In a historic breach of all historical norms, in a move that really does put the Republic on the precipice of serious constitutional disorder, chaos, and disaster, a jury in New York found, unanimously, that Donald Trump was guilty of 34 separate felonies, all stemming from hush money payments that were made to Stormy Daniels all the way back in 2016. Now voters will render their own judgment as Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, barrels ahead to the November 5th election, using the trial and other prosecutions he faces as a rallying cry for his supporters. President Trump responded to the verdict: "This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. They wouldn t give us a venue change in the immediate aftermath of the verdict, in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent. And they know what happened here, and the whole thing is a disgrace, and they know where the real verdict is going to be. And we'll fight till the end and we'll win" - Donald Trump's lawyer Todd Blanner. Today's episode is a mashup of my thoughts on the verdict and my initial reaction to it, and why I think this was a political put-up job by the DA and why it's a travesty of corruption and why we should all be mad at the DA. I'll be back with more on that in the next episode of The FiveThirtyEight podcast, coming soon. - Tom Frieden. -- Tom's new book, "The Most Important Case I've Never Seen: Trump's Most Accomplished Case." is out now! Tom's next book is out on Amazon Prime Video, "Trump's Most Memorable Lawyer's Guide to the Trump Case." Tom's New York Times article on the most important case in the most ridiculous case I've ever seen, and it's out now, so you won't want to miss it. Subscribe to Tom's newest book, Tom's guide to all things Trump's most ridiculous and ridiculous, and much more! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: Tom's latest book, The Most Ridiculous Case Ever? Subscribe and review Tom's book recommendations, and Tom's podcast is out in paperback! Click here to get a copy of the book he wrote about Trump's newest novel, "A Man Who Wasn't Scandalous: The Most Accused of It Allowed Me to Write About It All?
00:00:00.000Last night, in a historic breach of all historical norms, in a move that really does put the Republic on the precipice of serious constitutional disorder, chaos, and disaster, a jury in New York found, unanimously, that Donald Trump was guilty of 34 separate felonies, all stemming from hush money payments that were made to Stormy Daniels all the way back in 2016.
00:00:26.000We're going to go through all the details in a moment.
00:00:28.000It was a political put-up job by Manhattan D.A.
00:00:31.000Alvin Bragg, who came into office pledging to get Donald Trump, not pledging to find his criminal behavior that was actually criminal, pledging to get Donald Trump under any circumstances.
00:00:39.000And that, of course, mirrored the language of Attorney General Letitia James, who was elected to her position in the state of New York on the basis of, quote-unquote, getting Donald Trump.
00:00:47.000It was a put-up job by the judge, Juan Marichan, who clearly wants Trump behind bars, which is why I believe that he's probably going to sentence him to jail time come July.
00:00:56.000I do not think that Chekhov's gun can sit above that mantelpiece for the entirety of the second act here.
00:01:03.000This was a put-up job by the Biden administration, which has been attempting to brand Donald Trump a criminal and a felon since literally the day that they got into office.
00:01:11.000And the Democratic Party, which has been attempting to label him everything from a Putin cat's paw to a traitor to the country since 2015.
00:01:18.000It all culminated yesterday in a jury finding, in the most ridiculous possible criminal case, that Donald Trump was guilty of 34 felonies.
00:01:30.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump was found guilty Thursday by a New York jury on all 34 counts in his hush money case, concluding the first ever criminal trial of a former president.
00:01:39.000Now voters will render their own judgment as Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, barrels ahead to the November 5th election, using the trial and other prosecutions he faces as a rallying cry for his supporters.
00:01:51.000President Trump, for his part, responded to the verdict.
00:03:15.000This is a trash case that was brought in a jurisdiction unfriendly to Donald Trump with a prosecutor who obviously wanted to make his bones on Donald Trump's back and a judge who wants to be famous based on convicting Donald Trump.
00:03:30.000Todd Blanch, one of Trump's attorneys, he made the point that the timing of this most recent grand jury is quite suspicious.
00:03:36.000It turns out That it's kind of weird to file a misdemeanor charge, which is really what this was, a misdemeanor business records falsification charge that expired in 2017.
00:03:47.000In 2023, as Donald Trump was securing the Republican nomination for the presidency.
00:03:52.000Here is Todd Blanch, one of Trump's attorneys.
00:03:56.000I will say that the timing of this most recent grand jury, meaning the 2023 grand jury that ultimately indicted President Trump, kicked into action less than two months after President Trump announced he was running for re-election.
00:04:10.000And there are coincidences, and then there's coincidences, and I don't think that that's just something that happened.
00:04:17.000Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA who brought this case, had pledged back in 2021 that he was going to find some rationale for prosecuting Donald Trump.
