00:00:53.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:04:21.000So if this was an NDA agreement, a hush money payment, it is now the district attorney's argument that you must publicize your hush money payments, that you must now make public the private agreements that you engage in if you also might be running for some political office.
00:04:39.000And by the way, hush money is not illegal in New York City.
00:04:42.000It is a standard operating procedure of the corporate and billionaire elite in New York City.
00:04:49.000You're trying to tell me NBC News is not actively negotiating some hush money payments right now.
00:04:55.000They specialized in it with Matt Lauer.
00:04:58.000Every major media organization, bank, investment firm, venture capital in New York City has done this for quite some time.
00:05:09.000By the way, Michael Cohn is the one that actually wrote the check, and we're supposed to believe that Donald Trump was the one in charge of all what checkbook was being used, as if this is not an accountant issue.
00:05:20.000And then Andy McCarthy has a great argument.
00:05:22.000He said, wait a second, but the alleged crime actually happened after he was a candidate.
00:05:29.000So how is it that this involved campaign finance if the alleged crime happened after he was running for the presidency?
00:05:38.000Additionally, in the charging documents, it says that Donald Trump was in New York when he reimbursed Michael Cohen in 2017, but according to Peter Struckstroke Smirk and James Comey's own FBI memos, Donald Trump was not in New York that day in February 2017.
00:05:53.000So they're indicting him for a crime that they can't specify in a place where they're saying Donald Trump was, even though he was not there.
00:07:28.000So it's not even clear that legal expenses is false.
00:07:32.000Number five, these are supposedly violations that impacted the 2016 election, but the supposed law breaking happened in 2017 after the election.
00:07:45.000So, you write a check after an election, and somehow they need to make an argument in front of a jury that, even though there's no evidence to support this, that Donald Trump writing the check, not even for the full amount, for legal expenses for his then lawyer, was to reimburse Michael Cohen for a payment that Michael Cohen said in a letter to the FEC had nothing to do with Stormy Daniels.
00:08:09.000And finally, most importantly, the idea that this campaign is a campaign finance violation is ludicrous.
00:08:16.000So, what the DA is now saying under a completely fabricated new precedent is that you must use campaign finance funds for personal use.
00:08:30.000For example, if you're running for office and you use it to buy furniture or clothes or things that benefit you, not the campaign, you could get in trouble at the FEC.
00:08:39.000So, now they're saying you must use campaign finance funds for personal use, that everything is a campaign expenditure.
00:08:47.000There are countless reasons a person might make an NDA payment.
00:08:52.000He might do it to protect his marriage, his reputation, his business.
00:08:57.000He might do it to avoid an expensive legal battle.
00:08:59.000He might do it just to save himself from the annoyance.
00:09:03.000But the theory of Alvin Bragg's office is anything that Trump does, which might be remotely help his odds of winning an election, is actually supposed to be reported as a campaign expenditure.
00:09:13.000And again, Bill Clinton didn't just do this once, he had a whole system.
00:09:18.000He would deploy Hill Dog, they would intimidate the women, sign NDAs, threaten them.
00:09:24.000And Bill Clinton just said, oh, it's just part of campaigning.
00:09:27.000Under Bragg's theory, under this particular theory, if a candidate tries to lose weight, which Alvin Bragg should try to do, that's a separate issue, to look better for a campaign, then their gym membership and Weight Watcher subscription should be a campaign expense.
00:09:45.000If a candidate is watching TV at home and comes up with an idea for something to say in a speech, they should bill their Netflix subscription as a campaign expenditure.
00:09:54.000The entire point of campaign finance laws is to clearly separate campaign work from everything else.
00:10:02.000But Bragg's standard is the exact opposite.
00:10:04.000He says that any moment the government can maliciously say that everything in your personal life is actually political.
00:10:10.000It's no surprise that a liberal came up with this because for them, politics is everything.
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00:12:50.00052% of felonies, previously charged felonies, are now being downgraded as misdemeanors in New York City.
00:12:57.000But if you're Alvin Bragg, then he takes a paperwork issue that is not a crime, it's not even a misdemeanor, standard operating procedure in New York City, and upgrades it to a 34-count felony, anarcho-tyranny, play cut 40.
00:13:14.000Donald Trump was arraigned on a New York Supreme Court indictment, returned by a Manhattan grand jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
00:13:28.000Under New York state law, it is a felony to falsify business records with intent of defraud and intent to conceal another crime, no matter who you are.
00:13:40.000We cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct.
00:13:46.000We cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct.
00:13:50.000People are getting pushed onto subways.
00:14:27.000I'm not even former presidents, but everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law.
00:14:31.000The prosecutor's overreach sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages public faith in our justice system.
00:14:40.000Andy McCarthy makes a fabulous argument on Fox.
00:14:43.000He said, wait a second, the timeline doesn't even fit.
00:14:46.000You guys don't know how your facts write in the charging documents.
00:14:50.000What Bragg is alleging is that Trump took a series of actions to defraud the voting public in connection with the 2016 election.
