Fresh & Fit - Donald Trump Sentenced In New York Hush Money Case!

00:00:00.000 And we are here.

00:00:29.000 What's up guys?

00:00:30.000 We are live once again.

00:00:32.000 Another day.

00:00:33.000 Another podcast.

00:00:35.000 More work being put in.

00:00:37.000 We're taking over 2025.

00:00:41.000 Y'all know what time it is.

00:00:43.000 Hold on one sec.

00:00:45.000 Hold on.

00:00:49.000 Stop the show.

00:00:50.000 Hold on.

00:00:53.000 I need you guys to get lit in the chat, right?

00:00:55.000 We're gonna fucking take over.

00:00:56.000 If you're watching this thing on Rumble right now, for Fresh and Fit, for some odd reason, it's acting weird.

00:01:01.000 So come on over to Rumble Myron Gaines X. Myron Gaines X on Rumble.

00:01:06.000 Go over there.

00:01:07.000 I need more energy from you guys.

00:01:09.000 Let's fucking go.

00:01:09.000 I need a bunch of hosts last in the chat.

00:01:11.000 You know what time it is, guys.

00:01:12.000 Guys, we're taking over 20 fucking 25.

00:01:13.000 Let's fucking cook.

00:01:15.000 You guys know what time it is?

00:01:24.000 You guys know what time it is, baby.

00:01:46.000 O slash the Jack.

00:01:55.000 Let's go, baby.

00:01:55.000 We're taking over 2025.

00:02:05.000 All this working podcast on YouTube.

00:02:07.000 Fuck, I'm both preach.

00:02:09.000 They're fucking losers.

00:02:11.000 We're going to surpass everybody else that talks shit.

00:02:13.000 Fuck you.

00:02:14.000 Let's go.

00:02:15.000 There's a lot of electric.

00:02:17.000 All the way to fucking victory.

00:02:18.000 And promo's O slash the Jack.

00:02:20.000 Guys.

00:02:23.000 We can't be stopped.

00:02:24.000 We won't be stopped.

00:02:25.000 All right.

00:02:38.000 Welcome to the stream, guys. - Welcome to the stream.

00:02:42.000 So, I'm going to call Bills real quick, Chad.

00:02:50.000 You guys can literally hear a little bit of the...

00:02:53.000 Genius behind the phone call.

00:02:55.000 He's going to help me with, because I think our Rumble, is it?

00:02:57.000 Are we live on Rumble?

00:02:58.000 Oh, wait.

00:02:59.000 Did I figure this out?

00:03:04.000 Holy shit, I'm fucking good.

00:03:05.000 Let's go.

00:03:07.000 Hold on.

00:03:08.000 Yo, Bills.

00:03:09.000 Yo, talk to me.

00:03:10.000 I think I figured it out.

00:03:11.000 I'm live on Fresh to Fit and on Myron Gaines X right now.

00:03:14.000 Oh, you was missing one?

00:03:15.000 I feel like you did it.

00:03:16.000 Yeah, I thought I got both alerts.

00:03:18.000 Yeah.

00:03:19.000 Holy shit, I did that.

00:03:21.000 That ATOM multi-stream thing you taught me yesterday.

00:03:24.000 It works.

00:03:24.000 Yeah, I went back to the custom RTMP and I put the rumble shit in and it worked.

00:03:32.000 Damn, okay.

00:03:34.000 What the fuck?

00:03:35.000 Alright, we lit, chat.

00:03:37.000 Let me just double check and make sure I'm live on Fresh or Fit 2. Oh, we are.

00:03:45.000 Yeah, we cooking.

00:03:47.000 Yeah, buddy, we cooking.

00:03:48.000 I figured this shit out.

00:03:49.000 Alright.

00:03:51.000 Alright, yeah, because people were saying that it wasn't live on Rumble.

00:03:56.000 Oh, okay, okay, okay.

00:03:57.000 The double Rumble.

00:03:58.000 Okay, yeah, yeah.

00:03:59.000 Yeah.

00:03:59.000 Yeah, sometimes if it's not in there, just check in Rumble Studio and you have to like re-input it.

00:04:06.000 Alright, awesome, awesome.

00:04:07.000 Alright, I'm on stream right now.

00:04:08.000 Just chat, tell a lot of Bills by.

00:04:10.000 They can hear you.

00:04:11.000 Alright, brother.

00:04:12.000 Alright, man.

00:04:13.000 I'll see you later.

00:04:13.000 I think we're going to do our thing at like 7.30 or 8. Yeah, alright, perfect.

00:04:17.000 I'll be there.

00:04:17.000 Alright, bro.

00:04:18.000 Peace.

00:04:19.000 Alright!

00:04:21.000 Crisis averted.

00:04:21.000 I thought we were fucked, but we're not, I guess.

00:04:23.000 Sweet.

00:04:24.000 So, guys, welcome to the stream.

00:04:26.000 Welcome to the stream.

00:04:26.000 I'm gonna...

00:04:27.000 Let me go ahead and get...

00:04:29.000 Because we're gonna be reacting to a video.

00:04:36.000 Because I want you guys to...

00:04:38.000 Yes?

00:04:41.000 I want you guys to, like, kind of understand this case.

00:04:44.000 So you guys under...

00:04:45.000 Then we'll get into the sentencing and how we even got here, right?

00:04:49.000 So...

00:04:51.000 First and foremost, some housekeeping things.

00:04:53.000 If you guys want to get involved in the show, the main way to do it, three main ways.

00:04:58.000 If 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...

00:05:18.000 Castle Club chat when you're in Castle Club because I'm streaming on four different platforms right now.

00:05:23.000 Two on YouTube, two on Rumble, and then obviously Castle Club.

00:05:26.000 So actually five.

00:05:27.000 So I got like five chats in front of me right now looking at what's going on.

00:05:30.000 And as you guys know, as usual, I'm going to probably switch over to the Mario Games X accounts right after that.

00:05:37.000 So bear me one second.

00:05:40.000 I just got to put a proper chat up here.

00:05:43.000 Oh, what the f-- oh, man.

00:05:55.000 Hold on.

00:05:56.000 There we go.

00:06:00.000 That's what it is.

00:06:01.000 What the fuck?

00:06:07.000 Oh.

00:06:12.000 My bad, Chad.

00:06:14.000 Hold on.

00:06:14.000 My bad, man.

00:06:15.000 What the fuck is this shit?

00:06:17.000 I'm ending something.

00:06:19.000 But you know what?