00:04:26.000He said, quote, I'm the candidate in the race who has the experience of Donald Trump.
00:04:30.000I was the chief deputy in the attorney general's office.
00:04:32.000We sued the Trump administration over 100 times for the Muslim travel ban,
00:04:35.000for family separation at the border, for shenanigans with the census.
00:04:39.000I also led the team that did the Trump Foundation case.
00:04:41.000So I'm ready to go wherever the facts take me and to inherit that case.
00:04:44.000I think it'd be hard to argue with the fact that'd be the most important, most high-profile case, and I've seen him up front and seen the lawlessness he could do.
00:04:51.000And he was then asked by a reporter, you believe that should happen?
00:04:53.000He said, I believe we have to hold him accountable.
00:04:55.000Okay, he was pledging to do this in 2021, and then he did it.
00:06:54.000When Democrats say that all they want is the law followed without fear or favor, it's weird how you're perfectly fine with James Comey letting Hillary Clinton off the hook for obvious criminal conduct in 2016 with the excuse, while she was running for president, we don't want election interference.
00:07:07.000And then it turns out that you're totally fine with Donald Trump being prosecuted for absolute trash of charges stemming from activities sexually back in the mid-2000s and then from a hush money payment made in 2016.
00:07:22.000Meanwhile, you're apparently perfectly fine with the DOJ letting Joe Biden, the current president of the United States, off the hook, even though he clearly involved himself in criminal conduct, in terms of mishandling classified material, because he's a doddering old fool, who then goes out, by the way, and rips the prosecutor for mentioning that he's a doddering old fool, and in the process, shows himself to be even more of a doddering old fool.
00:07:40.000You are totally fine, apparently, if you're a Democrat, with the DOJ originally trying to cut such an extraordinary sweetheart deal with the president's son, that it was only scuttled when a judge looked at it and said, what the hell is this?
00:07:52.000That is the only reason that Hunter Biden is being brought up on charges now.
00:07:55.000It's because a judge looked at the original sweetheart deal brought by Merrick Garland's DOJ and said this is so obviously corrupt that there's no way I can greenlight this prosecution deal.
00:08:04.000As far as the political obviousness of the situation, remember that one of the big prosecutors in this case was a person named Matthew Colangelo.
00:08:14.000The DNC paid Matthew Colangelo 12 grand in January 2018 for political consulting He donated to Barack Obama's first presidential campaign in 2008.
00:08:23.000He was the third-ranking official at President Biden's Justice Department.
00:08:55.000Meanwhile, the judge, Mayor Sean, obviously a partisan Democrat.
00:09:00.000He's donated small amounts before to the Biden presidential campaign in 2020, as well as to ActBlue, which is an activist group.
00:09:09.000His daughter is a Democratic activist as well.
00:09:13.000The reality is that she serves as president of Authentic Campaigns, a firm that does digital campaign work like online fundraising, and they work with Democratic political candidates.
00:09:23.000Not only that, she was apparently the director of digital persuasion for now-Vice President Kamala Harris's 2020 presidential campaign, according to CNN.
00:09:31.000So you have a partisan Democrat judge, a partisan hack prosecutor, and a set of charges that are just garbage.
00:09:39.000And the Wall Street Journal has likened this to a turducken of a case.
00:09:43.000I've heard other people, including my friend Megan Kelly, refer to it as Russian nesting dolls.
00:09:47.000To understand the charges in this case, you have to understand that, effectively speaking, it is an onion of charges, and at the center, there is nothing.
00:10:04.000Alvin Bragg brought a misdemeanor charge of falsification of business records that is past the statute of limitations.
00:10:10.000The only way that he could spin that into a chargeable offense and extend the statute of limitations is to charge it as a felony.
00:10:17.000The problem is there is no underlying felony.
00:10:20.000So the underlying felony that he actually ended up charging was a federal felony.
00:10:23.000State prosecutors do not have jurisdiction to charge federal felonies.
00:10:28.000Unbelievably enough, the same exact Biden administration that is insisting that states cannot enforce federal law because of federalism have no problem with the Manhattan D.A.
00:10:38.000enforcing federal election finance law that has been already investigated and Trump has not been indicted on anything election related.
00:10:46.000They apparently are fine with a state D.A., a Manhattan D.A., going after Donald Trump on a federal election charge.
00:10:53.000He has no jurisdiction over these issues, none.
00:10:57.000Andrew McCarthy has been writing about this for, obviously, since the initiation of this mess.
00:11:04.000He says that payments that were made to Karen McDougal, who is a person that Trump schtupped and then paid hush money payments via David Pecker to, or Stormy Daniels, or to a bellman at his building because there was some sort of false allegation that Donald Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock, which wasn't true, but they made a payoff.