00:15:01.000The indictment then goes forward with all these counts that begin on February 14th, 2017 and continue until December 5th of 2017.
00:15:15.000That's all months after the 2016 election.
00:15:21.000Even if what he's alleging had something plausible to it, the actions that we're talking about that he's alleging as criminal and a method of defrauding the public in connection with the 2016 election happened afterwards.
00:15:39.000And Bragg is not even specific in this.
00:15:42.000I'm going to be very honest, and we have Professor Dershowitz joining us, who's been so clear and so just courageous, honestly, to defy so much of the kind of legal chattering class, is people's unwillingness to call this out is absolute prosecutorial BS.
00:16:07.000I mean, let me just read some quotes here.
00:16:09.000Mark Stern, who is this ridiculous liberal writer, says, quote, not the slam dunk case that Democrats wanted.
00:16:17.000Ian Milheiser, senior correspondent at Vox, calls the whole case, quote, painfully anticlimactic.
00:16:24.000And it's unclear whether the law Bragg is relying on even applies to Trump.
00:16:29.000Not even clear whether Trump broke the law.
00:16:31.000It might not apply to him, Vox.com writes.
00:16:33.000Andy McCabe, who shouldn't have a pension and committed actual crimes in the FBI, said that this indictment is a disappointment and said, quote, all our legal friends read this indictment and they don't see the way to a felony.
00:16:48.000It's hard to imagine convincing a jury that they should get a felony.
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00:18:04.000Professor, welcome back to the program.
00:18:07.000Your immediate reaction to now the arraignment of Trump and the indictment, the indictment that's now been made public, your reaction.
00:18:14.000It's the weakest criminal case I've seen in 60 years of practicing and teaching criminal law.
00:18:20.000The basic theory behind the prosecution and the indictment is that when Trump paid $130,000 as hush money to make sure that Stormy Daniels didn't publicly reveal her accusation of an adulterous affair, that when he paid the $130,000, he was obliged to immediately list it in his public corporate forms and tell the reason why he paid the hush money.
00:18:43.000Now, would anybody ever pay hush money if they had to immediately disclose, oh, I paid the hush money to keep quiet the fact that I had or was accused of having this affair since the time Alexander Hamilton paid hush money when he was the Secretary of the Treasury.
00:18:59.000Never has anybody ever been prosecuted for not completely disclosing on a corporate form the reason he paid the hush money.
00:19:35.000I mean, you've seen thousands of indictments in your career.
00:19:40.000I don't understand in what universe this is acceptable.
00:19:44.000Well, he tried to in his press conference go beyond the indictment.
00:19:48.000You're not supposed to go beyond the indictment at a press conference, but he do it by explaining that the real crime was covering up a campaign contribution, but there is no campaign contribution here.
00:20:02.000And by the way, a lot of the allegations of the 34 occurred after the election.
00:20:07.000So it couldn't, how do you make a campaign contribution from the White House, from the Oval Office?
00:20:12.000Obviously, you'd have to strike out at least half of the allegations if that were the theory.
00:20:20.000You know, Thomas Jefferson once said that for a criminal statute to be valid, a reasonable person has to be able to understand it if he reads it, reads it while running, running.
00:21:19.000Yeah, look, I'm not a Trump supporter, unlike you.
00:21:23.000And unlike many of your listeners, I am a liberal Democrat who supports women's right to choose and gay marriage and, you know, the range of Democratic policies.
00:23:01.000But then the idea that if you pay the money, you have to then give the reason on your corporate form for why you gave the money makes a mockery of corporate form.
00:23:47.000Well, I have a policy of only representing somebody once.
00:23:51.000And so I'm not going to lawyer, but I would certainly be happy to participate in the court of public opinion.
00:23:59.000I don't think I could get this case dismissed so easily.
00:24:03.000I don't think that if you had the best lawyers in the history of the world, Abraham Lincoln and John Marshall, a New York City judge would dismiss this case because that New York City judge's life would be over.
00:24:15.000Everybody would point to him the way they pointed to me when I defended him.
00:24:18.000Oh my God, there's the man who helped Trump get free.
00:24:22.000So I don't think it's going to be easy.
00:24:23.000I think he probably will be convicted by a New York jury who voted for Bragg and voted for get Trump.
00:25:11.000He should first make the two motions that might be appealable if he loses, the motion for change of venue and the motion for statute of limitations.
00:25:19.000It's not appealable if you make a motion to dismiss based on the fact that it isn't a crime.
00:25:24.000That's appealable only after he's convicted.
00:25:26.000But there are other motions that can be made and what's called interlocutory appeals can be brought.
00:25:32.000So I would recommend making those motions, particularly the change of venue motion, and then appealing it if it's lost.
00:25:38.000Because I think a lot of judges in Albany and other places in New York outside of the city might say, are you kidding?
00:25:45.000Trying him in the same place where the DA ran on a campaign to get him?
00:26:08.000And so then, Professor, I want to broaden this just for a second.
