA. These agreements are, and then it keeps going.
00:36:07.000And not for nothing but Rudy Giuliani...
00:36:10.000Trump's own lawyer admitted it on air back in 2018. So they funneled it through the law firm, funneled through the law firm, and the president repaid it.
00:36:19.000Trump's current lawyer, Todd Blanche, countered by calling Michael Cohen a liar over and over and over again at high decibel.
00:36:26.000He said, it's like what people talk about with athletes like Michael Jordan is the GOAT, Tiger Woods is the GOAT, Tom Brady is the GOAT. These athletes are the greatest of all time, the best among their peers.
00:36:36.000Michael Cohen is the GOAT. He's literally the greatest liar of all time.
00:36:43.000Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass, who delivered the six-hour closing argument, said, keep something else in mind when the defense goes on and on about how Michael Cohen is immoral or he's a liar or he's a thief.
00:36:54.000Mr. Blanche actually said, this is not the type of witness you want.
00:36:57.000We didn't choose Michael Cohen to be our witness.
00:36:59.000We didn't pick him up at the witness store.
00:37:02.000The defendant chose Michael Cohen to be his fixer because he was willing to lie and cheat on Mr. Trump's behalf, which is a slightly better joke.
00:37:09.000Plus, Steinglass had all those exhibits and witnesses to back up what Michael Cohen said.
00:38:05.000You guys gotta remember, bro, as a prosecutor, when you prosecute high-level individuals, you're considered like a fucking rock star in the legal world.
00:38:13.000This is going to open opportunities for him later in the private sector.
00:38:16.000Like, it's a huge come-up for your career, and I think that's something that's kind of overlooked when people talk about these cases, about, oh, why did New York bring the case or whatever?
00:38:24.000It's for their reputational, um, embatterment, guys.
00:38:29.000Now, Ivan Brad can literally put on his fucking application if he decides to go private sector, because I'll tell you guys this, being an AD doesn't make you that much money.
00:38:36.000I mean, hell, let's Google it real fast, right?
00:39:47.000For him, this is a huge come-out because now he can secure any legal job he wants, right?
00:39:53.000And this happens very often guys where people will take a lower paying job in the government So they could build up their resume and then switch to the private sector and make fucking a bunch of money Record-keeping On a good lawyer my law firm the number on 10 is a felony charge that derives from section 174 four counts of false was charged is a separate count here's the charges and
00:40:17.000Which is how Trump got indicted for 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree under New York Penal Law Section 17510. But 17510 is a felony charge that derives from first-degree falsifying business records, which is a misdemeanor.
00:40:32.000So under 175.05, it's a misdemeanor to make or cause a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.
00:40:38.000And under 175.10, it's a felony to make a false business record with the intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.
00:40:47.000In plain English, if you create the false business record as part of a criminal scheme, then it becomes a felony.
00:40:53.000And look, no one in that room believed that Michael Cohen was being paid $35,000 a month for work performed in 2017. The misdemeanor false business records were pretty much a given.
00:41:04.000So for the purposes of this case, the main thing that prosecutors had to do was come up with another crime that would plus up that misdemeanor false business record to a felony.
00:41:19.000Because everyone understood that the object of this game was to have Cohen file a false tax return claiming that he'd earned $420,000 for work performed when he was actually being reimbursed for what was functionally a loan to the campaign.
00:41:33.000The second crime was a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act, or FECA. Because in 2016, when Cohen paid $130,000 to Daniels, the maximum an individual could donate to a campaign was about $2,700.
00:41:46.000And while Cohen didn't write the check to the Trump campaign, he did write it for the benefit of the Trump campaign.
00:41:54.000So if Cohen had, say, hosted a party for the campaign and paid $10,000 to the caterer, it would still be an excessive campaign contribution, and this is no different.
00:42:04.000Trump's lawyers tried to argue that Trump wanted to silence Daniels to protect his family from embarrassment, not for political ends.
00:42:10.000But that was pretty fatally undercut by Pecker's testimony that Trump invited him to a meeting at Trump Tower just days after announcing his candidacy.
00:42:18.000At the meeting, they cooked up a plan for the National Enquirer to bottle up stories that damaged Trump while attacking his rivals.
00:42:25.000The whole purpose of this plan was to protect the campaign.
00:42:29.000Trump never cared about buying Stormy Daniel's silence between 2006 and 2016. And if he'd never run for president, it would have stayed that way forever.
00:42:42.000Because when that Hollywood Access video came out, every chick came out wanting their pound of flesh.
00:42:48.000You know, E. Carroll, all these women making fake accusations against them.
00:42:51.000...had paid to Daniels was an undeclared and excessive campaign contribution.
00:42:55.000The third predicate was a violation of New York election law, Section 17152, which makes it a crime to conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to public office by unlawful means.
00:43:07.000And here's where things get a little wonky.
00:43:09.000Because the prosecutors suggested that the unlawful means were the tax fraud and the campaign finance violation.
00:43:14.000So in some sense, this thing kind of loops back on itself.
00:43:18.000Once they defined the crimes, the prosecution had to prove that Trump had the intent to commit them.
00:43:23.000The judge instructed the jury that a person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when, with intent to defraud that includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof, that person makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.
00:43:39.000So under New York law, the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump both committed the business records offense And that he intended to commit one of the three other offenses.
00:43:49.000The prosecution didn't need to show that he committed the other three offenses, though.
00:43:53.000And it gets even wonkier because the jurors didn't have to agree on which of the three other crimes lusted up from a misdemeanor under 175.05 to a felony under 175.10.
00:44:04.000The jury instruction said, in determining whether the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you may consider the following.