00:06:19.000 Fuck it.

00:06:19.000 I'll fix this shit after.

00:06:21.000 Alright, so quick announcements.

00:06:24.000 Get it to Cast Club Premium, guys.

00:06:26.000 Today's the last day.

00:06:27.000 We're closing you down after today.

00:06:28.000 So get in there now for only $65.

00:06:30.000 You get High Viacademy weekly Zoom calls and a community Telegram chat, etc.

00:06:35.000 But you gotta be in Cast Club to do it, of course, as well.

00:06:37.000 So keep that in mind because we're gonna be going back and forth to make sure everyone is also in Cast Club.

00:06:42.000 Also, If you want to get it for the year, it's $500.

00:06:45.000 If you want to get it for the year with Cow's Club and Cow's Club Premium, it's $900.

00:06:48.000 Okay?

00:06:49.000 So make sure to get in while you guys can.

00:06:51.000 At least get in at the $65 price point because it's going up to $98 after today.

00:06:55.000 All right, guys?

00:06:56.000 So get in now while y'all can.

00:06:58.000 All right?

00:06:59.000 So, 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.

00:07:07.000 So we're going to...

00:07:10.000 We're gonna go ahead and watch this video.

00:07:12.000 This is from Legal Eagle.

00:07:17.000 Trump...

00:07:17.000 Oh, my bad.

00:07:19.000 Let me get my mug out the way. 0.99

00:07:24.000 He's kind of a hater of Trump, but finally...

00:07:26.000 And then I think he had...

00:07:28.000 Let me...

00:07:28.000 Let me duplicate this.

00:07:33.000 all right so so why is he guilty Well, we know that's bullshit anyway.

00:07:50.000 And then this one...

00:07:51.000 Which indictment is this one?

00:07:57.000 He's the first ex-president charged with a crime.

00:08:00.000 Or as Trump put it, he has been indicated.

00:08:03.000 Indicated with 34 felony counts of...

00:08:05.000 Alright, well watch this one because I think this one actually goes over the case.

00:08:10.000 Like, the facts of the case.

00:08:12.000 So...

00:08:12.000 And then if we have time, we'll watch the other one too.

00:08:15.000 And then we'll get into what went down today.

00:08:16.000 Because 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.

00:08:24.000 And we're going to spin all this back together.

00:08:27.000 And I've actually covered this case on FedReacts like twice, guys.

00:08:32.000 If you watch FedReacts, you guys already know that we covered all of Trump's criminal cases.

00:08:38.000 case 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.

00:09:07.000 So Trump is the first president to get arrested and indicted.

00:09:10.000 By a grand jury, right?

00:09:12.000 And the agency that ran this, it was basically the state of NY that prosecuted him for this.

00:09:17.000 It wasn't the Fed case.

00:09:18.000 This was only one of the four different cases he had.

00:09:21.000 It was the New York case, the Georgia case, both state.

00:09:24.000 Then he had a case out of Washington, D.C. That was federal.

00:09:26.000 Then he had a case out of South Florida in West Palm Beach.

00:09:29.000 That was federal as well.

00:09:32.000 A 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.

00:09:40.000 But 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.

00:09:50.000 Vice presidents have been charged with breaking the law.

00:09:53.000 Governors, 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.

00:10:01.000 Of course, if you live outside of Illinois, your odds get way better.

00:10:05.000 Nevertheless, Trump posted that he was shocked that he was treated like some regular Joe.

00:10:10.000 He 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.

00:10:26.000 But the timing of the indictment caught most...

00:10:28.000 And you guys already know, New York loves to do their fucking purpose.

00:10:31.000 If you guys don't believe me, remember Luigi Mangione?

00:10:34.000 When they arrested him a couple weeks ago?

00:10:36.000 Meeting him at the fucking...

00:10:37.000 Taking him off a helicopter and shit.

00:10:39.000 Remember that shit, guys?

00:10:40.000 New York loves to do their fucking perp walks, but in this one they didn't.

00:10:43.000 Obviously it's a security issue, right?

00:10:45.000 Because you can't perp walk the fucking former President of the United States.

00:10:48.000 He has a Secret Service detail that he's with.

00:10:50.000 Most people by surprise.

00:10:52.000 News sources had just reported that the grand jury was going on hiatus until May without indicting Trump.

00:10:56.000 So, score one for the confidentiality of the grand jury system.

00:11:00.000 But 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.

00:11:07.000 Now, Donald Trump has been indicted for 34 counts of falsifying business records.

00:11:10.000 And during our last video about the New York case, we discussed the possible facts that would give rise to an indictment for falsifying records.

00:11:16.000 Every 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.

00:11:28.000 To 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.

00:11:35.000 And 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.

00:11:42.000 Now, according to the Manhattan DA's indictment and the attendant statement of facts, the DA is alleging the following facts.

00:11:48.000 The record's concerned A catch and kill scheme with AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer.

00:11:53.000 The 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.

00:12:00.000 The plan was for AMI to then conceal those stories rather than publicizing them.

00:12:04.000 According 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.

00:12:13.000 The man claimed to have a story about Trump having a secret love child and AMI paid him $30,000 to keep quiet.

00:12:18.000 The 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.

00:12:29.000 The party subsequently decided that they thought the doorman was lying.

00:12:33.000 The second incident involved playboy bunny Karen McDougal, who the statement of facts refers to as woman number one.

00:12:38.000 AMI arranged to pay McDougal $150,000 in exchange for the right to her story about an alleged affair with Trump.

00:12:45.000 AMI told McDougal that she would get to write articles.

00:12:52.000 As 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.

00:13:00.000 AMI 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.

00:13:12.000 Now 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.

00:13:19.000 And 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.

00:13:27.000 David 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.

00:13:43.000 Keep that name in mind, right?

00:13:46.000 What do we see here?

00:13:47.000 We 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.

00:13:56.000 And, you know, we're talking about the National Choir.

00:14:00.000 But the big thing to focus on, guys, is Stormy Daniels.

00:14:03.000 She's a porn star. 1.00

00:14:04.000 She 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.

00:14:13.000 While he was married, Pecker told Howard to notify Michael Cohen.

00:14:16.000 Dylan Howard testified that he communicated with Cohen about Daniels and also helped Daniels find lawyer Keith Davidson.

00:14:23.000 And 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.

00:14:33.000 And the National Enquirer head honchos then negotiated the $130,000 settlement and also confirmed the NDA with Davidson.

00:14:39.000 So the Enquirer...