00:11:23.000In legalese, says McCarthy, these payments were legal consideration for entering into
00:11:27.000nondisclosure agreements. NDAs are common, lawful, a staple of civil law settlements.
00:11:31.000Alvin Bragg claims that the NDA payments were illegal because they were essentially campaign
00:11:35.000contributions that exceeded the federal dollar amount limits. There's a problem with this. NDAs.
00:11:42.000Paying somebody for an NDA, which is common practice.
00:11:46.000Every settlement basically ends with an NDA.
00:11:48.000Every single legal settlement, from employment law to contract law, every single legal settlement ends with an NDA and money being paid.
00:11:56.000Whether it's hush money payments like this one, or again, whether it's in any other context.
00:12:01.000That doesn't make it an election contribution.
00:12:04.000Bradley Smith, who's the former FEC chairman, originally appointed to the FEC by Bill Clinton, He wrote, quote, a businessman candidates intent to protect
00:12:12.000his public image before an election by settling a lawsuit or other potential legal claim,
00:12:16.000paying to have old divorce records sealed, settling up contested debts, none of which he has an
00:12:20.000obligation to pay before or after becoming a candidate, does not make these payments campaign
00:12:24.000expenditures. If it did, many more politicians than Trump would be in trouble. If the idea is that
00:12:29.000anything that affects an election is now a campaign expenditure, that would also have
00:12:35.000You could literally label your gym workouts campaign expenditures because obviously how you look has an impact on the campaign trail.
00:12:42.000The idea that anything that has any impact on the election now becomes an election-related expense is totally nuts and unprecedented in American law.
00:12:50.000But effectively, the judge allowed Bragg to bring these illegal charges Not only that, the judge then stacked the trial by effectively allowing Alvin Bragg to argue that Trump had already been convicted of some violation of election law, even though he hadn't.
00:13:09.000Well, Michael Cohen was brought forward, Trump's former attorney and convicted perjurer.
00:13:15.000And Cohen had already pled guilty to campaign crimes because he thought that was going to allow him to cut a deal with prosecutors to go after Trump.
00:13:24.000We'll get some more on this in just one second.
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00:14:39.000Because what they wanted to say is that Cohen had pled guilty to campaign finance violations On Trump's behalf, which meant Trump was actually guilty of a crime even though Trump has never even been charged with a federal election crime.
00:14:52.000As McCarthy says, even though prosecutors are not supposed to use Cohen's guilty pleas to argue that Trump is guilty of campaign crimes, that's exactly what they did and Merchant let them do it.
00:15:00.000The judge then barred Trump from arguing he is innocent because he was never charged by the federal authorities.
00:15:05.000Mershan, reasons that Trump's non-prosecution is irrelevant because the feds may have dropped the case for reasons having nothing to do with whether Trump was guilty.
00:15:12.000But then how exactly do you admit Cohen's guilty plea in the elections case?
00:15:17.000Or Pecker, AMI's non-prosecution and conciliation agreements?
00:15:20.000They had big incentives to cut those deals without admitting guilt, but they're still being brought in to prove Trump's guilt.
00:15:26.000So Trump has never tried on these charges, federal election charges.
00:15:29.000He's never even indicted on those charges.
00:15:31.000So how exactly does Alvin Bragg make his case?
00:15:33.000He brings in associates of Trump's who have pled guilty to crimes and then used their guilty pleas as an excuse to say that Trump was guilty.
00:15:42.000of the same sort of crime and therefore you can wrap a misdemeanor around a crime that he was not convicted of or charged with and turn that into a felony for purposes of New York state law.
00:15:54.000Again merchants didn't even allow Bradley Smith to testify.
00:15:57.000Trump's team wanted to bring Bradley Smith in to explain federal election law which is the predicate for this entire nonsense trial and the judge said no.
00:16:06.000So this thing was rigged from the start.
00:16:08.000Listen, this trial was over the same way that the O.J.
00:16:10.000trial was over the minute it moved from Brentwood to downtown L.A.
00:16:20.000So all of the kind of heartburn over Trump's team mishandling this or Trump mishandling this because he should have just admitted that, of course, he paid these women off and it had nothing to do with violation of federal election law or anything like that.
00:16:31.000It wouldn't have made one bit of difference.
00:16:42.000And this is, in fact, a cataclysmic circumstance for the country.
00:16:46.000Because when you have the chief political rival of the President of the United States being brought up by allies of the President of the United States in a court on spurious charges, charging with felonies, specifically, said the entire media can then claim that he's a convicted felon and so can Joe Biden.
00:17:02.000When that happens, you are looking at incipient tyranny.
00:17:07.000What is the outcome of this going to be now?
00:17:09.000If Donald Trump is put in jail, which could actually happen here, he could be in jail at the time of the election.