00:44:14.000One, violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act, otherwise known as FICA.
00:44:18.000Two, the falsification of other business records, or three, violation of tax laws.
00:44:23.000So, four of the twelve jurors could believe that the other crime was tax fraud, four could buy the FICA violation, and four could be convinced by the nesting doll of the New York State election crime.
00:45:08.000Do you agree that unanimity is not ordinarily required?
00:45:11.000To which Trump's lawyer, Emile Beauvais, replied, certainly, but we think it's important under the circumstances of this case and think it's in your honor's discretion to make clear the record here.
00:45:21.000In other words, he said, I admit that I'm asking you to make an exception for my client and the decision to do so is within your discretion.
00:45:28.000But the judge said, what you're asking me to do is change the law, and I'm not going to do that.
00:48:41.000Donald Trump got the ball rolling earlier in the week with a post on Truth Social claiming that...
00:48:45.000The reason the radical, highly conflicted judge Juan Mershon had to come up with three fake options for the jury to choose from without requiring them to be unanimous, which is completely un-American and unconstitutional, is because the corrupt Soros-backed D.A., Alvin Bragg, couldn't come close to proving that any crime was committed.
00:49:00.000Soon, all of Trump's MAGA allies were singing from the same hymnal.
00:49:04.000Senator Marco Rubio tweeted that judge in Trump case in NYC just told jury that they don't have to unanimously agree on which crime was committed as long as they all at least pick one.
00:49:40.000Fox News' John Roberts tweeted that Judge Mershon just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict.
00:49:45.000Four could agree on one crime, four on a different one, and the other four on another.
00:49:49.000He said he would treat 444 as a unanimous verdict.
00:49:52.000Here's Trump's favorite legal commentator, Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, explaining on Fox that no one knows what the crime is.
00:50:01.000When they were reading those guilty verdicts, the one thing that we didn't know is really what he was found guilty of.
00:50:11.000So Judge Merchan, right, his daughter, guys, and Laura's been exposing this shit for a minute now.
00:50:15.000But Judge Merchan's daughter, business partner, Mike Nellis, refused to comply with his subpoena yesterday after hiring Democrat lawyer Marcielis.
00:50:22.000Who was also brought to represent Kamala Harris' campaign and now also GA Secretary of State.
00:50:27.000So in other words, Judge Merchan's daughter had worked for Kamala Harris' campaign, guys.
00:50:48.000And Kamala Harris have the same lawyer representing them so they can communicate with each other under the excuse of attorney-client privilege.
00:50:53.000Weeks before President Trump was set to be sentenced in New York City, Kamala Harris sent funds to the personal home residence of Mike Nellis, as I have been exposing all year now.
00:51:02.000Millions of dollars in payments from pro-indictment Democrats who have fundraised off of Trump going to jail has been sent to the personal home residence of Judge Merchan's daughter.
00:52:35.000But she literally had somewhere between five to ten tweets, just like this, exposing things between Merchan and his daughter, other conspirators, etc.
00:52:44.000And this made Merchan look really fucking bad.
00:52:48.000So, and then here, what ended up happening is Trump used some of that stuff to make his argument that the judge was not impartial.
00:53:29.000She, as an owner, gets a percentage of those contributions.
00:53:34.000So there is a statute in New York which says a judge must disqualify himself if a person known by the judge should be within the sixth degree of relationship and a daughter is the first degree, has an interest.
00:53:51.000Some people try to say, because I was having a debate earlier with a lawyer on this, a liberal lawyer on X. She was saying, look, he went to the ethics board and he asked if he needed to recuse himself.
00:54:04.000Like, bro, if there's any, you know, potential optical issue that looks like you're compromised, most judges would just be intelligent and just recuse themselves.
00:54:13.000They wouldn't ask no fucking ethics board.
00:54:28.000This entire New York case for Trump was nothing more than a play to elevate the careers of everyone that was involved in the fucking charging.
00:54:41.000This New York case was nothing more than a come up For all the lawyers, law enforcement personnel, people that were involved in the investigation, people that were involved in collecting the records, building this case, everyone that worked on this case, this was a big come-up for them.
00:54:58.000Because for them to go after him for falsifying business records, which is typically a fucking misdemeanor, and to go as hard as they did for this minuscule fucking charge, right, proves to you guys that they're okay with wasting taxpayer dollars to go after somebody From an optics standpoint.
00:55:40.000I argued in court for that investigation.
00:55:45.000Show me the motive and I'll show you why.
00:55:48.000That's why, guys, they went after him.
00:55:50.000This was a huge come-up for everybody in the state of New York, because now they got bragging rights to be able to say that we sentenced them, we arrested them, and we were the first ones to do it.
00:56:35.000And that's what I argued to the lawyer before, because she was trying to tell me, like, oh, no, Judge Merchant isn't corrupt or any of this other bullshit.
00:58:18.000So what we're going to do now, guys, I'm going to go ahead and switch to Myron Gaines X on Rumble and on YouTube, okay?
00:58:25.000So what I'm going to do for you guys is I'm going to go ahead and drop the YouTube link for you guys in Fresh and Fit, and I'm going to drop the Rumble chat for you guys, or the Rumble link.
00:59:26.000If you're watching on Fresher Fit at either Rumble or on YouTube, I pinned the link to watch the video on my Myron Gaines X channel, guys.
00:59:36.000Again, I'm doing this for maybe one more week or a couple of days, but...
00:59:41.000We are not going to be streaming any of this stuff on Fresh and Fit anymore.
00:59:44.000I'm going to be, you know, once you guys get used to me going live every day at 5 o'clock and we build a habit, we're not going to be going live on Fresh and Fit anymore.