Donald Trump has been convicted in one of the most disgraceful sham trials in American history. Also, another traditional American symbol has been declared problematic and is now being banned, even though nobody can explain what is so problematic about it. And the internet mob gets mad at me because I made the controversial and provocative claim that dieting and exercise are a good way to lose weight.
00:00:00.000Today on the Matt Wall Show, justice is officially dead in this country as Donald Trump is convicted by a kangaroo court in one of the most disgraceful sham trials in American history.
00:00:08.120I have plenty to say about this today, as you can imagine.
00:00:10.400Also, another traditional American symbol has been declared problematic and is now being banned, even though nobody can explain what is so problematic about it.
00:00:18.640And the internet mob gets mad at me because I made the controversial and provocative claim that dieting and exercise are a good way to lose weight.
00:00:25.400All of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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00:02:10.020That's the real crime, which isn't a crime.
00:02:12.360But you might still be wondering, on paper, what crime was Trump just convicted of?
00:02:17.580Somehow, a day after the guilty verdict was read, the actual crime he was guilty of is still very hard to say.
00:02:25.380Now, one possible theory is that the government of New York really doesn't like it when people overpay their taxes.
00:02:32.280They're the first government in the history of the universe that actively punishes its citizens for handing over too much cash.
00:02:39.500It drives Alvin Bragg absolutely crazy when that happens, apparently.
00:02:44.780If New Yorkers pay the government too much cash, then the full weight of New York's criminal justice system will come crashing down on them.
00:02:52.020A jury will convict them in a day, and they'll face several years in prison.
00:02:55.580This is how desperately New York doesn't want money from its citizens.
00:03:00.200Now, that's what you have to believe if, for some reason, you're still pretending that there was any legitimacy to the show trial of Donald Trump that concluded yesterday in Manhattan.
00:03:11.180I've been thinking of the best way to illustrate just how unprecedented and disgraceful the trial was.
00:03:17.240There are so many possibilities to choose from.
00:03:20.040But I keep coming back to this one point because nobody else is really talking about it.
00:03:23.860And it puts this whole debacle into perspective.
00:03:26.120As I outlined last week, in order to convict Donald Trump, it was not enough to show that he had supposedly falsified a business record.
00:03:35.860The government also had to show that Trump has falsified those records in furtherance of some other crime.
00:03:44.280When I did my monologue on this on Friday, I had no idea because the prosecution hadn't suggested anything.
00:03:49.120We made it all the way to closing arguments, and still the prosecution had never explained what the crime was that the defendant had supposedly committed.
00:03:58.860But during those closing arguments this week, a prosecutor named Joshua Steinglass finally offered a theory.
00:04:06.480He said that Donald Trump had falsified the business records in order to violate a different New York state law that prohibited the use of unlawful means to promote any candidate for office.
00:04:16.820But that still leaves a key question unanswered.
00:04:20.580What were those unlawful means that Trump supposedly engaged in?
00:04:24.640So you keep peeling the onion back to find what the hell crime Trump is supposed to have committed, and you continue to come up empty.
00:04:31.360So Steinglass didn't say definitely what the unlawful means were, but he did mention a few possibilities.
00:04:37.340And one of those possibilities was that Trump had violated New York tax law.
00:04:41.160Now, when you hear that, you might think, well, they're alleging that Trump is engaging in tax evasion.
00:04:48.160But they're actually alleging the opposite.
00:04:51.080They're accusing Trump of not evading taxes.
00:04:54.640Specifically, Steinglass argued that Trump's 1099 form was inaccurate because the payment to Michael Cohen was actually a reimbursement and not compensation as the Trump organization had reported it.
00:05:05.820But if that were the case, then the government, under its own theory of how Trump's team should have filed the paperwork, would be getting less money out of the deal because they're not owed income tax on reimbursements.
00:05:17.420They're only owed income tax on compensation.
00:05:20.560Now, I went through the transcripts and found the quote from the prosecutor because when I heard about it, I couldn't believe it was real, but it is.
00:05:56.660So translation, it's very possible the jury just convicted Donald Trump for falsifying business records in order to cover up the fact that he overpaid on his taxes.
00:06:17.920That is one of the three possible grand conspiracies that were alleged here, a dastardly scheme to funnel too much money to the government.
00:06:29.920This is the villainous behavior that we're supposed to believe is a threat to democracy.
00:06:34.580That's what justifies potentially imprisoning the man who is leading every major poll to become the next president of the United States.
00:06:41.780That's what supposedly necessitated doing something that has never been done before in American history, by charging a former president with a crime.
00:06:49.960Now, just for good measure, if the jury didn't buy that theory, the government and the judge gave them a whole menu of other options they could choose from.
00:06:59.100And one of them related to covering up violations of campaign finance law, while the other was covering up violations of business record laws.
00:07:06.160In other words, as Tablet Magazine put it, the jury could have found that, quote,
00:07:09.200Trump falsified business records to conspire to steal the election by falsifying business records.
00:07:16.800Now, which circular, incoherent conspiracy did the jury buy?