00:17:13.000If that actually happens, or even if he's under house arrest, how exactly, if Donald Trump then loses the election, will anyone believe that that's a legitimate representation of the will of the American people?
00:17:30.000They don't seem to care if they burn down every institution in the country in order to get at Donald Trump.
00:17:35.000They don't seem to care if they blow up the law in order to get at Donald Trump.
00:17:37.000The most important thing is getting Donald Trump.
00:17:39.000And then they have the temerity to project that Donald Trump is the threat to democracy?
00:17:43.000That's the case that they keep making?
00:17:44.000Donald Trump is the threat to democracy?
00:17:47.000The Biden-Harris campaign put out a statement.
00:17:49.000They said, in New York today, we saw that no one is above the law, which is just the sickest thing.
00:17:54.000What we actually saw today and yesterday is that Donald Trump, it's not about him being above the law.
00:18:00.000It is that the law will be applied to him in ways that it has never been applied to anyone else.
00:18:05.000The great irony of this is that Donald Trump once bragged that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and he wouldn't lose any support.
00:18:12.000Well, I mean, the truth is, if you had shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, Alvin Bragg may have let him off the hook, because the rule in New York is you murder someone by throwing them in front of a subway train, and you might get out on no bail.
00:18:21.000But apparently, if you commit a misdemeanor records error in 2015 or 2016 or 2017, they'll bring you up a decade later on charges.
00:18:31.000The Biden-Harris campaign said in New York today we saw no one is above the law, except of course for Joe Biden, who is above the law, and Hunter Biden, who was above the law until a judge scuttled that deal.
00:18:39.000Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain.
00:18:44.000But today's verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality.
00:18:47.000There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office.
00:18:51.000Convicted felon or not, says the Biden campaign, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.
00:18:56.000The threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater.
00:19:00.000Our democracy, trademark, has never been greater.
00:19:03.000He's running an increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution, pledging to be a dictator on day one, calling for our constitution to be terminated so he can regain and keep power.
00:19:11.000A second Trump term means chaos, ribbing Americans' freedoms and fomenting political violence.
00:19:15.000The American people were ejected this November.
00:19:18.000That last paragraph is one of the greatest examples of projection I've ever seen in my life.
00:19:23.000Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who have trumped up a series of charges in four separate jurisdictions against Donald Trump.
00:19:29.000They say the threat Trump poses to democracy has never been greater.
00:19:36.000Here is just a short list of ways in which Joe Biden is a threat to our democracy.
00:19:40.000One, he and his party have activated apparatchiks at the state level to use federal charges over which they have no jurisdiction to attempt to jail his political opponent who's currently leading him in the swing states in the polls.
00:19:51.000Two, he activated his DOJ to target Donald Trump in three separate jurisdictions.
00:20:01.000That same DOJ was activated in order to scuttle a case against Joe Biden and scuttle a case against Hunter Biden.
00:20:08.000He tried to use OSHA to force 80 million Americans to vaccinate against their will.
00:20:14.000He defies the Supreme Court on a regular basis by alleviating student loan debt in violation of law and then brags about it.
00:20:22.000He continues to falsely claim in front of black audiences that if he loses, it will be because Republicans suppress the vote, which is a lie.
00:20:28.000It is a blatant, outright, anti-democratic lie.
00:20:31.000And Joe Biden tells it every day, and the media continue to massage his shoulders over it.
00:20:35.000He keeps attacking the Supreme Court over and over and over, their legitimacy.
00:20:39.000Claiming that particular justices are corrupt.
00:20:41.000He and his party have been saying this for years.
00:20:45.000He has used government agencies to threaten social media companies repeatedly.
00:20:51.000He has attacked states for enforcing border law.
00:20:54.000He has used federal predominance over border law to keep the border wide open.
00:21:03.000And that statement from Joe Biden is just an astonishing one.
00:21:06.000He's running an unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution?
00:21:09.000You literally are running your entire campaign on Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy and he must be stopped by any means necessary because if not, the country will end.
00:21:18.000Calling for our constitution to be terminated?
00:21:24.000The comment that he made on Truth Social was about how, by stealing elections, Democrats were effectively terminating the Constitution.
00:21:31.000The only person who's been in strong violation of the Constitution repeatedly is Joe Biden.
00:21:36.000I'll get to more on this in just a moment.
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00:22:13.000Facing the IRS without a professional?
00:22:46.000Taiwan is being routinely threatened by China.
00:22:48.000Inflation has raged out of control for three plus years, increasing prices from when you took office by 20% basically across the board and in some areas by 80 or 90%.
00:23:01.000Our social fabric is ripped, and in the middle of this you throw the lit fuse bomb that your political opponent might be jailed, and yet you have the temerity to say that this is about upholding the law?