00:26:11.000And I want to encourage everyone to get your book, Get Trump.
00:26:13.000I'm going to ask you about the censorship of your book, which I find to be just extraordinary.
00:26:17.000But Professor, you're painting a very dark picture of the American legal system, especially in this area of New York, which used to be America's greatest city.
00:26:30.000And it doesn't seem as if we have any sort of hope.
00:26:32.000Basically, how did we get here in the shortest way you could describe it, electing DAs, overly politicizing the office?
00:26:40.000Is this just a culmination of many decades of errors that is now manifested in this outrageous indictment?
00:26:48.000Yeah, I think the democratization of our criminal justice system, which started with Andrew Jackson, has not been good for America.
00:26:55.000We're much better off borrowing the English system where they have career prosecutors, civil servants, a director of public prosecution, nobody who's in the government, just making honest decisions about prosecution.
00:27:07.000But that's not the core of the problem.
00:27:09.000The core of the problem is we've become radicalized.
00:27:12.000There's no such thing as a moderate, conservative, liberal center.
00:27:16.000I used to debate Bill Buckley all the time.
00:27:18.000And, you know, he was a conservative and I'm a liberal.
00:27:20.000And then we would, you know, shake hands, go out and have a drink.
00:27:31.000You know, people tell me the Constitution be damned.
00:27:34.000Don't care about the constitution say we have to get Donald Trump.
00:27:38.000So there's been this movement and it's getting worse.
00:27:40.000Let me tell you why it's getting worse, because it's spreading to the law schools and to the colleges.
00:27:45.000Look what happened at Stanford and YALE and Georgetown, where members of the National Lawyers Guild, which has 100 branches around the country now, have tried to stop and in some instances have stopped judges and other conservatives from speaking on campus.
00:28:15.000I'll come up at my own expense, no fee.
00:28:18.000Let's see if you can allow me to make a moderate liberal speech on the Constitution in front of the student buddy at Harvard or whether the radicals will disrupt me because I defended Trump.
00:28:43.000He's on the side of free speech, but he's leaving and he's being replaced by a dean who isn't so much on the side of free speech.
00:28:50.000He's being replaced by a president of Harvard who was instrumental in firing Ron Sullivan as the dean of one of the colleges because he had the temerity to represent an unpopular defendant.
00:29:10.000Some of our politics are polar opposites, but I think it's so admirable because we agree on the fruits of the Enlightenment of due process and checks and balances of the Constitution and decency and dialogue.
00:29:45.000It wants to restore America to its position in the world, which is losing.
00:29:49.000You know, one of the presidents of, I think it was San Salvador, yesterday wrote a tweet saying, don't you ever dare lecture us about democracy anymore.
00:29:58.000You're trying to imprison the man who's running for president against the incumbent president, and you're telling us about democracy?
00:30:06.000You know, we are losing our standing in the world as the great paragon of democracy, justice, and due process.
00:30:14.000I'm almost 85 years old, but I'm going to spend the rest of my life fighting for a restoration of due process and constitutionalism.
00:30:22.000It may be a losing battle, but I'm not giving up.
00:30:25.000It's a righteous cause, and I'm a partner in that cause, despite our different politics.
00:30:30.000If we do not have due process in the Constitution, this whole project falls apart.
00:30:36.000Professor, tell us about how your book is not being sold in independent bookstores.
00:30:42.000Yes, I've had many friends call independent bookstores where I have for years bought my books, and they say, no, no, no, we're not selling a book called Get Trump.
00:30:52.000Look, I've had seven New York Times bestsellers, including the number one bestseller, a book called Chutzpah back in 1990, The Case for Israel, Reasonable Doubts.
00:31:01.000I was a best-selling author for years in the New York Times, but I've been canceled by the New York Times basically since I defended Donald Trump.
00:31:09.000I used to be the lead editorial op-ed writer from the New York Times on legal issues, never since I defended President Trump.
00:31:18.000And so now they're manipulating the bestseller lists because they don't put somebody on the bestseller list just because you've sold the most books.
00:31:25.000My book was number one, number two on Amazon for fiction over a several week period.
00:31:33.000They only count when there's a variety of places from which the books are bought.
00:31:39.000And independent bookstores play a disproportionate role in that.
00:31:43.000So it's a subtle form of censorship done by people on the left who don't want books like Get Trump to become bestsellers.
00:31:52.000The only way of responding is by you folks making it a bestseller, by buying it on Amazon, buying it on Simon and Sister or whatever, Barnes and Noble, and by calling your stores and telling them, please sell Get Trump.
00:33:30.000Some judges have refused to take law clerks from these schools.
00:33:35.000I think that's a mistake because there are good people at these schools.
00:33:38.000But the names of the people who have organized these censorship events, preventing people, the names should be published and judges should refuse to hire the individuals who themselves have engaged in censoring free speech.
00:33:54.000I wouldn't hire somebody who tried to prevent other people from speaking.
00:33:58.000And I would expect other lawyers would have the same attitude.