00:07:33.120So to restate, the upshot is that a former president and the leading presidential candidate right now,
00:07:39.200was just convicted of 34 felony charges by a jury of his political opponents during an election year based on a novel legal theory
00:07:48.180where the underlying alleged crime was never clearly explained and might not even make sense.
00:07:54.000And on top of that, the jury didn't even have to reach a unanimous conclusion about it.
00:07:58.340So, 12 members of the jury are walking out of the trial with potentially 12 different and opposing ideas about what crime they just convicted a former president of committing.
00:08:13.520Now, all that's to say, there are not enough words in the English language to describe what a travesty of justice this case was.
00:08:22.780Trials like this are what define the third world.
00:08:25.820Show me the man and I'll show you the crime, as the saying goes.
00:08:29.000With this trial, Alvin Bragg, who ran for office on the platform of going after Donald Trump,
00:08:34.380managed to come up with a Frankenstein fake crime for the sole purpose of fulfilling that campaign promise.
00:08:41.560And it wasn't just a promise to New Yorkers that Bragg fulfilled.
00:09:06.620And what I feel is gratitude to work alongside phenomenal public servants who do that each and every day in matters that you all write about and make the press.
00:09:16.720And in lots of matters that you don't.
00:09:23.740The only voice that matters is the voice of the jury and the jury has spoken.
00:09:30.340Now, the man to Alvin Bragg's right in that video is named Matthew Colangelo.
00:09:36.220He happens to be a former high-ranking Biden DOJ official who left that job in December of 2022 to work as a senior counsel with Alvin Bragg in the Manhattan DA's office.
00:09:45.940In fact, he was the number three guy in the DOJ before he took a massive demotion to work in a much smaller local prosecutor's office.
00:10:25.600And this is the man who went right from Joe Biden's DOJ to Alvin Bragg's office right around the time that Bragg was reportedly waffling about bringing charges against Trump.
00:10:36.200Now, you could choose to believe that this is all a coincidence.
00:10:40.760Maybe you'd think Matthew Colangelo would treat a Democrat in exactly the same way as he treated Trump.
00:10:46.280If a Democrat supposedly falsified some business records, then Colangelo would be hot on their heels.
00:10:52.280But that really doesn't appear to be likely either.
00:10:54.960In 2022, while Colangelo was still at the DOJ, the Clinton campaign and the DNC struck a deal with the FEC after the FEC alleged that they had falsified campaign records.
00:11:05.720Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign at the Democratic National Committee have agreed to pay $113,000 to settle a Federal Election Commission investigation
00:11:13.140into whether they violated campaign finance law by misreporting spending on research that eventually became the infamous Steele dossier.
00:11:20.960The Clinton campaign hired Perkins Coe, which then hired Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence firm, to conduct opposition research on Republican candidate Donald Trump's ties to Russia.
00:11:31.400But on FEC forms, the Clinton campaign classified the spending as illegal services.
00:11:36.520Well, that sounds a lot like what Donald Trump was accused of doing, except much, much, much worse.
00:11:45.140The Clinton campaign allegedly falsified records to hide their involvement in spreading the Russiagate lie.
00:11:52.080That was a lie that dominated the political landscape for, what, six years?
00:11:55.340It led to thousands of fake news articles and investigations, ruined the lives of several people who worked on the Trump campaign.
00:12:02.980But no member of the Clinton campaign was ever hauled before a jury for falsifying records or for doing anything else.
00:12:10.140Matthew Colangelo never even dreamed of prosecuting them.
00:12:13.660And, of course, neither did Alvin Bragg.
00:12:15.920The Clinton campaign and the DNC just paid a fine and the matter was resolved.
00:14:17.200This is a city where you don't even go to prison if you pummel old ladies in the street.
00:14:22.840This is a city that is profoundly reluctant to send anyone to prison for anything, even and especially for actual violent crimes committed against innocent people.
00:14:34.400But this business records case is on a whole other level, they say.
00:14:38.900The most serious business records case in the history of the state.
00:14:44.140So serious that they can't even tell you what the crime was, even now after he's been convicted of it.
00:14:50.160Trump didn't show remorse for this fake crime, so he needs to go to prison.
00:14:56.800We're supposed to believe that that's the normal outcome in a case like this, but it's not.
00:15:01.760If you look up recent prosecutions in New York for falsifying business records, you'll find that virtually all of them involve allegations of tax fraud or workers' compensation fraud where the defendant made money.
00:15:13.040For example, there was a New York v. James Garner, a case from November 2021, in which, quote,
00:15:18.820a mental health therapy aide was indicted for allegedly defrauding over $35,000 in workers' compensation benefits.
00:15:25.360There was also a case of New York v. Jasu Aguilar Dubon from October 2022, in which, quote,
00:15:30.420a Bronx business owner was indicted for failing to report over $1 million in income, avoiding paying $60,000 in taxes.
00:15:38.680Now, on their website, the outlet Just Security has tallied many other examples like this.
00:15:42.620But again, the point is that these people allegedly lied to obtain more money.
00:15:47.800In this case, as I said, Trump overpaid his taxes, if anything.