00:23:15.000And then you have Hillary Clinton, who, honest to God, if Democrats want Donald Trump to win, I'm not sure how they can do better than by continuing to trot out Hillary Clinton.
00:23:21.000Hillary Clinton yesterday, in the aftermath of this, she comes out a-grinning.
00:23:25.000This federal law violator herself, let off corruptly by James Comey, who literally rewrote the charges in order to let her off in 2016.
00:23:47.000Certainly not a belief, a correct belief by one side of the aisle, that the other side of the aisle is perfectly willing to use the methodologies of legalism in order to destroy candidates on the basis of non-violation of law.
00:23:59.000Trotting out Hillary Clinton to laugh and scoff over this, it's disgusting.
00:25:12.000The media, of course, are truly ecstatic about all of this.
00:25:17.000Left-wing anchors can't get it out of their mouth.
00:25:19.000They're just going to say convicted felon over and over, which is, of course, exactly what Democrats want.
00:25:22.000And they believe that if they call Trump a convicted felon over and over while grinning, that the American public will buy it.
00:25:28.000I don't think this is going to go the way they think this is going to go.
00:25:32.000We've been holding our breath as a country for a long time waiting for the cavalry to arrive in the form of the rule of law and it did arrive today and it's a majestic day.
00:27:32.000He was the first ex-president who had been charged in multiple jurisdictions.
00:27:37.000And that has had no impact on the polls.
00:27:39.000What the polls show is that most Americans don't think this makes any difference at all.
00:27:44.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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00:29:03.000According to an NPR PBS NewsHour Marist poll, over two-thirds of people said a guilty verdict would make no difference to their vote.
00:29:11.000About 1 in 6 voters said a guilty verdict would make them less likely to vote for Trump.
00:29:16.000However, 15% said they would be more likely to vote for Trump if he was hit with a guilty verdict.
00:29:24.000Only 11% of independents said a guilty verdict would make them less likely to vote for Trump.
00:29:28.000And less likely, by the way, does not mean won't vote for Trump.
00:29:33.000If this campaign comes down to Joe Biden calling Trump a convicted felon and Donald Trump saying, you're a terrible president, you're awful at this, and by the way, you're a tyrant who activates the methods of law enforcement to target your political opponents, Trump is going to win.
00:29:45.000Ironically, politically, this is probably quite good for Trump.
00:29:48.000That at least is the case that Senator Marco Rubio is making.
00:29:58.000I mean, they just elected Donald Trump president, so politically, I think it's good.
00:30:01.000I think, unfortunately, they've made a travesty, a mockery of our criminal justice system.
00:30:06.000I think all over the world right now, they're watching news reports and they're saying, what's America sending to us?
00:30:11.000Meaning these third world countries, these dictatorships, these crazy places.
00:30:15.000I mean, I don't know what I can add to what people have already seen.
00:30:20.000This is all absurd, and he's totally right about that.
00:30:23.000So, what does that mean for Democrats?
00:30:25.000Well, if Trump does not go to jail, then they get the worst of both worlds.
00:30:30.000They get Trump on the campaign trail being able to talk about this.
00:30:33.000And also, they look like the tyrants that they are.
00:30:37.000If they throw him in jail, there is the real possibility of actual violence.
00:30:42.000Seriously, if he's in jail at the time of this election, and then he loses, how many Americans are going to feel truly dispossessed by the entire system?
00:30:52.000I'm not talking about like full-scale civil war, but the idea there won't be chaos and unrest is insane.
00:30:57.000And by the way, that chaos and unrest would then be used by a President Biden in order to crack down on his political opponents even harder.
00:31:03.000This is all getting very ugly, very, very quickly.
00:31:06.000This is why there was a, a basic agreement.
00:31:10.000You don't prosecute your political opponents in the United States.
00:31:13.000But, unclear what the prosecutors are going for here.
00:31:16.000Bragg is certainly going to ask for jail time.
00:31:18.000Here's a reporter asking Alvin Bragg if he'll seek jail time yesterday.
00:31:22.000Do you plan to request a prison sentence for Donald Trump's multiple violations of the gag order that was in place?
00:31:34.000The judge scheduled a sentencing for July 11th.
00:32:01.000A 77-year-old first-time criminal offender in the white-collar area, supposedly, you're going to send that guy to jail.
00:32:06.000But there are a couple of things that Bragg and the judge could theoretically use in order to push Trump into jail.
00:32:13.000Thing number one could be the violation of the gag order, which is insane.
00:32:17.000So an unconstitutional gag order was put forward by Merchant in this case, saying that Trump could not comment about the prosecution, basically.
00:32:22.000He couldn't comment about the judge or his daughter or anything like that.
00:32:26.000And Trump supposedly violated that, and he threatened him with jail time at the time.
