Former President Bill Clinton has been found guilty on all 34 counts in a case that should have been dismissed because of falsified business records. Megynkelly reacts to the verdict and calls for a Supreme Court review of the case.
00:00:54.180We aren't a banana republic, or at least we didn't used to be.
00:00:59.500And don't forget what's happened in this Trump case in which he's now been found guilty of all 34 counts against him, which was overcharged to begin with.
00:01:10.140And once charged, it should have been one count.
00:01:12.200The whole case boils down to the same alleged scheme, but they stretched it into 34 counts by saying, and that check, and that check, and that invoice, and that invoice, it was all part of your scheme.
00:01:26.960So now he looks like Al Capone convicted on these 34 counts.
00:01:30.840But the idea all along was to stop him from becoming president again.
00:01:39.160That's the idea behind this prosecution.
00:01:42.020That is the idea behind Letitia James bankrupting his company that he built, and along with his dad from the ground up in New York, the city that just turned on him.
00:01:52.440That was the idea behind E. Jean Carroll and her sexual assault case brought 30 years after the fact, alleging a sexual assault slash rape in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, a case she couldn't even remember the year of the alleged rape in.
00:02:11.680And that's the idea behind Fannie Willis and Jack Smith times two.
00:02:45.160If we get Supreme Court opinions allowing my case to go forward with Jack Smith, I'll be there.
00:02:50.480We've heard about the concern that Fannie Willis, her case is going up in appeal, but she's going to try to find some way to pedal to the metal it.
00:02:57.200But we've heard even in that January 6th case before Judge Chetkin, there may be a plan to try to get him tried even after he wins.
00:03:07.840If he wins in November, we could have a trial of the president elect in an effort to get him another conviction so they could convince electors to be unfaithful on January 6th of 2025.
00:03:24.340This whole scheme, and here it is the proper word, is corrupt.
00:03:32.560It's a before and after moment for America.
00:03:35.960What just happened today is a line we can't uncross.
00:03:41.400And these Democrats will rue the day they decided to use lawfare to stop a presidential candidate.
00:04:03.820It could potentially still be Barack Obama.
00:04:07.020It could still potentially be Hillary Clinton.
00:04:09.880We're going to have to look at what the statutes of limitations are on the various crimes they surely committed.
00:04:15.600We're going to have to look at passing laws to revive those dead crimes, felonies or misdemeanors so that those cases can be brought out of time.
00:04:27.180That what that's what may be in the interest of justice, just like they did for E.
00:04:32.040Jean Carroll with a New York state law that was passed so that she could sue him.
00:04:43.460And John Yoo, an amazing lawyer who worked in the Bush administration, Department of Justice, has a great piece out today talking about how that's the only way they'll learn.
00:04:55.900The only way to save the republic now is to give them a taste of their own medicine.
00:05:07.420They're the wolves with the bloody piece of meat in their mouths.
00:05:11.440That doesn't stop the wolf from coming back for more.
00:05:14.740The only thing that will stop him is if he loses a limb of his own.
00:05:19.480And I'm sorry, but the Democrats started this game in the same way the Republicans upped the ante when it came to, for example, the filibuster fight.
00:05:27.660The Democrats got rid of it for lower court judges.
00:05:30.240Mitch McConnell said you will rue the day because we're going to be in control of this chamber one day and you're going to lose the filibuster at the higher level court and you'll be sorry.
00:05:58.000So before you celebrate too much over at MSNBC and CNN who are positively gleeful, gleeful over this absurd conviction, you wait and ask yourself, ask yourself, what kind of Pandora's box has been opened here?
00:06:16.120Here was President Trump moments after the guilty verdict today.
00:06:19.600This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.
00:09:11.120He's in the same position he was in when he had to stand up first and argue the closing argument before he had even heard the prosecution's theory of the case.
00:09:17.800Now he's got to go up to the appellate court and try to guess.
00:09:20.400Gee, I don't really know what I've been found guilty of.
00:09:23.040I guess falsifying business records through unlawful means and the unlawful means were...
00:10:12.280When I was in the AG's office, I sued Trump over 100 times for his administration's misconduct and brought a case against the Trump Foundation and held him accountable.
00:10:21.220I'm the candidate in the race who has the experience with Donald Trump.
00:10:25.140I was the chief deputy in the attorney general's office.
00:10:28.180We sued the Trump administration over 100 times.
00:11:27.120You must be so happy you lived up to your campaign promises.
00:11:29.900I'll give you that one hell of a politician, one shitty prosecutor whose obligation is to uphold the rule of law and to seek justice, justice, not just convictions.
00:15:10.620That barred him from discussing witnesses, jurors, and the judge's family members.