00:14:41.000 We're trying to keep this started for coming out, allegedly.

00:14:43.000 And Stormy Daniels basically got paid off. 1.00

00:14:47.000 Statement of facts confirms that Cohen and AMI admitted guilt in connection with the payoffs of McDougal and Daniels in the federal matters.

00:14:54.000 Now, 12 days before the general election in 2016, Cohen drew down $130,000 on a home equity loan deposited...

00:15:00.000 And 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.

00:15:11.000 After the election, Trump started paying back the initial $130,000 payment to Cohen, but he increased the amount to a total of $420,000.

00:15:20.000 Now, 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.

00:15:28.000 Later checks came from Trump's personal bank account.

00:15:30.000 In total, 11 checks were issued for phony purpose, legal services.

00:15:34.000 Trump signed nine of those checks.

00:15:36.000 And 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

00:16:02.000 So, why 34 counts, and what records did Trump allegedly falsify?

00:16:06.000 Well, prosecutors charged each false entry as a separate count.

00:16:10.000 For example, there are four counts.

00:16:12.000 Which, you know, I think they were trying to make a thing here, guys.

00:16:16.000 Like, I'll be honest with y'all.

00:16:17.000 This New York hush money case, the state of New York knew that Trump was going to be charged in other jurisdictions.

00:16:23.000 So 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.

00:16:32.000 Alvin Bragg campaigned on this, the district attorney for New York.

00:16:35.000 So they had a hard-on for Trump.

00:16:37.000 And if you guys are wondering who Alvin Bragg is, this is him.

00:16:45.000 This guy hates Trump.

00:16:47.000 He campaigned on going after Trump to become district attorney.

00:16:50.000 So they had a hard-on for Trump from the beginning, man, because this is a very frivolous case, to be honest with y'all.

00:16:56.000 No one gets charged for stupid shit like this, but they wanted to send a message.

00:17:00.000 Counts 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.

00:17:08.000 The 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.

00:17:25.000 The 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.

00:17:38.000 The 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.

00:17:45.000 The fourth count related to that payment that was when Trump, quote, made and caused a false entry.

00:17:50.000 The 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.

00:18:11.000 The DA basically uses the same pattern for all of the other counts.

00:18:15.000 It's basically one count for every check or invoice.

00:18:18.000 Now, this isn't required, but it's also a totally normal way to charge someone.

00:18:22.000 Now, there has been a ton of breathless reporting, about 34 felony counts, but...

00:18:28.000 A prosecutor has discretion here.

00:18:30.000 They're not required to list out every single act that was part of a general criminal scheme.

00:18:35.000 But by the same token, it's also a totally normal way of going about writing an indictment, and it's done all the time.

00:18:43.000 So basically, you can't conclude anything from the fact that there's basically three dozen different felony counts.

00:18:53.000 Now, 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.

00:19:02.000 Okay, this is important, guys, because this is what makes it the felony, and that's what the state pushed for.

00:19:09.000 This charge is normally always charged as a misdemeanor, but the state of New York tried to get it...

00:19:16.000 To a felony, so they had to prove this part.

00:19:21.000 For obvious reasons.

00:19:30.000 When the defendant acts for the purpose of frustrating the state's power to faithfully carry out its own law.

00:19:36.000 In 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.

00:19:43.000 The government only has to show that Trump did something to frustrate the regulatory authorities of New York.

00:19:49.000 And 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.

00:20:03.000 But 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.

00:20:12.000 But the statement of facts does try to justify the charges.

00:20:14.000 The 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.

00:20:22.000 Quote, But the prosecutor will need to prove that Trump knew about the Daniels payments too and

00:20:52.000 that he agreed to Cohen's payment scheme.

00:20:55.000 The statement of facts alleges that Trump didn't want to pay Daniels directly, so he asked Cohen to do it.

00:20:59.000 Quote, Trump did not want to make the $130,000 payment himself and asked Cohen and Weisselberg to find a way to make the payment.

00:21:05.000 After discussing various payment options with Weisselberg, Cohen agreed he would make the payment.

00:21:10.000 Before making the payment, Cohen confirmed with Trump that Trump would pay him back.

00:21:13.000 The statement of facts alleges that Cohen made the payment through a shell company with Trump's blessing.

00:21:17.000 Quote, 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.

00:21:28.000 He then transferred $100.

00:21:29.000 And this was something that they used against him, too, that he created this shell business to pay Stormy Daniels.

00:21:34.000 Thank you.

00:21:36.000 $31,000 from his personal home equity line of credit into that account.

00:21:40.000 On 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.

00:21:50.000 Now, 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.

00:22:07.000 in income tax.

00:22:08.000 Finally, Weisselberg added an additional $60,000 as a supplemental year-end bonus.

00:22:12.000 So the statement of facts indicates that Trump knew about his arrangement with Cohen.

00:22:16.000 Quote, 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.

00:22:24.000 Each 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.

00:22:36.000 At no point did Cohen have a retainer agreement with Trump or the Trump Organization.

00:22:40.000 And 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.

00:22:47.000 That messed him up too.

00:22:49.000 The statement of facts also goes into some detail about how each payment was invoiced and made.

00:22:53.000 And I think this detail is Hey, real nigga, baby, let's go! 1.00

00:23:04.000 He's like, yeah, I have this bitch, man. 1.00

00:23:06.000 I'm the president now.

00:23:07.000 Fuck her, bro. 1.00

00:23:07.000 You ain't cloud chasing no more. 1.00

00:23:12.000 Trump did the smash and dash, man.

00:23:17.000 He literally turned into Goku.

00:23:20.000 After the election, they could avoid paying altogether because at that point, it would not matter if the story became public.

00:23:26.000 This 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.

00:23:32.000 Finally, the statement of facts alleges that Trump tried to pressure Cohen to lie about their arrangement.

00:23:36.000 The 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.

00:23:50.000 In 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.

00:23:58.000 And he even went ahead and was one of the main witnesses of the case against him.

00:24:01.000 Now, 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.

00:24:09.000 So, what's the second crime in this case?

00:24:11.000 Well, 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.

00:24:17.000 However, 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.

00:24:24.000 However, in a press conference, Alan Bragg identified three general areas of law that he alleges that Trump intended to break.

00:24:30.000 The scheme violated New York election law, which makes it a crime to conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means.

00:24:38.000 The $130,000 wire payment exceeded the federal campaign contribution cap.

00:24:44.000 And the false statements in AMI... And let's be honest, that's a stretch.

00:24:48.000 That's a stretch.