00:32:29.000So you could theoretically say, well, his behavior shows that he's just going to go out there if he campaigns.
00:32:33.000He's going to violate all those things.
00:32:34.000He's going to violate the law some more, so I'm throwing him in jail.
00:32:38.000Factor number two is that here's how the process works.
00:32:41.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the judge set a sentencing hearing for July 11th, just days ahead of the Republican National Convention.
00:32:48.000In the meantime, probation officers must complete an advisory pre-sentencing report and submit it to the judge before the hearing.
00:32:53.000Trump will also get the chance to gather character letters from friends, family members, and colleagues to guide the judge's determination.
00:33:00.000So they'll have an advisory pre-sentencing report in New York.
00:33:04.000One of the factors that is taken into account in determining whether an offender, supposed offender, gets probation or whether he goes to jail is remorse.
00:33:11.000Do you think Donald Trump is going to show remorse?
00:33:15.000Either Donald Trump throws himself on the mercy of the court and begs forgiveness for this evil crime that he's committed, which of course he didn't commit because there's no crime, or they throw him in jail.
00:33:27.000That is the highest, again, the media are making it out that it's a small possibility he gets thrown in jail.
00:33:34.000And I'm leaning toward merchants gonna go all the way and try to throw him in jail because, again, you don't put the gun on the mantelpiece in Act 1 if you're not willing to take it off the mantelpiece in Act 2.
00:33:43.000Here's a bevy of legal analysts agreeing with me on this one.
00:33:46.000Next big step in the process is July 11th, so it's the sentencing hearing.
00:33:51.000I do anticipate that the district attorney will ask for some sentence of incarceration, and I do think that there's a good likelihood that the judge will impose some sentence of incarceration.
00:34:03.000cases, a sentence of imprisonment is routinely imposed.
00:34:10.000This is the most serious falsifying business records case in the history of the state of New York.
00:34:15.000I think Alvin Bragg is going to ask for a sentence of incarceration, and I think Judge Mershawn will very seriously weigh that.
00:34:26.000Okay, so, is he going to go all the way?
00:34:28.000Even if he doesn't, he could put him under house arrest, which means he'd be restricted to Mar-a-Lago wearing an ankle bracelet while doing all of these rallies, presumably digitally.
00:34:56.000Merchant can make Trump pay a fine or condition his freedom on Trump staying out of criminal trouble.
00:35:00.000Trump can ask the judge or an appellate court for bail pending appeal to keep him out of custody while he challenges his conviction.
00:35:06.000But again, this whole thing is designed to get the Democrats beyond the election.
00:35:09.000That's what this is, it's a put-up job.
00:35:11.000So why would Mershon allow him to stay out of jail pending his appeal?
00:35:14.000And I'm going to predict that he sentences him to some jail time.
00:35:18.000And all hell is going to break loose, because you don't go halfway if you are Judge Mershon.
00:35:22.000If you're willing to blow the law this strongly, Then why not go all the way and become the guy who put Donald Trump in jail and be a hero of the republic to Democrats forevermore.
00:35:32.000Alright, in a second we're going to be joined by Megyn Kelly to talk all this through.
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00:36:39.000Also, this Sunday, we have a brand new episode of the Sunday Special with Pete Hegseth.
00:36:42.000Pete is an army combat vet and co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend.
00:36:46.000He has a new book out, The War on Warriors, that explores how changes in the armed services have affected those in uniform and impacted our ability to protect the country.
00:36:55.000So I signed up 20 years ago to fight extremists, put my life on the line, and now I'm deemed one because of what I believe, because of my Christian faith, or because I work for Fox News, or because I support Donald Trump.
00:37:49.000So obviously pretty dark day for the Republic.
00:37:52.000The actual case here was non-existent and it was kind of a turducken of a charge in the sense that it was a misdemeanor that was wrapped around a supposed felony that was wrapped around another claim.
00:38:03.000It was almost like three separate claims and the charging documents That's something I've never seen before, which is the judge literally saying to the jury that if four of you agree on the underlying felony, and four more of you agree on a separate underlying felony, and four more of you agree on a third underlying felony, that we can aggregate that all together and say that you all agree on the underlying felony that would allow for the charging of a state misdemeanor charge as a state felony, even though we are well outside the statute of limitations.
00:38:28.000Have you ever seen anything remotely like this?
00:38:31.000No, I heard somebody say it's like a Russian nesting doll of crimes.
00:38:37.000Just keep going, keep going until you find the little one on the inside.
00:38:41.000And the whole thing was a fraud from the beginning, Ben, because what really Alvin Bragg was trying to do was bring a federal case as a state prosecutor.
00:38:51.000He doesn't have jurisdiction to enforce federal election law.