00:15:52.580So his prosecution is highly unusual for that reason alone.
00:15:57.000And that's not the only strange aspect of this case, of course.
00:15:59.720It's also more than a little odd that the same judge who handled this hush money trial
00:16:04.440is also handling the criminal case against Steve Bannon and the criminal case against the Trump organization.
00:16:11.640And this judge just so happens to be a Joe Biden donor.
00:18:59.160Nobody on earth is impartial to Donald Trump.
00:19:02.080And if such a unicorn does exist, they don't live in New York City.
00:19:05.940But this illustrates a key difference between the left and the right, which is that, in general, the left is committed to winning at all costs.
00:19:14.020They're happy to seat biased jurors and judges to get what they want.
00:19:18.200Meanwhile, conservatives are preoccupied with norms that nobody else in the country cares about.
00:19:25.360Republicans could have arrested and charged Hillary Clinton for any number of crimes at any point in the past decade.
00:19:32.920They could have pursued her for the Steele dossier FEC charge.
00:19:35.720I mentioned earlier, investigated the Clinton Foundation, prosecuted Clinton's retention of classified materials, followed by her lie to the FBI during an interview about those materials.
00:19:45.480But Republicans didn't do any of that on the basis that if they do that, then Democrats might return fire.
00:19:53.560And so Republicans continue to cherish our norms while Democrats blow the norms to smithereens with a thousand sticks of dynamite.
00:20:02.660Now, the necessary response is obvious, although it won't be pleasant.
00:20:09.100Donald Trump should immediately create and publish a list of 10 high-ranking Democrat criminals who he will have arrested when he takes office.
00:20:17.380First on the list should be Joe Biden.
00:20:19.020Second should be Joe Biden's crackhead son.
00:20:21.600And in the meantime, Republican AGs all over the country should pursue their own indictments.
00:20:25.040Border states should charge government officials for deliberately contributing to human trafficking at the southern border.
00:20:31.460And if Donald Trump's hush money, quote unquote, was illegal because it interfered with an election somehow, then so is importing millions of foreign nationals every year.
00:20:40.660That's the biggest form of election interference imaginable.
00:20:43.260Time to impanel a grand jury right away in the reddest city, in the reddest state on the map.
00:20:50.680Better issue a gag order on Joe Biden, too, for good measure.
00:20:54.700Take corrupt Democrats, corrupt Democrat criminals, put them on trial in front of juries that already hate them before the trial even begins.
00:21:35.700The entire legal system depends on a series of unstated principles that prosecutors won't pursue political cases, that juries will be impartial, that crimes must be clearly defined.
00:21:48.780And once one side violates all of these principles, then the principles cease to exist for everyone.
00:24:38.920ABC 7 News in San Francisco reports a historic but controversial flag that has become a symbol of the far right
00:24:46.180was taken down in front of San Francisco City Hall over the weekend.
00:24:49.260According to a city official, the Appeal to Heaven flag was swapped with an American flag on Saturday.
00:24:54.560Officials say the controversial flag was initially raised on Flag Day in 1964 at Civic Center.
00:24:59.460It was part of what is known as the Pavilion of American Flags.
00:25:02.840San Francisco Recreation and Parks Communication Manor Daniel Montez said the flag was originally used during the American Revolutionary War
00:25:08.660flown by George Washington's cruisers.
00:25:10.760It was associated with early quest for American independence.
00:25:13.900It's since been adopted by a different group, one that doesn't represent the city's values,
00:25:17.540so we made the decision to swap it with the American flag.
00:25:21.020The Appeal to Heaven flag has made headlines recently after the banner was flown outside U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alita's
00:25:27.400beach vacation home in New Jersey, according to the New York Times,
00:25:30.240which obtained several images showing it on different dates in July and September 2023.
00:25:36.100The Times previously reported that an upside-down American flag had flown outside Alito's Alexandria, Virginia home
00:25:40.460less than two weeks after the violent January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
00:25:47.880This is how it works, and we're watching the process in real time,
00:25:53.520so it's very instructive, and it's worth taking note of this.
00:25:56.560We are watching as the left takes the next historical symbol, which in this case has existed for 250 years,
00:26:06.640back to our nation's founding, and just deciding that they're going to turn it into a problem.
00:26:13.200Just deciding that it's a problem now.
00:26:15.660This thing that has existed for 250 years hasn't been a problem, and now it's a problem.
00:26:23.640And they decided it because Alito flew the flag at his vacation home.
00:26:28.340Turns out that exact same flag had been outside of San Francisco City Hall for 50 years.
00:26:35.300And so rather than the left saying, well, okay, never mind.
00:26:40.420I mean, if this flag not only has been around for 250 years, but even for half a century has been flying in San Francisco,
00:26:46.840then it's clearly not some sort of symbol of far-right extremism.
00:26:51.660Rather than the left saying that, they're saying, oh, well, no.
00:26:55.320See, we've decided that it's a symbol of far-right extremism.
00:26:57.700And so rather than going back on that after we discover that it was actually flying outside of San Francisco City Hall,
00:27:03.840we're just going to take it down from San Francisco City Hall.