00:24:49.000 ...books violated New York law.

00:24:52.000 That is why.

00:24:54.000 Mr. Trump made false statements.

00:24:56.000 So, Bragg mentions that the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels could have violated the federal campaign contribution caps.

00:25:02.000 Because the hush money payment was intended to benefit the Trump campaign, it could be considered an...

00:25:07.000 And that's where you can argue, was it really campaign contribution?

00:25:11.000 Was it really?

00:25:12.000 You know?

00:25:13.000 Because this shit occurred back in, like, 2006 when he dealt with this Stormy Daniels chick.

00:25:18.000 ...in-kind contribution.

00:25:19.000 The FEC limits...

00:25:20.000 So you can make the argument that that's not a campaign...

00:25:23.000 That's from his personal life.

00:25:27.000 But that's why it's good to have good lawyers.

00:25:30.000 I'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.

00:25:36.000 So the $130,000 would be way over that limit.

00:25:39.000 As 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.

00:25:46.000 And then there's also the state conspiracy allegation.

00:25:49.000 New York Elections Law Section 17-52 covers conspiracy to promote or prevent an election.

00:25:55.000 Section 17-52 requires proof of a conspiracy among two or more people to promote the election of a particular person.

00:26:05.000 And there was also a suggestion that they falsified records for the purpose of tax fraud.

00:26:16.000 So we'll see how this unfolds in the coming months.

00:26:18.000 But 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.

00:26:30.000 And those are still crimes.

00:26:32.000 There just wouldn't be jail time associated with them.

00:26:35.000 Now, in terms of defenses, Trump is going to have lots of them.

00:26:38.000 Trump's criminal defense will probably be different from his public talking points.

00:26:42.000 For example, Trump and his advocates have argued that prosecuting people for...

00:26:45.000 Now that we know the facts of the case, now we're going to get into the guiltiness, then we'll get into today.

00:26:50.000 He won a popular vote.

00:26:51.000 Twelve citizens of New York unanimously found former President Donald Trump guilty of all 34 felony counts.

00:26:57.000 He reacted about as you would expect.

00:26:58.000 This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.

00:27:03.000 Huh, it's really unfortunate.

00:27:04.000 Well, Trump's actually right there.

00:27:06.000 He's referring to Judge Merchan, which I'll talk about him in a second.

00:27:13.000 Remember, folks, it's a rigged system.

00:27:17.000 Yeah, cry more, Donnie.

00:27:18.000 Chaos lawyer and reluctant Trump whisperer Liz Dye has the details.

00:27:21.000 Thanks, Devin.

00:27:22.000 Well, it finally happened.

00:27:23.000 For the first time in our nation's history, an American president was found guilty of a felony in a court of law.

00:27:28.000 Although if you ask the future felon himself, that was inevitable.

00:27:31.000 Mother Teresa could not beat these charges.

00:27:33.000 Well, yes.

00:27:35.000 If 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.

00:27:47.000 But if Mother Teresa ever did do any of that, she managed to keep it on the down-low.

00:27:52.000 Trump, however, is not a keeping it on the down-low.

00:27:55.000 Well, she didn't want to keep it on the down-low.

00:27:57.000 That's the whole reason why they had to pay.

00:27:58.000 She didn't want to keep it on the down-low.

00:28:00.000 Down-low kind of guy.

00:28:02.000 At 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.

00:28:14.000 And he reportedly boasted about their brief sexual encounter the next day.

00:28:18.000 But ten years later, when he decided to run for president, he was decidedly more circumspect.

00:28:23.000 Trump, whose notorious philandering had been a subject of the New York tabloids for decades...

00:28:28.000 Oh, what, because he womanizes? 0.99

00:28:30.000 Bro.

00:28:32.000 But 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.

00:28:48.000 And so he enlisted his longtime friend David Pecker, the owner of the National Enquirer, to burnish his image.

00:28:54.000 Pecker, 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.

00:29:16.000 Pecker 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.

00:29:25.000 Pecker 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.

00:29:36.000 So he refused to go through with it.

00:29:38.000 Then, 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.

00:29:49.000 And even after Cohen threatened that the boss would be furious if he didn't do the deal, Pecker wouldn't budge.

00:29:55.000 So 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.

00:30:08.000 Then on October 7, 2016, the Access Hollywood tape dropped, with Trump bragging about grabbing women by the genitals because... 0.88

00:30:14.000 When you're a star, they let you do it.

00:30:16.000 You can do anything.

00:30:18.000 Yo, W. Trump.

00:30:22.000 W. Trump, this lady's fucking pissed. 1.00

00:30:24.000 This Karen is angry. 1.00

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.

00:30:38.000 So 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.

00:30:47.000 And on November 1, the agreement was signed, and Trump went on to win the White House.

00:30:51.000 During 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?

00:31:00.000 Howard replied, oh my god!

00:31:02.000 Howard 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.

00:31:14.000 Michael 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.

00:31:23.000 And while that honorific allowed him to pitch himself as a sort of lobbyist, it didn't come with a paycheck.

00:31:27.000 In 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.

00:31:39.000 By 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.

00:31:51.000 And the way that he took care of it was through a series of monthly checks for $35,000, supposedly paying Cohen for legal expenses.

00:31:57.000 I don't know.

00:31:58.000 This all seems really complicated.

00:31:59.000 Legal fees?

00:32:00.000 Reimbursements?

00:32:01.000 Taxes?

00:32:01.000 If only there was someone who were really good at explainers.

00:32:03.000 Throughout 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.

00:32:12.000 So that was the...

00:32:12.000 All right, this thing could go on too fast.

00:32:13.000 Let me...

00:32:15.000 Payment to Daniels, $130,000.

00:32:18.000 On 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.

00:32:32.000 So that brought Cohen's out-of-pocket expenses to $180,000.

00:32:37.000 Now, on the left side, there were notes by Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg documenting that they would have to...

00:32:42.000 Weisselberg.

00:32:46.000 Gross 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.

00:32:54.000 If 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.

00:33:00.000 But because they were going to be keeping it a secret, he would have to declare that as income.

00:33:03.000 And 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.

00:33:10.000 So now that's a total of $420,000.

00:33:13.000 And if the payments were going to be paid out in $35,000 increments, that was, that'd be like 12.

00:33:18.000 That'd be 12 equal payments.

00:33:20.000 And that's what there were.

00:33:21.000 This isn't complicated math.

00:33:22.000 Exhibit 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.

00:33:34.000 And that's how you end up with the 34 counts, Chad.