00:38:54.000Which is the exclusive jurisdiction of the Feds, of the Federal Election Commission here, which did investigate this after it broke in 2018, that they'd done this whole catch-and-kill scheme with AMI and Michael Cohen, and said, this is not a problem, legally.
00:39:19.000If he had just said the underlying felony is federal election law, that's what I'm basing this whole case on, He wouldn't have had jurisdiction to bring this.
00:39:27.000And I mean, this judge has pretended that that's not the case.
00:39:31.000This judge has pretended all along that you don't actually have to show a violation of the underlying crime.
00:39:37.000You just have to show an intent to violate it.
00:39:41.000So basically what happened was the collusion happened between the DA and the judge to make this as easy for Alvin Bragg as humanly possible, letting him skirt jurisdictional rules Legal rules and pretend that there's a felony when there's not one.
00:39:56.000No one involved in this case apparently understands federal election law, which we do because literally we've had Brad Smith on.
00:40:03.000We've been discussing it hour after hour on our show for the better part of a year.
00:40:07.000And it was completely misspelled out in the jury instructions.
00:40:11.000And the judge led this jury to the fountain of guilt.
00:40:15.000And I blame him and I blame Alvin Bragg.
00:40:17.000And I don't really blame the jury because they had no choice given what they were given here.
00:40:23.000Megan, obviously you had this sort of hotly fought contest with Dan Abrams last night talking about the federal election law issues and obviously I'm in agreement with you.
00:40:32.000I'm not sure exactly what he's talking about when he suggests that what is essentially a payment for an NDA, which happens literally all the time, all the time, in a wide variety of contexts by the way, everything from employment law to payoffs like this, Or just settlements.
00:40:46.000I mean, this is just like a normal thing that happens in the legal world all the time.
00:40:50.000The suggestion that that is, by any stretch of the imagination, a violation of federal election law because it happened close to an election, as Bradley Smith has himself said, that would be equivalent to arguing that if I had an outstanding lawsuit against me and I wanted to settle that before the election because I just didn't want it hanging over me for the election, that that would amount to a federal campaign contribution by me, leaving aside the fact that there are no contribution limits.
00:41:13.000By Trump himself, because the candidate can donate as much money to his own campaign as he wants, even if it were to be considered a federal election campaign donation.
00:41:22.000So if you run for office, you cannot settle any cases against you.
00:41:27.000Once you declare, you're just exposed.
00:41:30.000And you must, according to this jury verdict, and now Dan Abrams, you must let the public see all of your dirty laundry.
00:41:38.000Sorry, but if you try to cover any of it up like a normal human or businessman, Or in Trump's case back in 16, man with the number one show on television, you have to be publicly embarrassed, no matter what kind of cretin crawls out of the walls to try to disparage you.
00:41:55.000And Brad Smith has been pointing out all along, he was federal election chair under Clinton.
00:42:01.000He was appointed by Bill Clinton as the chairman of the FEC.
00:42:05.000And he has been pointing out all along what you look at to determine whether this is a campaign contribution or could be categorized as one.
00:42:11.000Which is what they assumed in this case, is whether you look at the nature of the payment, not the subjective belief of the defendant.
00:42:21.000It doesn't matter whether Trump did this to advance his campaign, whether that was the goal of Cohen, Pecker, and Trump.
00:42:29.000All that matters is the nature of a hush money payment.
00:42:32.000Is it the kind of thing that could only ever be used to advance a campaign?
00:42:36.000Or might it have a more broad purpose and is used outside of the electoral context?
00:42:42.000The things that fall within the former lane are things like rally fees and get-out-the-vote efforts, polling to see how a candidate is doing.
00:42:52.000Those, yes, would be legitimate campaign finance items that you could get in trouble for if they exceeded the limits.
00:43:12.000So Megan, the other issue where you're seeing a lot of people complain about the right wing take on this particular case or even the independent claim on this particular case is Donald Trump goes out there and he says, and I've said, and I think you've said as well, that in the absence of Biden being in the White House, it is unlikely that this happens.
00:43:29.000That the reality is that the Democratic Party has decided that they are going to litigate Donald Trump's candidacy to death.
00:43:36.000And what happened here is pretty obviously a put up job that involved the Biden White House.
00:43:42.000I mean, there is some evidence to that effect in the sense that a Manhattan prosecutor who is one of the people heading up this particular case was literally a political consultant for the DNC.
00:43:50.000In 2018 and was working at the DOJ until five seconds ago, and then he joined this particular office about three months before the charging documents were brought down.
00:44:00.000But again, the reality is that if Joe Biden had put out the message, hey guys, we're running an election here.
00:44:05.000We don't want to see this sort of thing happen.
00:44:07.000Is there any chance that Alvin Bragg would have brought this case?