00:15:15.060She must be so thrilled, the judge's daughter, who's making tens of millions of dollars off of her own Get Trump campaign for people like Adam Schiff.
00:15:23.420She must be absolutely joyous tonight.
00:15:25.200Can you imagine the dinner they're having in the merchant household?
00:15:28.420Judge Mershon and his rich daughter, who's getting even richer by the second thanks to this verdict.
00:17:03.100And the people over on MSNBC freaked out that he said that word because they associate it now with Trump's electoral claims that he denied.
00:17:24.360This judge allowed in the fact that David Pecker of AMI, the National Enquirer, had a non-prosecution agreement with the feds around election fraud claims, election campaign donation claims.
00:17:39.760He allowed David Pecker to testify to that.
00:17:50.820So Michael Cohen, same thing, was allowed to testify that he pleaded guilty and served time.
00:17:57.180Wasn't really for this crime, but that he did plead guilty to same thing, violating federal election campaign finance law.
00:18:05.140The jury never should have been allowed to hear that.
00:18:07.940The prosecutor argued it over and over and over.
00:18:11.240He mentioned it so many times in his closing and elsewhere to the point where finally the judge had to issue a limiting instruction to the jury saying,
00:18:18.780Eh, you're not really allowed to consider that, those agreements and those plea deals, to decide whether Trump is guilty.
00:18:25.600It's technically just to assess the credibility of these witnesses.
00:18:29.100But let me just tell you how bass-ackwards that is.
00:18:31.840The way those agreements, a guilty plea, would typically come in against a testifying witness is by the defense attorney.
00:18:38.920The defense attorney who wants to poke holes in the story would get up there and say, you're a damn criminal, Michael Cohen.
00:19:01.220Because they knew the defense would never do that.
00:19:05.640They had enough ways to poke holes in the testimony of those two men, and it would have been far too prejudicial to Trump to bring it up.
00:19:12.140So the prosecution brought it up on its own, and it never should have been allowed.
00:19:18.260At the same time, the judge barred Brad Smith, Trump's campaign finance expert, the former commissioner of the FEC, which has exclusive jurisdiction to pursue claims for violations of federal campaign finance law, barred his testimony as unnecessary.
00:19:36.520Reduced Donald Trump, if you're going to put him on at all, to letting him define a couple of terms, rendering him totally useless and pointless.
00:22:14.020I think the prosecution would have taken that.
00:22:15.940The whole argument is not over whether he had the one-nighter with her.
00:22:19.060The arguments over whether he entered into a scheme to shut these women up who were threatening him.
00:22:25.520He had denied that he had an affair with her from the beginning, and he felt the need to continue denying it, even in the legal case.
00:22:32.460Because this is one time where Trump, the guru of seeing things and landing it, even though everybody criticizes him for the decision-making.
00:22:40.760Then after the fact, you're like, oh my God, he was right.
00:24:05.920He may not be able to vote, but his supporters sure can.
00:24:09.700And if I know the country, and I think I do, I don't think there's anything you can do to stop the Trump voters now.
00:24:18.180I mean, I think as much as MAGA was prepared to vote for Trump before, and even disaffected Republicans who might not love Trump, they're going to run to the polls now.
00:24:29.800They're going to run to the polls now.
00:24:31.660The question that we have in the coming days and weeks is what about those groups of Republican voters who voted for Joe Biden the last time, who were starting to come home, who were going to overlook some of Trump's personality ticks that make him less than appealing to a large number of, in particular, women, who were starting to give him another look.
00:24:57.080And that, folks, I don't know the answer to.
00:25:01.920Independents, if you believe the polling, large numbers of them said convicted felon could change it for me.
00:25:09.100Even some 20 to 30 percent of the Republican base, when polled, said convicted felon might change it for me.
00:25:43.180If I have to predict, I say Trump gets no jail time and gets a reversal on appeal, but it comes too late, well past the presidential election.
00:25:57.380You've got Tish James of New York, the AG, tweeting out, no one is above the law.
00:26:49.740Joy Reid was out there the other night talking about how fun it was going to be to see all of her.
00:26:54.520This is how she put her DEI, hers, all her DEI, my DEIs, taking Trump down.
00:26:59.720Well, she's not wrong that Soros-backed DAs, hand-placed in these positions to not prosecute real crime,
00:27:09.480like Alvin Bragg, Fannie Willis and others, have seen a crime for the first time and gotten excited and salivated over the prospect of pursuing it
00:27:19.380because the defendant's name was Donald Trump.
00:27:22.180In this country, we're supposed to pursue crimes, not people, in the criminal justice system.
00:27:28.200It's a before and after moment for the law and for us.
00:27:32.500So what I think is going to happen is I think electorally it's going to help Trump more than it hurts him.