00:33:37.000 He 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.

00:33:49.000 And 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.

00:33:57.000 Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?

00:34:01.000 What the fuck is you thinking?

00:34:03.000 Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche argued that Cohen had actually been doing legal work in 2017 to earn those monthly payments.

00:34:10.000 In 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.

00:34:17.000 Quote, He would be able to get that credit.

00:34:34.000 And that might have been persuasive if the prosecutors were simply asking the jury to take Michael Cohen's word for it.

00:34:40.000 After all, Cohen was convicted of tax fraud and lying to Congress.

00:34:43.000 He's hardly a credible character.

00:34:45.000 But it wasn't just Cohen calling it a reimbursement.

00:34:48.000 Yeah, because he's been arrested for perjury, guys, and lying under oath.

00:34:51.000 Once you get hit with those charges, you don't become a credible witness.

00:34:55.000 For the hush money payment.

00:34:57.000 You lose a lot of credibility.

00:34:58.000 And if you ever get...

00:35:00.000 Convicted of perjury as a cop?

00:35:02.000 You're done.

00:35:03.000 You can't work in law enforcement if you've ever been convicted of perjury or making false statements.

00:35:08.000 Pecker testified that he had also leaned on Trump to pay Cohen back.

00:35:12.000 And Makani confirmed that he took Cohen off the payroll and routed those invoices through bookkeeping rather than through the legal department.

00:35:19.000 Exhibits 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.

00:35:36.000 She said, He's the kind of person who seeks credit.

00:35:43.000 There's also the fact that Trump tweeted repeatedly that he'd reimbursed Cohen for the Daniels payout.

00:35:48.000 And not for nothing but Rudy Giuliani, Trump's own lawyer, admitted it on air.

00:35:52.000 And that's crazy they put that on Twitter.

00:35:54.000 Mr. 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.

00:36:06.000 ...payout.

00:36:07.000 And not for nothing but Rudy Giuliani...

00:36:10.000 Trump'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.

00:36:19.000 Trump's current lawyer, Todd Blanche, countered by calling Michael Cohen a liar over and over and over again at high decibel.

00:36:26.000 He 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.

00:36:36.000 Michael Cohen is the GOAT. He's literally the greatest liar of all time.

00:36:41.000 Stop it.

00:36:42.000 Get some help.

00:36:43.000 Assistant 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.

00:36:54.000 Mr. Blanche actually said, this is not the type of witness you want.

00:36:57.000 We didn't choose Michael Cohen to be our witness.

00:36:59.000 We didn't pick him up at the witness store.

00:37:02.000 The 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.

00:37:09.000 Plus, Steinglass had all those exhibits and witnesses to back up what Michael Cohen said.

00:37:13.000 Well, the jerk store called.

00:37:15.000 They're running out of you.

00:37:17.000 In the end, it took the jury of seven men and five women less than a day and a half to reach a guilty verdict.

00:37:22.000 Now, throughout this trial, Trump was represented by Todd.

00:37:25.000 And that's why a lot of the people that hate Trump are saying, hey, he got convicted of a jury of his own peers.

00:37:29.000 But again, this case should have never been brought in the first place, guys.

00:37:33.000 I mean, this is a lot of work and a lot of effort to go after a dude for paying a thought off.

00:37:40.000 Like, let's be honest here.

00:37:41.000 Come on.

00:37:42.000 Come on, State of New York.

00:37:43.000 But again, like I said before, this was a clout grab by Alvin Bragg where he wanted to be able to say...

00:37:49.000 I am the first district attorney to charge a former president of the United States with a crime and have him be indicted.

00:37:56.000 That's what the state of New York wanted.

00:37:58.000 Right?

00:37:58.000 And then all these other charges that came after, they wanted their piece of, their pound of flesh too.

00:38:04.000 Blanche.

00:38:05.000 But if you want...

00:38:05.000 You 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.

00:38:13.000 Right?

00:38:13.000 This is going to open opportunities for him later in the private sector.

00:38:16.000 Like, 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?

00:38:24.000 It's for their reputational, um, embatterment, guys.

00:38:28.000 It's very simple, you know?

00:38:29.000 Now, 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.

00:38:36.000 I mean, hell, let's Google it real fast, right?

00:38:39.000 Let's see here.

00:38:53.000 Does it have it here?

00:38:59.000 Okay.

00:39:00.000 So he's only earning somewhere between $100 to a quarter million a year.

00:39:05.000 Right?

00:39:07.000 Boom.

00:39:08.000 Report for Alvin Bragg.

00:39:09.000 And this is public since 2023. He makes somewhere in this range, it looks like.

00:39:13.000 And he's a district attorney.

00:39:14.000 Right?

00:39:15.000 Who's the top law enforcement official.

00:39:19.000 In the city of New York.

00:39:21.000 Right?

00:39:22.000 For the state level.

00:39:26.000 And this actually got the mayor in trouble.

00:39:29.000 This thing, he didn't properly disclose some of the money he got from Turkey.

00:39:34.000 Right?

00:39:35.000 For benefits and trips and shit like that.

00:39:36.000 This is what got him in trouble.

00:39:37.000 So, it looks like somewhere between 100 to 250K. Which, guys, to be honest with you, that's not that much money in New York.

00:39:44.000 Right?

00:39:45.000 So...

00:39:47.000 For him, this is a huge come-out because now he can secure any legal job he wants, right?

00:39:53.000 And 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

00:40:17.000 Which 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.

00:40:32.000 So under 175.05, it's a misdemeanor to make or cause a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.

00:40:38.000 And 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.

00:40:47.000 In plain English, if you create the false business record as part of a criminal scheme, then it becomes a felony.

00:40:53.000 And 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.

00:41:04.000 So 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.

00:41:14.000 And in fact...

00:41:15.000 They came up with three.

00:41:17.000 First and most obvious is tax fraud.

00:41:19.000 Because 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.

00:41:33.000 The 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.

00:41:46.000 And while Cohen didn't write the check to the Trump campaign, he did write it for the benefit of the Trump campaign.

00:41:53.000 And that still counts.

00:41:54.000 So 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.

00:42:04.000 Trump's lawyers tried to argue that Trump wanted to silence Daniels to protect his family from embarrassment, not for political ends.

00:42:10.000 But 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.

00:42:18.000 At the meeting, they cooked up a plan for the National Enquirer to bottle up stories that damaged Trump while attacking his rivals.

00:42:25.000 The whole purpose of this plan was to protect the campaign.