00:44:11.000Well, I guess there's some chance because he wanted to get elected himself.
00:44:14.000I mean, he he had dual purpose of dual purpose in pursuing this.
00:44:18.000and he wanted to make sure Trump didn't get elected as president.
00:44:21.000But I don't believe that there was no coordination with the White House because look what we saw in the Fannie Willis case when she was publicly disgraced with her extramarital affair with Nathan Wade while she was actually prosecuting the case against Trump.
00:44:33.000We saw that they coordinated with the White House.
00:45:42.000So, Megan, looking at what happens next, the July 11th date, which is four days before the Republican convention, which is when the sentencing hearing is supposed to actually happen, what do you think are the odds that the judge, in this case Maruchan, who obviously wanted Trump convicted, what do you think are the odds that he actually sentences him to jail time?
00:46:00.000Because the conventional wisdom right now is, no, no way, he'll probably give him probation, or he'll give him some sort of house arrest, or something like that.
00:46:07.000I don't know, I feel like if you go this far to get this conviction, I feel like he's gonna go all the way.
00:46:17.000I don't think he's gonna give him jail time.
00:46:20.000It would be such an egregious deviation from what would normally be done in a case like this, that I don't think he thinks he can get away with that.
00:46:28.000It's just, I mean, a first time felon.
00:46:30.000It's ridiculous to even say that word about Trump, but okay, let's go with it.
00:46:33.000First time felon with no prior record.
00:46:36.000And what would be the aggravating circumstances?
00:46:39.000What the left is pointing to is, well, he violated the gag order.
00:46:45.000The gag order will not be upheld when that gets appealed.
00:46:48.000That cannot be the basis for increasing Trump's sentencing on this unconstitutional substantive crime.
00:46:56.000Everything around this, he wasn't afforded due process at a federal level under our federal constitution, nor under the New York state constitution, which doesn't allow you to just say, We incorporate by reference all criminal laws.
00:47:08.000And if what he did was to cover up some vague violation of one of those, he's guilty of a felony.
00:47:14.000So there's been multiple constitutional violations here, including that gag order, that cannot possibly be the basis of a sentence enhancement.
00:47:22.000And I just don't think Judge Machon is gonna have the stones to go quite that far.
00:47:26.000But He has disappointed me and surprised me many times along the way, so I guess I'm open-minded to that extreme possibility.
00:48:01.000going to happen. I could see Mershawn dragging him into court and basically saying you showed no
00:48:05.000remorse for this crime, you've shown no remorse this whole time and so now I'm going to give you
00:48:08.000a jail sentence. My basis for saying that is Judge Arthur Engeron who hit Trump with a 500
00:48:13.000million dollar judgment on the basis of absolute crap, meaning that if you're a New York judge and
00:48:18.000you want to be famous for the rest of your life, be the guy who put Donald Trump in jail.
00:48:22.000Yes, it's absurd. It's like you're not allowed to maintain your innocence or in the context of
00:48:29.000Engeron, your non-liable nature in the face of a ridiculous trumped up charge.
00:48:34.000It's like, well, we found a jury that we pushed into this guilty verdict, we the judge and the prosecutor.
00:48:41.000And now that they've done what we've told them to do, you have to say we were right all along.
00:48:45.000You are not entitled to maintain the position that this was an erroneous verdict and that you are not guilty of this crime.
00:48:52.000And what's amazing is, even though Trump made a strategic mistake by disputing some of the items in this case that he didn't need to dispute, he should have said, let's put to the side whether I had an interlude with Stormy Daniels.
00:49:04.000I think he could have gotten a stipulation.
00:49:06.000Mr. Trump denies that he had an interlude with Stormy Daniels, but for the purposes of this trial, we are going to proceed as though he did, okay?
00:50:19.000Steve Bannon can't talk to Trump anymore.
00:50:22.000He's got to answer to some Community college, city college guy who's trying to enforce the laws against the sitting president of the United States, who's gonna tsk-tsk him and slap his knuckles.
00:50:35.000They're actually talking about Trump possibly doing rallies from his home, a home arrest, if that's what this judge sentences him to.
00:50:43.000Part of me wants to see it, I'm gonna be honest, like the home arrest or the actual jail time.
00:50:47.000Part of me wants to see it because it'll guarantee his win.
00:50:52.000Every single Republican in America, every single one, the voting participation will break records on the GOP side, maybe even enough to overcome the doubtful independence.
00:51:11.000Obviously, I've never seen Republicans united like this since maybe the Brett Kavanaugh trial.
00:51:15.000And this is even higher levels than that.
00:51:17.000So if you're a hesitant Republican or somebody who's sort of on the fence, don't really like Trump, people are going to walk over broken glass to vote for him now because this is so obviously trumped up.