00:42:29.000 Trump 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.

00:42:37.000 And so the prosecutors argued that...

00:42:39.000 Well, she wanted a clout chase, man. 0.98

00:42:41.000 That's why.

00:42:42.000 Because when that Hollywood Access video came out, every chick came out wanting their pound of flesh. 1.00

00:42:48.000 You know, E. Carroll, all these women making fake accusations against them. 0.96

00:42:51.000 ...had paid to Daniels was an undeclared and excessive campaign contribution.

00:42:55.000 The 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.

00:43:07.000 And here's where things get a little wonky.

00:43:09.000 Because the prosecutors suggested that the unlawful means were the tax fraud and the campaign finance violation.

00:43:14.000 So in some sense, this thing kind of loops back on itself.

00:43:18.000 Once they defined the crimes, the prosecution had to prove that Trump had the intent to commit them.

00:43:23.000 The 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.

00:43:39.000 So 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.

00:43:49.000 The prosecution didn't need to show that he committed the other three offenses, though.

00:43:53.000 And 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.

00:44:04.000 The 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.

00:44:14.000 One, violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act, otherwise known as FICA.

00:44:18.000 Two, the falsification of other business records, or three, violation of tax laws.

00:44:23.000 So, 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.

00:44:32.000 And that would be fine.

00:44:34.000 In fact, no one will ever know which predicate they accepted, or even if this was an issue at all for the panel.

00:44:40.000 Since there was no place on the charge sheet for the jurors to specify which other crime they were basing their verdict on.

00:44:45.000 And it may seem odd, but that's just how New York law works.

00:44:49.000 Which Trump's lawyers explicitly acknowledged during the charging conference when they negotiated those jury instructions.

00:44:55.000 Trump wanted the judge to say, you, the jury, must reach unanimous decision regarding whether the people have established unlawful means.

00:45:02.000 And if so, which unlawful means was or were at issue.

00:45:06.000 And Justice Mearshan said...

00:45:08.000 Do you agree that unanimity is not ordinarily required?

00:45:11.000 To 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.

00:45:21.000 In 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.

00:45:28.000 But the judge said, what you're asking me to do is change the law, and I'm not going to do that.

00:45:33.000 And that was that.

00:45:35.000 This will not be an issue that gets the case overturned on appeal, but it will be an issue that sucks up a lot of airtime.

00:45:41.000 In fact...

00:45:42.000 Yeah, absolutely it will.

00:45:43.000 Real quick, let me read some of these chats, guys.

00:45:45.000 We got Xander says, W. Martin, would you ever do the 20-verse-1 again?

00:45:48.000 I watched the one you did last year, and boy, it was hilarious.

00:45:50.000 It seemed pretty popular, too.

00:45:52.000 You had almost 25,000 people watching live.

00:45:53.000 I don't know if you can see the pictures, but picture one, your reaction to a joke made.

00:45:57.000 Picture number two, chatting with a girl about a guy.

00:46:00.000 Yeah, we could do the 20-1.

00:46:07.000 1 again.

00:46:08.000 If I'm not mistaken, guys, we did that instead of After Hours, right?

00:46:13.000 Xander, can you remind me?

00:46:14.000 We did that instead of After Hours, if I'm not mistaken.

00:46:17.000 Algy309, subscribe.

00:46:19.000 Shout out to you, bro.

00:46:21.000 Also, Xander, tell me what day that was.

00:46:25.000 When was that 20 vs.

00:46:27.000 1?

00:46:28.000 What day did we do that?

00:46:30.000 Alright.

00:46:31.000 So we got here.

00:46:32.000 So shout out to you, dude, for joining Castle Club ALG. Shout out to you.

00:46:36.000 I'm going to give you a Don DeMarco, actually.

00:46:37.000 Ishmi says, you seen Ian Ray show the fuck out of Elon yesterday?

00:46:45.000 Yep, I definitely did.

00:46:46.000 We talked about it yesterday.

00:46:48.000 O Slash in the chat.

00:46:48.000 Shout out to you, Haz.

00:46:50.000 We got Zuhar.

00:46:52.000 Yo, Myron, maybe a tip for 2025. Start a new podcast with Sneeko with other content.

00:46:58.000 Sneakle's doing his own thing right now, guys.

00:46:59.000 He's more on the pre-recorded, you know, artistic vibe right now.

00:47:04.000 Yo, Myron.

00:47:05.000 Okay, you're out big, bro.

00:47:06.000 Thank you.

00:47:07.000 Our big bro.

00:47:08.000 I appreciate that.

00:47:09.000 Easy.

00:47:10.000 As he again says, what's up, Myron?

00:47:12.000 I sent you a DM on IG. Saw you.

00:47:13.000 Don't read them because you get so much.

00:47:15.000 Understandable.

00:47:16.000 So I signed up for a year on CC. Just want to say thanks.

00:47:19.000 That GoFundMe was not a scam, bro.

00:47:21.000 Oh, no worries, bro.

00:47:22.000 You know, people are going to fucking say things.

00:47:25.000 Xander says, I knew Trump would get these cases dismissed.

00:47:28.000 Middle finger to all the never-Trumpers.

00:47:30.000 Too bad Trump will still not be considered a felon.

00:47:32.000 Will still be considered a felon.

00:47:33.000 How do you respond if people will say Trump is a racist and pee?

00:47:37.000 Bro, we just ignore him, dude.

00:47:38.000 They've been saying that shit since 2015, dude.

00:47:40.000 Andy Balls, love you, man.

00:47:41.000 I appreciate that, bro.

00:47:44.000 Sandy Balls.

00:47:45.000 Then we got Mary One says, $1.

00:47:47.000 Can you still screw him after the president and term is over?

00:47:50.000 Yeah.

00:47:51.000 Yeah, Chet, I'll be honest with you.

00:47:52.000 I would not be surprised if they didn't go after him after his presidency.

00:47:57.000 So, yeah.

00:47:58.000 Al Boyce says, he had an interview with Trump's lawyer.

00:48:00.000 It's on X. Gee, shit.

00:48:02.000 Okay.

00:48:04.000 And then we could react to that.

00:48:07.000 Can you send me the link, Al Boyce?

00:48:08.000 Can you send me the link for that, actually?

00:48:11.000 We'll react to that, too.

00:48:12.000 Crazy in NYC, we can't get shooters and robbers to get convicted yet.

00:48:15.000 They did all this for Trump.

00:48:16.000 Complete clout political submission.

00:48:18.000 You know who targeted from a judicial abuse.

00:48:20.000 There are actual shooters still walking the streets of New York.

00:48:22.000 Thank you, Kim Pop.

00:48:23.000 Thank you.

00:48:24.000 The reason why this case is so fucking ridiculous, guys, is because there is way worse shit going on in New York.

00:48:29.000 Like gang violence, people getting killed, like all kinds of crazy shit.

00:48:33.000 But they spent millions upon millions upon millions of dollars to go after Trump on this bullshit, falsified business charge.

00:48:39.000 It already is.

00:48:41.000 Donald Trump got the ball rolling earlier in the week with a post on Truth Social claiming that...

00:48:45.000 The 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.

00:49:00.000 Soon, all of Trump's MAGA allies were singing from the same hymnal.

00:49:04.000 Senator 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.

00:49:12.000 And that among the crime.

00:49:13.000 And speaking of the judge.

00:49:15.000 So Laura Loomer has been on this judge's neck for a while. 0.98

00:49:19.000 Uh, where'd I put it?

00:49:25.000 Oh, damn, I lost it.

00:49:26.000 Okay.

00:49:27.000 I'll find a few minutes.

00:49:30.000 Hold on.

00:49:35.000 I have it here?

00:49:36.000 No.

00:49:38.000 Simmer down, little Marco.

00:49:40.000 Fox News' John Roberts tweeted that Judge Mershon just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict.

00:49:45.000 Four could agree on one crime, four on a different one, and the other four on another.

00:49:49.000 He said he would treat 444 as a unanimous verdict.

00:49:52.000 Here'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.

00:50:01.000 When they were reading those guilty verdicts, the one thing that we didn't know is really what he was found guilty of.

00:50:08.000 Because if you remember...

00:50:10.000 All right, so real quick.

00:50:11.000 So Judge Merchan, right, his daughter, guys, and Laura's been exposing this shit for a minute now.

00:50:15.000 But Judge Merchan's daughter, business partner, Mike Nellis, refused to comply with his subpoena yesterday after hiring Democrat lawyer Marcielis.

00:50:22.000 Who was also brought to represent Kamala Harris' campaign and now also GA Secretary of State.

00:50:27.000 So in other words, Judge Merchan's daughter had worked for Kamala Harris' campaign, guys.

00:50:31.000 Right?

00:50:32.000 So obviously, that comes off really bad optically.

00:50:35.000 You got a judge that's supposed to sentence Donald Trump and his daughter worked for his adversary's campaign.

00:50:42.000 This is literally like the definition of conflict of interest.

00:50:46.000 Right?

00:50:46.000 So Judge Merchan's daughter...

00:50:48.000 And Kamala Harris have the same lawyer representing them so they can communicate with each other under the excuse of attorney-client privilege. 0.99

00:50:53.000 Weeks 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.

00:51:02.000 Millions 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.

00:51:13.000 Holley, guys.

00:51:15.000 Big.

00:51:19.000 Do you guys see why now?

00:51:20.000 I talk about this and I always use Laura Loomer as one of the main people that broke this story.

00:51:27.000 Like, the mainstream media will not report this, guys.

00:51:30.000 This is fucking insane.

00:51:32.000 In-fucking-sane.

00:51:34.000 So, instead of being dragged to prison, which is what Steve Bannon was jailed for, Mike Nellis is now posting attacks on me.

00:51:39.000 Meet Weird Flex.

00:51:40.000 These attacks have been coordinated and sanctioned by the media and cowardly Republicans who don't want to see that attack for what it is.

00:51:49.000 A cover for Judge Merchan and his daughter's company.

00:51:51.000 If there's nothing to hide, why not comply with the subpoena?

00:51:54.000 Where's the House GOP?

00:51:55.000 Are they going to be a bunch of cowards and allow Mike Nelson to refuse to comply with the subpoena?

00:52:00.000 Seems like none of the House GOP is focused on actually exposing this witch hunt against Trump and holding Merchan accountable.

00:52:05.000 Everyone can see through this sham attack...

00:52:08.000 On me, that was coordinated the day Judge Merchan's gag order was upheld, and same day, Nels refused to comply.

00:52:13.000 So, guys, Laura Loomer's been exposing Judge Merchan and his daughter all fucking summer. 1.00

00:52:20.000 Like, all summer, she had her fucking neck, she had her foot on their necks, bro. 0.75

00:52:24.000 So, I gotta give her credit, because if it had not been for Laura Loomer, this is just one of a bunch of tweets, by the way.

00:52:30.000 This tweet that you guys are seeing here, she wrote like 20 of these.

00:52:33.000 She literally had like... 1.00

00:52:34.000 I'm exaggerating.

00:52:35.000 But she literally had somewhere between five to ten tweets, just like this, exposing things between Merchan and his daughter, other conspirators, etc.

00:52:44.000 And this made Merchan look really fucking bad.

00:52:48.000 So, and then here, what ended up happening is Trump used some of that stuff to make his argument that the judge was not impartial.

00:52:56.000 The motion.

00:52:57.000 And they've put together a composite of issues that would cause me a little bit of pause.

00:53:04.000 And I can explain all the various things that they've put together.

00:53:09.000 The main focus of this motion, as opposed to the previous one a year ago, which the judge denied, is on the daughter's line of work.

00:53:17.000 As you already said, the daughter does work with many, many high-profile Democratic candidates.

00:53:25.000 She works on their social media.

00:53:27.000 They put out a post.

00:53:28.000 They get contributions.

00:53:29.000 She, as an owner, gets a percentage of those contributions.

00:53:34.000 So 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.

00:53:50.000 And he didn't.

00:53:51.000 And here's the thing.

00:53:51.000 Some 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.

00:54:01.000 And they said no.

00:54:02.000 But it doesn't matter.

00:54:04.000 Like, 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.

00:54:13.000 They wouldn't ask no fucking ethics board.

00:54:15.000 But...

00:54:16.000 Judge Marchand wanted the clout to be the first judge to be able to sentence a former president.

00:54:20.000 That's the fucking truth.

00:54:21.000 This whole New York case, guys...

00:54:23.000 You know what?

00:54:24.000 Let me boil this fucking thing down. 0.94

00:54:25.000 Right?

00:54:28.000 This 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.

00:54:38.000 Again, one more time.

00:54:41.000 This 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.

00:54:58.000 Because 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.

00:55:16.000 Because think about it.

00:55:16.000 They spent all this money.

00:55:18.000 Trump's not going to jail.

00:55:19.000 They spent millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of dollars to prosecute him.

00:55:23.000 Where'd that money go?

00:55:24.000 What, just so you could call him a fucking convicted felon?

00:55:27.000 No!

00:55:27.000 They did it for their own career benefit.

00:55:30.000 Because now, if any of them go to private sector, yeah, I was on that Trump hush money case.

00:55:35.000 I was one of the prosecutors on it.

00:55:37.000 I led that investigation.

00:55:40.000 I argued in court for that investigation.

00:55:45.000 Show me the motive and I'll show you why.

00:55:48.000 That's why, guys, they went after him.

00:55:50.000 This 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.

00:55:58.000 That's all they cared about.

00:55:59.000 They never actually cared about getting justice or putting him in jail.

00:56:02.000 It was to send a message that, hey, look, we don't like you, Trump, and we're going to get a come-up off you.

00:56:08.000 ...by the outcome of the proceeding.

00:56:10.000 So the question here is...

00:56:13.000 Is this daughter likely to profit, to benefit from the outcome of this proceeding?

00:56:20.000 And you have to understand, it's not actual conduct that's worrisome.

00:56:24.000 It's the appearance, the appearance to a reasonable person that this judge cannot be fair and impartial, given that relationship.

00:56:33.000 So ordinarily, I would think that...

00:56:35.000 And 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.

00:56:40.000 And I was like, bro...

00:56:41.000 A reasonable person looking at this is going to think that this has bad optics.

00:56:44.000 I mean, everyone here in the chat, you guys have common sense.

00:56:47.000 Like, this looks bad no matter how you splice it.

00:56:50.000 A benefit financially would be to a spouse because they share the income.

00:56:54.000 This is an independent adult daughter.

00:56:57.000 They don't share income.

00:56:58.000 But according to this statute, according to this statute, the judge must recuse if she would substantially benefit from the outcome.

00:57:07.000 So that's one thing that concerned me.

00:57:09.000 But if you add to that...

00:57:10.000 You know what's funny, bro?

00:57:12.000 Xander, you said it was March 25th last year?

00:57:14.000 We lost our Instagrams right around that time, bro.

00:57:17.000 That's right around the time we lost our Instagrams.

00:57:19.000 And then, like, our...

00:57:21.000 Oh, my God, bro.

00:57:22.000 It was such a...

00:57:23.000 It was so fucking...

00:57:24.000 That makes sense.

00:57:25.000 Had 27,000 watching back then because we didn't...

00:57:27.000 We had our Instagrams, dude.

00:57:29.000 Fucking lame.

00:57:31.000 But don't worry, we're...

00:57:33.000 We're building back up in 2025, guys.

00:57:36.000 Us losing our Instagrams hurt us a lot.

00:57:38.000 You know?

00:57:39.000 It was annoying.

00:57:40.000 Because we used to bring a lot of people in from Instagram with the stories and shit like that.

00:57:46.000 Was the judge's original contribution to President Biden four years ago, which he made himself.

00:57:52.000 Very small contribution.

00:57:54.000 I think it was $10, right?

00:57:56.000 $35, I'm told.

00:57:58.000 $35.

00:57:59.000 A small contribution, but he made...

00:58:01.000 All right.

00:58:01.000 So now you guys get it, right?

00:58:03.000 We know the facts of the case.

00:58:04.000 Now let's get into today.

00:58:05.000 Now we're going to fast forward.

00:58:06.000 So guys, this is what we're going to do.

00:58:07.000 I gave you guys the backstory.

00:58:09.000 We talked about the case, the charges, how we got here, who prosecuted this case, how he got convicted, etc.

00:58:17.000 We went over details.

00:58:18.000 So 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?

00:58:25.000 So 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.

00:58:37.000 On Fresh and Fit as well.

00:58:38.000 So, time to switch on over, depending on what platform you prefer, Rumble or YouTube, right?

00:58:45.000 I'd prefer if you guys all came to Rumble, but if you want to be on YouTube, that's fine too.

00:58:52.000 So, time to switch on over, my ninjas.

00:58:56.000 I'm going to be ending the Fresh and Fit versions.

00:59:03.000 Bear with me, guys.

00:59:14.000 Bear with me.

00:59:19.000 Join up, ninjas.

00:59:23.000 So come on over, guys.

00:59:24.000 Come on over.

00:59:25.000 I pinned it.

00:59:26.000 If 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.

00:59:36.000 Again, I'm doing this for maybe one more week or a couple of days, but...

00:59:41.000 We are not going to be streaming any of this stuff on Fresh and Fit anymore.

00:59:44.000 I'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.

00:59:50.000 It's going to be Myron Gaines X only.

00:59:52.000 I'll make announcements.

00:59:53.000 Make sure to ring the bell.

00:59:54.000 I'll be making announcements on Twitter.

00:59:56.000 So come on over right now, guys.

00:59:58.000 And I'm going to end these streams.

01:00:03.000 So first, I'm going to go ahead and end the Fresh and Fit on YouTube.

01:00:10.000 So come on over, guys.

01:00:16.000 And then we're going to start getting cooking here.

01:00:18.000 All right.

01:00:20.000 Come on over.

01:00:21.000 Link is pinned in Fresher Fit chat, guys.

01:00:22.000 Come on over.

01:00:23.000 So we're ending Fresher Fit here.

01:00:24.000 Bam.

01:00:25.000 Done.

01:00:25.000 Okay.

01:00:26.000 Now we're going to end the Fresher Fit on Rumble.

01:00:32.000 And again, I'm doing this so you guys can kind of get in the habit of knowing where to find me, 5 p.m.

01:00:37.000 Monday through Friday, every day.

01:00:39.000 I'm committing to it.

01:00:40.000 Right now, guys, I feel like shit.

01:00:42.000 I'm not going to lie to you all.

01:00:43.000 But I am committing to this shit.

01:00:44.000 5 p.m.

01:00:45.000 every day, Monday through Friday, for at least a fucking few weeks. 0.92

01:00:49.000 At least.

01:00:50.000 So, we're going to be cooking, chat.

01:00:54.000 Alright, let me just make sure.

01:00:55.000 Okay.

01:00:56.000 Double, triple check.

01:00:59.000 Alright.

01:01:00.000 I am ending the rumble stream now.

01:01:03.000 Is it still going?

01:01:10.000 Thank you.

01:01:13.000 The fuck, why is it still going?

Fresh & Fit - January 10, 2025

Donald Trump Sentenced In New York Hush Money Case!

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript