Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen took the stand yesterday in the Trump trial in New York City. Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, is on trial for conspiracy to obstruct justice, lying on the stand, and making false statements. But what exactly is the crime that has a former president of the United States sitting in a Manhattan courtroom? And why is it so important that a criminal trial be held in a place that resembles a Kafka novel? President Trump is not the only one being charged with a crime, but the one being tried in a dingy and depressing Manhattan courthouse. What s at issue here is that no one seems to have a good answer to the question: What exactly is Trump's crime? And what s the crime? And why does this matter to every American who cares about living in a self-governing, constitutional republic where they are free and bound by the rule of law and a free and just society? This episode is brought to you by the Daily Beast and edited by Alex Blumbergen. The opinions expressed here are our own, not those of our companies, unless otherwise specified by our editors. We do not own the rights to any of the music used in this podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you for any amount you can manage, review, or subscribe to our other podcast releases. It helps us to keep us in touch with what you're listening to and reviewing our content. Tweet us on social media! and share the podcast on your thoughts on the podcast and what you think of what we should be listening to. and what we can do in the podcast in the future episodes of the podcast! . Thanks for listening to the podcast, tweet us to let us know what you thought of this podcast and your thoughts about it! or your thoughts and your experience on this podcast? if you'd like us to be featured in the next episode or any other podcast you're looking forward to listening to us listening to our next episode of this episode of The Daily Beast or any of our other podcasts we should do something like that we should listen to us do more of this next week's podcast on this is a little bit more of what you've listened to in your thoughts or review we should send us a review or review it on the next thing we can help us do something more of that?
Transcript
Transcripts from "Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. You can also explore and interact with the transcripts here.
00:00:00.000I attended the Trump trial this week in the Manhattan courthouse, and there's no substitute for being there in person.
00:00:15.000You can even watch it at times on TV, not this trial, but you can watch something on TV, but it's not quite the same as being there in person.
00:00:22.000I'm going to tell you about my experience in the courtroom.
00:00:25.000But more importantly, we're going to get to the heart of what the heck is actually going on in these multiple prosecutions against Donald Trump.
00:00:33.000And the moral of the story is, it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.
00:00:57.000So what we're going to do is actually go into some level of depth, some level of detail to get into the essence of what's actually going on.
00:01:05.000And then on the other side, emerge with a stronger understanding of what's actually at stake and why this matters, not just to Americans who follow politics, not just to Republicans or Democrats, but to every American who cares about living in a self-governing constitutional republic where they are but to every American who cares about living in a self-governing constitutional republic where they are free and bound by That's what's at issue.
00:01:34.000It's the dingiest place I've been in a long time.
00:01:36.000It'd be sad as an American to understand what U.S. taxpayers and, frankly, New York state and city taxpayers are paying to go sit inside what looks like a building that might have reminded me from a bureaucrat's office in India in the 1990s.
00:01:50.000In a third world nation that, in many cases, has outstripped the United States in the quality of its own infrastructure or buildings.
00:01:57.000This is what it felt like as a reminder to me.
00:02:06.000None of that really matters, but it gives you the look and feel of what's actually going on in a, I would say, disastrous New York City courthouse.
00:02:19.000It was fitting for how disgusting what actually is happening in that courthouse as well.
00:02:24.000The thing that made it depressing wasn't just the interior finishes or the fact that the electric wiring is showing in a courtroom which should supposedly have the austere environment of justice.
00:02:33.000It's the fact that that was appropriate for a courtroom in which what we saw playing out was nothing other than a political sham in the name, masquerading in the name of justice.
00:02:44.000And so in a certain sense, it was a poetic fit that was rather depressing.
00:02:48.000And the day I was there, it was focused on finishing the direct testimony of Michael Cohen and then the beginning of his cross-examination.
00:02:57.000Perhaps one of the most flawed witnesses you could imagine in the conduct of any trial, let alone this one.
00:03:03.000So I want to get to the heart of the real question that needs to be answered.
00:03:09.000Trump is being charged with a crime, a criminal trial conducted right here in New York City.
00:03:14.000It's where I'm recording this today because I just ended up being in New York.
00:03:34.000What exactly is the crime that has a former president of the United States sitting in a courtroom from 9am to 6pm or 9am to 5pm every day or 4pm?
00:03:48.000Nobody seems to have a good answer to that question.
00:03:51.000They've said a lot of things that he did, a lot of paperwork here and there, hush money payments.
00:03:55.000People understand the atmosphere, the vibe of something that happened that seems sinister and wrong.
00:04:00.000But again, a clear statement of what exactly is the crime?
00:04:05.000There's a lack of a good answer to that question.
00:04:08.000And after the period of the trial that I attended where Michael Cohen testified, that answer is now less clear than it ever was.
00:04:16.000So what you saw for hours—I was in the courtroom while they did this—was Michael Cohen going through invoice after invoice that he submitted for Donald Trump in the name of legal services.
00:04:27.000And Michael Cohen on the stand, a guy who has perjured himself, lied over and over, and actually said so yesterday, the countless number of times that he had lied before— Says that, you know what, that was his falsifying of a business record.
00:04:40.000That was his alleged violation of not actually submitting a legal receipt as something that was something other than a legal receipt submitted as a legal receipt.
00:04:48.000So I think Michael Cohen for several hours during the time that I was there established that he had submitted false receipts.
00:04:55.000But what exactly was the crime that Donald Trump committed?
00:04:59.000Nobody has yet answered that question.
00:05:01.000Now I'll tell you what their prosecution's theory of the case is.
00:05:06.000Prosecution's theory of the case is that Donald Trump participated in falsifying those business records based on how those were recorded.
00:05:13.000legal invoices that came in were recorded as legal expenses.
00:05:17.000And supposedly that's an allegation involving falsification of a business record.
00:05:22.000Well, let's take a look at that for a second.
00:05:25.000If you're running a business and a lawyer sends you an invoice citing legal expenses, and for all you know, that is to settle an NDA or a nondisclosure agreement that that lawyer made on your behalf that involves foreclosing a legal liability, the alleged crime here that is to settle an NDA or a nondisclosure agreement that that lawyer made on your behalf that involves foreclosing a legal liability, the alleged crime here of Donald Trump falsifying a legal record, a business record, not Michael Cohen, who's writing up false invoices that he claims not Michael
00:05:56.000That's That's the heart of what they're challenging here.
00:05:59.000Well, what else are you supposed to do when an attorney sends you a legal invoice for something that relates to a legal matter involving an NDA and the enforcement of NDA and avoidance of liability under that NDA? Recording that as a legal expense.
00:06:12.000That is what they would say is falsifying a business record.
00:06:17.000But let's go a layer deeper into this.
00:06:19.000This is where going into the details of the law actually matter.
00:06:23.000That alleged crime, even if it was committed, which for the reasons we discussed, if you get a legal expense, you're running a business, a lawyer, an outside lawyer sends you an invoice.
00:06:33.000You know it relates to dealing with a legal matter and you record it as a legal expense in your business ledger.
00:06:40.000To call that a crime itself should frighten every business owner, not just in New York but any other jurisdiction in the United States where they're going to adopt this kind of politics in prosecution.
00:06:49.000Even if you accept that ridiculous theory that that itself was a crime, look at the New York law.
00:06:55.000Under New York law, that supposed crime is only a misdemeanor.
00:07:04.000But that crime of falsifying that business record, failing to record that non-legal expense but recording it as a legal expense, that is only a...
00:07:16.000Crime up to the level of being a misdemeanor.
00:07:19.000You can't go to prison over it, right?
00:07:41.000It's a basic concept in the law that says, after a certain amount of time, we don't want people thinking about certain transgressions and have it weigh over their life.
00:07:48.000The prosecution or the government has a certain amount of time to charge a crime.
00:07:53.000That's what's called the statute of limitations.
00:07:54.000And the statute of limitations for this particular alleged crime or misdemeanor is five years.
00:08:02.000Trump's actions here that are alleged are far beyond that five years.
00:08:05.000So in order to be able to actually charge this crime and bring it within the statute of limitations and to further be able to charge it as a felony, something that could send you to prison, not just something that would have you have a small fine for misdemeanor, they had to charge a different underlying not just something that would have you have a small fine That's what the New York law requires.
00:08:26.000It says that unless this falsifying business record was in furtherance of a separate felony, you could only charge that as a misdemeanor.
00:08:35.000And by the way, you only have five years to do it.
00:08:37.000There's no way they could have brought this case.
00:08:38.000And even if they brought this case within that five years, they couldn't have charged it as a felony.
00:08:42.000But they're charging as a felony long after that five-year window.
00:08:45.000So that five-year window then expands if you're charging it as a felony.
00:08:50.000Here's a funny little wrinkle that other people haven't commented on.
00:08:53.000Even the felony charge has a statute of limitations that would have otherwise expired, but for certain exemptions that the prosecution has asked for because of COVID that should further extend that statute of limitations even for the felony.
00:09:05.000So that's a side wrinkle I'm not even going to go into in depth, but using every little potential exception or trick in the book, what they're saying is that this allegation of falsifying business records, recording a legal expense as a legal expense in a business ledger, that that supposed crime is no longer just a misdemeanor, but is a felony. that that supposed crime is no longer just a misdemeanor, And it can be charged outside the statute of limitations because it is in furtherance of another crime, another felony.
00:09:32.000That's the heart of this case in New York.
00:09:45.000Alvin Bragg, the DA in Manhattan, is a local DA.
00:09:48.000He operates and enforces supposedly state laws.
00:09:52.000Side note, look at New York City, where I actually was yesterday in the courthouse, recording it right here this morning before leaving town.
00:09:59.000It's interesting how you could go left and right in New York City and see crimes as being committed on any given day.
00:10:05.000I used to live in New York a decade ago.
00:10:08.000And yet the concern of local prosecutors in New York is not to actually stop the violent crime being committed across the city and across the state, but instead to go after fictitious crimes that are politicized in nature.
00:10:30.000But the contorted legal theory is he can bring that federal law in if it's tied to the falsification of a business record, which is a New York law.
00:10:37.000He couldn't charge the falsification of a business record under New York law unless he tied in that federal crime.
00:10:42.000So they're really walking on a tightrope here to say that he gets to charge the New York misdemeanor under New York state law as a felony outside the statute of limitations because he charges a separate underlying federal crime.
00:10:54.000But he couldn't have otherwise charged that federal crime were it not for the auspices of doing it under a state law that itself has expired.
00:11:00.000So that's a funny little dance right there.
00:11:02.000But now let's go into even further detail.
00:11:04.000His whole theory of the case is that not only did Donald Trump falsify a business record, which is a misdemeanor, But that it becomes a felony that the New York prosecutor is able to charge under state law because it was in furtherance of a federal crime of a campaign finance violation.
00:11:22.000What is that campaign finance violation, you might ask?
00:11:42.000This was the payments made to Michael Cohen, which they say were reimbursements for Stormy Daniels' hush money payment, an NDA that Stormy Daniels signed to say that she could not talk publicly about her alleged, the affair that she alleged with Donald Trump.
00:11:58.000Donald Trump has denied the affair, but that she alleges it.
00:12:01.000But nonetheless, that they signed an NDA with her to make sure that she couldn't speak about it publicly.
00:12:06.000But what they're saying is the use of those payments to Michael Cohen, which they allege were misrecorded by the Trump organization, were actually campaign contributions that were paid for by personal money, but should have been paid for by campaign funds or should have been but should have been paid for by campaign funds or should have been recorded as
00:12:28.000That's the heart of this entire case of what makes this a supposed felony is that these alleged payments to Michael Cohen, which were alleged to be reimbursements for a Stormy Daniels payment to enforce an NDA, that those should have been recorded as a campaign contribution that those should have been recorded as a campaign contribution rather than just the personal payment that they were actually made through.
00:12:54.000The idea The idea that a personal hush money payment should have been made and recorded as a campaign contribution, should have been made out of campaign funds, is actually a laughable idea.
00:13:11.000Let's have the same shoe on the other foot.
00:13:13.000You want to get the best litmus test for whether a prosecution is politicized.
00:13:20.000If the defendant would have done the exact opposite, the exact opposite thing of what the The exact opposite thing of what the prosecution says.
00:13:30.000The prosecution says, this is a crime.
00:13:33.000Suppose the defendant did the exact opposite thing of what the prosecution is alleging.
00:13:38.000If the prosecution could have still brought that case and would have still brought that case, that proves that it's a politicized prosecution, right?
00:13:44.000Because if you do A, they're going to prosecute you.
00:13:47.000Well, let's say you do the exact opposite of A, the thing that they claim in this case that you should have otherwise done, and then they would still come after you for it.
00:13:55.000That means they were going to get you either way.
00:13:59.000This will be taught in law schools for the next century.
00:14:02.000It certainly should be as an example of what is a politicized prosecution because let's examine this claim.
00:14:07.000The New York prosecution rests on the idea, the entire case rests on the idea that Donald Trump failed to record a personal hush money payment as a campaign contribution because part of the point of making that contribution was to influence the perception of voters.
00:14:22.000Having Stormy Daniel stay quiet was supposedly to improve the perception of voters.
00:14:27.000Even if you accept those facts, which are being contested in court, even if you accept those facts, if Donald Trump had used campaign funds to make a personal hush money payment, they would no doubt be prosecuting him for that.
00:14:43.000And the irony is they'd have an even stronger case for doing it.
00:14:49.000You Politicians who for years, you have congressmen, you have Sarah Palin caught up in something like this where she was alleged to have used campaign funds for personal expense.
00:15:01.000Suppose you want to dress up in a nice suit and tie, but you feel like you wouldn't have bought that nice suit and tie of that quality, spending $5,000 or whatever it would be for a nice suit.
00:15:12.000You wouldn't spend that money as a politician who hasn't achieved millions, is not yet a millionaire but wants to go into public service, say that, you know what, I'm going to use campaign funds to do something that affects the perception of voters, that voters have of me.
00:15:27.000If I show up in a ratty gym t-shirt and shorts, I don't think voters are going to vote for me, even if that's what I normally wear.
00:15:34.000So I'm going to incur an expense that is designed with the goal of influencing the voters' perception of me.
00:15:40.000So let's say a Republican politician decides, you know what, I wasn't going to spend that personal money on a suit for my personal life, but the only reason I'm going to buy that $5,000 suit is because I want to influence voters' perceptions of me.
00:15:51.000That's a reasonable basis for many politicians to believe they're going to actually have voter perceptions affected by how they dress.
00:15:58.000Now, multiple congressmen back in 2009 used this argument to use campaign money to buy personal attire.
00:16:06.000Sarah Palin got caught up in what became a similar scandal.
00:16:09.000But what the Federal Election Commission, viewing federal law, says is...
00:16:14.000Political candidates cannot use campaign funds to make a personal clothing payment, a personal sartorial choice, even if it is explicitly designed to influence the perception of voters.
00:16:29.000So the prosecution's entire theory of the case here is that Donald Trump is making a personal hush money payment.
00:16:35.000There's all kinds of personal reasons, very much a personal issue of whether or not somebody's making a false allegation of an affair they had with you or an allegation of any kind that they had an affair with you.
00:16:45.000No, no, the exact same thing they did to congressmen and other candidates who have used campaign funds to buy personal clothing.
00:17:20.000Well, you only might get that haircut as a politician if you really care about the way you present yourself on a debate stage in the media to voters, to influence voters' perceptions of you.
00:17:28.000If you had a politician who was using campaign funds to make personal haircut payments, there is no doubt that federal prosecutors or the Federal Election Commission would be coming after you for that, as opposed to saying that if you used those same campaign funds for getting a haircut, as opposed to saying that if you used those same campaign funds for getting a haircut, you wanted to look good for voters at a rally or at a debate to then say that, oh, no, no, no, because that was designed to influence voters' perceptions of you, somehow that was supposed to
00:17:58.000That means there's literally no way to run for office, because on one hand, if you use campaign funds to make a personal payment, they're going to come after you for that.
00:18:06.000I don't know if you make a personal payment, but it was designed with somehow influencing the perceptions of voters of you that you were going to get dinged because it should have been a campaign expense.
00:18:21.000That's what this case is actually about.
00:18:22.000Imagine if Donald Trump, who rides around in planes that land in hangars, it says Trump on the plane.
00:18:28.000Part of his brand is success landing at rallies that have been held at hangars, supposedly Suppose he bought that personal airplane and owned it because he says, my ownership of an airplane is going to affect voters' perceptions of me.
00:18:41.000Had he used campaign funds to do that, that would be a scandal on the front page of the New York Times.
00:18:46.000Likely federal action against him for that.
00:18:48.000Yet the entire prosecution's theory of the case is, oh, if you're using funds to influence voters' perceptions of you, you are committing a crime unless you use campaign funds to do it.
00:19:04.000So, back to the heart of this case, the original question I asked...
00:19:08.000What exactly is the crime that Donald Trump committed?
00:19:14.000They say it was falsifying a business record in furtherance of influencing an election with an illegal campaign contribution.
00:19:22.000It fails on every metric of that test.
00:19:26.000First of all, recording a legal expense as a legal expense was the alleged falsification of a business record that itself fails on its own terms.
00:19:35.000Even if that was a crime, it was only a misdemeanor that fell outside the statute of limitations.
00:19:40.000And the only way they were able to upcharge it as a felony was by tying it to a federal crime that local prosecutors otherwise could not have charged.
00:19:48.000But that federal crime involves using personal money to make a personal payment.
00:19:53.000And had he used campaign funds to do it, as the prosecution alleges that he was obligated to, he actually would be in violation of laws based on precedents set by federal regulators and federal prosecutors in the past.
00:20:05.000That's where we are right now with this case.
00:20:08.000It was clearer to me than ever after watching Michael Cohen testify that the entire legal premise for the case rests on these falsehoods.
00:20:19.000And this was a case of an attorney who spent an hour testifying in part based on recordings that he took while he was the attorney for that client secretly recording those conversations.
00:20:33.000An attorney, supposedly for the benefit of the client, without telling the client, is secretly recording those conversations.
00:20:39.000And now those conversations have been aired in a prosecution against that client.
00:20:45.000Anybody who's dealt with a lawyer, anybody who's been through law school, any layperson who has an understanding of the law understands that seeking legal advice is subject to something called attorney-client privilege.
00:21:01.000But we as a country and in the law and countless cases, thousands every year, respect the concept of attorney-client privilege, which is to say that the conversation that a client has with an attorney while seeking in good faith legal advice is protected and cannot be used against that client because otherwise you couldn't have a legal system that functioned because a defense attorney couldn't actually be doing their job if their client couldn't talk to them.
00:21:26.000This is true in the case of mass murders, true in the case of rapes, true in the case of some of the most heinous crimes that are committed.
00:21:32.000But that's part of what we think of as the due process of law in the United States of America that has a judicial system that we can trust.
00:21:39.000Yet yesterday, what I witnessed in that courtroom...
00:21:43.000Was a guy testifying about the content of his interactions with his client, secretly recording them in those recordings being the linchpin of the prosecution against that exact client.
00:21:54.000That's not just a threat to Donald Trump.
00:21:56.000That's a threat to every American in this country.
00:21:59.000Every American who, in good faith, may seek how they're going to actually not violate the law, only to have that be used against them when they're seeking that legal advice.
00:22:07.000It flouts the very idea of attorney-client privilege.
00:22:11.000And had this been any other case, I think that every newspaper in this country and every lawyer in this country would be calling it out.
00:22:16.000But because of the political backdrop, they're too afraid to say it.
00:22:19.000That was a big part of the testimony yesterday as well.
00:22:21.000And so you have an attorney testifying that he believes he himself committed crimes but is attributing those to Donald Trump in flagrant violation of attorney-client privilege on the backdrop of a legal theory that fails on its own terms.
00:22:34.000So that's what's going on in this legal case in New York.
00:22:38.000I think it's a disgusting prosecution and the fact that that courtroom is sadly as disgusting as it is, shameful as an American citizen, that this is where the third world atmosphere in which the carriage of justice is actually carried out, the saddest part of all is actually fitting for what's actually happening in that courtroom because the only thing more third world than the interior of that courtroom is Is really the content of what's happening in there.
00:23:01.000This is the stuff of banana republics.
00:23:03.000This is the stuff of third world countries.
00:23:05.000If this was another country where on the back of this type of politicized case, we saw a former president that was running for president, was a leader.
00:23:14.000The party of the party and the party of the president in power is then using these prosecutorial tools to, through the back door, prosecute that major opponent.
00:23:23.000We would call that the stuff of banana republic.
00:23:56.000It was a good example in the United States of America.
00:23:58.000That's how the Soviets in communist Russia did it and the communist USSR did it.
00:24:02.000We do things differently in the United States of America.
00:24:04.000Well, no, that's exactly what Alvin Bragg did.
00:24:06.000He ran on the campaign promise of going after somebody that was politically unpopular in the jurisdiction where he was running, Hard Blue New York, to say that I'm going to go after and investigate this man.
00:24:17.000He just said I'm going to investigate that man.
00:24:19.000Well, he's now keeping his campaign pledge.
00:24:22.000We should not want to live in a country.
00:24:24.000Where prosecutors are bringing cases that are just fulfilling campaign pledges that they've made to go after specific individuals on vague charges, on nebulous legal theories, on flawed legal theories that they wouldn't have gone after anybody else for.
00:24:38.000I'll give credit to Fareed Zakaria for saying the hard truth that everybody recognizes.
00:24:41.000This case would not have been brought if this man's name were not Donald Trump.
00:24:49.000If they can do it to Republican today, they can do it to Democrat tomorrow.
00:24:52.000Every Republican, every Democrat, every black or white person or man or woman in this country should be equally concerned.
00:24:58.000This has nothing to do actually with partisan politics.
00:25:01.000The concern about it has nothing to do with partisan politics when you have a justice system that is obsessed with partisan politics in the process.
00:25:11.000So you got a prosecutor who's run for office on the campaign pledge of going after this man, doesn't care about what crime, doesn't say what crime, uses this flawed legal theory that we've described to now levy that crime.
00:25:28.000This is the backstop of a judicial system.
00:25:30.000This is the backstop of a fair and just judicial system.
00:25:32.000The person who's providing instructions to the jury, the person who decides which objections are or are not sustained, the person that decides which evidence gets presented to the jury, the person who provides daily and final instructions to that jury to deliver a verdict, the person who can deliver a directed verdict at any time, the judge, single judge presiding over this case. the judge, single judge presiding over this case.
00:25:52.000I had to double check this stuff to be certain because I didn't believe what I saw the first time I read it.
00:25:59.000His daughter is a leading Democratic Party operative who is making millions of dollars from Democratic clients that include the likes of Adam Schiff, who have made it their career plank to go after Donald Trump and lead the impeachment charge of This is the opposition party to the party that Donald Trump is leading right now as the Republican nominee for US president.
00:26:26.000This judge has a daughter who is making money off of doing business with the very Democratic clients who have made it the hallmark of their campaigns and their fundraising ploys to point to Donald Trump's trial.
00:26:44.000They have specifically during this investigation and trial made money off of fundraising emails and fundraising calls to action that were based on the trial itself.
00:26:59.000Imagine the same shoe fit the other foot.
00:27:02.000Imagine if this was a Republican judge with a Republican operative daughter who ran a private business that made money off of clients in the Republican Party who their core campaign was predicated on going after Joe Biden.
00:27:18.000Suppose Joe Biden was the actual defendant.
00:27:20.000There is no doubt that anybody on the other side, any person in the media, if the same shoe fit the other foot, would be crying bloody murder.
00:27:27.000And it would be wrong then as it is wrong now that they're raising funds off the very existence of a trial and her firm making money off of it that her own father is presiding over.
00:27:40.000Do you think they're going to make and raise more money from their own anti-Trump base if the judge comes down with a verdict in favor of Trump or in favor of a verdict that's against Trump?
00:27:50.000Think about which one is actually going to have his own family members profit from that decision.
00:28:48.000Now let's take a look at the most other recent New York action against Trump.
00:28:52.000Another person who campaigned for office on the premise of going after Donald Trump, didn't say what crimes, Letitia James I'm now talking about, the AG of New York, who then recently went after Trump.
00:29:04.000For supposedly over-inflating his property values for the purpose of securing insurance.
00:29:13.000So in the same period that you have this other flawed investigation, farcical sham of a prosecution for falsifying business records, you have this separate case that's been brought to say that, hey, there's a consumer fraud statute, a statute that's designed to protect consumers, everyday Americans, from being defrauded for people who sell a statute that's designed to protect consumers, everyday Americans, from being defrauded for people who sell them false bill of goods, who lie to That's a crime.
00:29:36.000It's a consumer protection statute in the state of New York.
00:29:38.000Using that consumer protection statute to go after Donald Trump on a different axis.
00:29:43.000To say that, you know what, you slightly inflated the values of your properties to secure more favorable terms on commercial insurance.
00:29:53.000Now, this is bizarre because they're using a consumer protection statute to supposedly protect some of the most sophisticated financial institutions on the planet.
00:30:04.000The largest banks and financial institutions and insurance companies that are, to say they're big boys would be an understatement.
00:30:11.000These are some of the most sophisticated financial institutions on planet Earth that have repeatedly done their own due diligence, entered their own partnerships and client relationships with the Trump organizations and haven't sued them, haven't had any damages.
00:30:24.000In fact, have repeatedly made money off of their business relationship to Donald Trump.
00:30:29.000But the state of New York is saying that not on behalf of those organizations which aren't suing him, which haven't sued him, which have no claim of damages and haven't made any public claim that they were harmed or damaged.
00:30:38.000It says that the people of New York were somehow damaged by the fact that Donald Trump slightly inflated his property valuation.
00:30:45.000Now, as a side note, most business people who would look at what the judge says those valuations should have been, anybody looking at real estate in South Florida, you've got nine-figure houses listed.
00:30:53.000Anybody been to Mar-a-Lago to say that, you know what, if that should have been valued for $19 million or whatever the prosecutor says it should have been valued at, I think it's a good deal for anybody to be able to buy that property for that value.
00:31:03.000That would be a great business deal somebody could make to buy a real estate property of that valuation.
00:31:07.000So it's ridiculous what they ascribed as the valuation.
00:31:10.000But they said that Donald Trump valued it more.
00:31:26.000These are sophisticated financial institutions who made money off of their relationship with Donald Trump over the course of years, did not lose money, and you have a prosecutor saying that somehow the people of New York are a victim.
00:31:39.000It's another exercise in what we call lawfare.
00:31:42.000The use of the law to adjudicate politics.
00:31:45.000It's a bastardization of our legal system.
00:31:47.000So at the same time you've got Alvin Bragg who ran for office on the pledge of going after Donald Trump, you have another state AG, Letitia James, who did the same thing.
00:31:54.000She ran for office on the pledge of going after Trump, didn't say what crime, now levying the statute book thrown after him.
00:32:29.000They allege this under the 1917 Espionage Act.
00:32:36.000Okay, this is the same overbroad statute from over a century ago that they've used to charge people from Eugene Debs to Julian Assange, people who've been politically unpopular at the time, a vague, broadly written statute.
00:32:49.000And I've written about this extensively in the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages about why I think the statute is garbage.
00:32:56.000But part of the reason it's anti-American at its core is it allows prosecutors with a political motivation to go after their opponents for vaguely defined crimes that weren't actually crimes when committed.
00:33:05.000Because that entire indictment of Jack Smith, now moving to that topic of the so-called documents case, leaves out any mention, what is it, a 40, 60-page indictment, whatever it is, that leaves out any mention of the much more recent act that governs how a president of the United States is supposed to deal with confidential records that he kept while U.S. president.
00:33:25.000Conference of Records of the United States while he was U.S. President and afterwards.
00:33:28.000It's called, you might be surprised to know, in 1978, the Presidential Records Act.
00:33:35.000And the jurisprudence on this, the case law on this is clear that the person who decides what does or does not qualify as a classified document and does or does not qualify as what the U.S. president then can keep with him after he leaves office is none other than the U.S. president.
00:33:50.000Now you might debate that as a policy matter.
00:33:52.000You might say that we as a people should not want to trust the U.S. president with whether or not he gets to keep documents after he leaves office.
00:34:01.000Keep in mind, this is the same U.S. president that we entrust with the nuclear codes.
00:34:05.000This is the same U.S. president that we entrust as the commander-in-chief of deciding whether to send our sons and daughters to go die in foreign wars or to defend our own soil.
00:34:13.000That U.S. president, I think it actually is pretty reasonable to say we also trust with deciding which documents should or should not remain under classified status in the White House versus ones that could be exposed to at least the general public or even kept by yourself after you leave office.
00:34:26.000I think it's a reasonable policy judgment.
00:34:31.000The courts have already upheld that interpretation of the law.
00:34:35.000You have a judge in the Clinton sock drawer case of 2012 that said the exact same thing, that in that case, President Bill Clinton, a Democrat in this case, it doesn't matter what party, it shouldn't really, but a Democrat in that case, Democratic president, recorded conversations that he had with foreign leaders.
00:34:51.000He had all kinds of discussions, sensitive discussions with Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, about real matters of foreign importance to the United States, that he took with him and he kept them in his sock drawer, presumably as personal memorabilia.
00:35:02.000No one's alleging that Bill Clinton was trying to sell that to our enemies, just as nobody's alleged or offered a shred of fact that Donald Trump is doing the same thing with documents that he kept.
00:35:11.000And yet, in that case, the judge, federal judge held that the person with the sole authority, the sole discretion to determine what was or wasn't covered by what needed to be kept in the government versus what the president could declassify or take with him was none other than the U.S. president himself, the same person we entrusted the nuclear codes in protecting this country as commander in chief.
00:35:34.000Yet, in the Trump documents case, what they're alleging is they did not make any mention of the Presidential Records Act, but were invoking some vague statute from 1917 called the Espionage Act, passed during World War I, to go after anti-war dissenters during World War I, to now charge Donald Trump with preserving documents in a way that Bill Clinton did, but somehow when Donald Trump does it, it's a crime.
00:35:53.000And the irony is he's running against Joe Biden, who wasn't protected by the Presidential Records Act when he was a U.S. senator, that actually took a bunch of documents, including classified documents, That he held in an unsecured location in his own home.
00:36:06.000And the only reason they even went after him at all was because they went after Donald Trump.
00:36:10.000This is otherwise a dated allegation that otherwise never would have been brought but for air cover.
00:36:32.000Entire case against a defendant brought on the premise of mishandling documents.
00:36:38.000And then the prosecutor who brings that case does what?
00:36:41.000Nothing other than mishandle those documents, which will likely toss this case out of court.
00:36:45.000At the same time you see that happening, you have a different case being brought in the state of Georgia, where the prosecutor who's going after Donald Trump, Fannie Willis over there, has now a personal conflict of interest.
00:36:55.000Apparently, now we know for sure, based on testimony, a deeply personal conflict.
00:37:01.000With the very attorney who she otherwise put in charge of prosecuting and bringing that case against Donald Trump, which has completely compromised the integrity of that case.
00:37:08.000And I'm not gonna go into those merits here because our time is limited.
00:37:13.000I went into depth in the New York case.
00:37:15.000Number one, you got the Alvin Bragg case.
00:37:17.000Then you got the Letitia James politicized crusade.
00:37:21.000Then you have what's going on with Jack Smith, his own mishandling of the documents in the mishandled documents case, ignoring the Clinton sock door case, judicial precedent, and the Presidential Records Act.
00:37:29.000What's the disaster that's unfolding in Fulton County, Georgia, with Fannie Willis and her personal relationship and her affair and financial relationship with the prosecutor who she's put in charge?
00:37:44.000The reason why is if the whole premise of these prosecutions was political in the first place, then the politics is going to guide the mistakes that those prosecutions make.
00:37:57.000This is exactly what you could have predicted.
00:38:00.000If these cases had nothing to do with the law, it's no surprise that those prosecutors are behaving in a manner that has nothing to do with the law.
00:38:08.000When you have prosecutors that have made campaign pledges to go after one man and keep that, that's not justice.
00:38:13.000When you have a judge whose family member is making money off of the existence of that case while presiding over that case, that is not justice.
00:38:22.000When you have century-old laws being used in tortured and overexpanded ways while ignoring more recent laws that govern that U.S. president charged in a criminal prosecution, that is not justice.
00:38:34.000And when you have a prosecutorial system in the United States of America that goes after you now because of your political beliefs, that is not justice.
00:40:03.000It's actually the view that's existed for most of human history.
00:40:06.000You see, the thing about the United States of America is we are the exception in human history.
00:40:11.000For most of human history in old world Europe and dating back to most civilizations, people were skeptical of the idea that citizens could self-govern.
00:40:19.000The idea that you get to speak your own mind freely as long as I get to in return.
00:40:24.000That's a crazy idea for most of human history.
00:40:27.000For most of human history, it's the idea that people are able to express any opinion in public.
00:40:33.000The idea that you get to decide who your leaders are, that you get to hold them accountable at the ballot box in a process where every citizen's voice and vote counts equally.
00:40:42.000That's the stuff of crazy futuristic talk of a society that isn't supposed to last.
00:40:52.000That's what made America great the first time around, is that for better or worse, and that's a crucial part of the bargain, for better or worse, we the people create a government that is accountable to us.
00:41:01.000We the people decide who actually wins our elections and who governs, not bureaucrats sitting in the back of three-letter government agencies or prosecutors in a prosecutorial system or judges who are conflicted.
00:41:12.000No, we the people settle that every November.
00:41:19.000They're afraid that it is possible, increasingly if you look at the polling numbers now, likely, that the one man who this system has an anaphylactic response to might actually just get elected as the next president of the United States.
00:41:30.000And they are going to stop at nothing.
00:41:32.000And they've made clear they will stop at nothing to keep this man away from office.
00:41:35.000There are the cases we've talked about today.
00:41:37.000There are the attempts to remove him from the ballot extrajudicially.
00:41:41.000Just a secretary of state saying that, you know what, I'm going to make a judgment saying that he should not be on the ballot because he did something that I disagree with.
00:41:47.000To the civil cases, to God knows what's coming in the next six months, that is not America.
00:41:52.000That is a bastardization of what this country was founded on.
00:41:55.000And I don't care whether you're on the left or the right.
00:41:58.000We got to agree that the people who we elect to run the government should be the ones who actually run the government.
00:42:04.000Maybe those people disagree with my views.
00:42:06.000I have strong views on questions relating from climate policy to the politicization of justice to, you think about, issues relating to the Second Amendment to issues relating to health care.
00:42:16.000I've got strong views on a lot of different things.
00:42:18.000You may disagree with me on those views, but we agree and part of our bargain is to live in a country where if our democratic process actually settles that at the ballot box, then it's up to us to hold our leaders accountable and we live by those results.
00:42:31.000We don't use the courtroom and the prosecutorial system to settle it through the back door instead.
00:42:36.000What we see right now is the old world monster rearing its ugly head again.
00:42:42.000King George's vision, as opposed to George Washington's vision for this country, a vision that was skeptical of citizens, skeptical that your voice could actually be trusted to determine who leads your country.
00:43:03.000Tax rate election, 1% higher or lower tax rate.
00:43:06.000Now, this isn't one of those elections.
00:43:07.000This is an election about the basic rules of the road.
00:43:09.000Do we believe in the year 2024, in the ideals of 1776, do we believe that you're free to express your opinion regardless of what that opinion is?
00:43:18.000Do we actually believe that your voice counts equally at the ballot box and it shouldn't be some government bureaucrat determining who can and cannot be the next president?
00:43:27.000Do we actually believe that the people who we elect to run the government should be the ones who actually run the government, not three-letter agency bureaucrats who were never elected to their positions, festering in that ever-growing swamp in Washington, D.C., the four million federal bureaucrats that are actually making policies rather than the congressman who you elect?
00:43:43.000That's what's at stake in this election.
00:43:47.000The same question, except this time, the way we're going to settle this, I hope, is through open debate, through an actual revival of those ideals that we long for.
00:43:56.000Americans across this country, especially young people, I see it, are lost, are hungry in a nation.
00:44:01.000A nation that preaches one set of ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, yet today living a very different set of ideals.
00:44:07.000It's no surprise to me that many people, young people, independents, people of every age across this country are lost, have been unmoored from understanding who we are, are lost at a moment where faith has disappeared, family has disintegrated, now our national identity has gone too.
00:44:23.000We're told we have a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution, yet now bureaucrats are telling me who I can and cannot elect, what I can and cannot say, what opinions I can and cannot express.
00:44:36.000That's what's going on in this country.
00:44:38.000I don't think it's a stretch to say that's part of what's fueling this mental health epidemic across our country.
00:44:42.000People that have lost their sense of grounding.
00:44:44.000People have lost their sense of commitment.
00:44:46.000People have lost their sense of citizenship and identity.
00:44:49.000And so what we talked about today, these trials against Trump, gets a little bit technical at times, talking about the specifics of, well, why is this legal case...
00:44:57.000Actually an unlawful case that's being brought against him.
00:45:02.000Part of the advice I'd give you is the more boring it sounds, the more you need to pay attention.
00:45:06.000Part of what they're trying to do is to pack in a political agenda, wrap it in the veneer of technocracy, and sell it to you as a legal or technical judgment.
00:45:13.000No, you've got to see through the details.
00:45:17.000That's how we're going to win the revolution of 2024. Our founding fathers had to do it a different way against the British Empire in 1776. But this time, the way we do it is not through physical action, not through violence, but through knowledge.
00:45:30.000Equip yourself and understand what's actually going on.
00:45:32.000Know the things that you're sure they don't want you to know.
00:45:36.000And that's how we're going to get this country back.
00:45:37.000That's how we're going to restore a justice system that's no longer politicized.
00:45:40.000That's how we're going to restore free speech in this country.
00:45:44.000And that's how we're going to save this republic.
00:45:46.000And if we don't get this right before, say my kids are in high school, I'm going to see them later today.
00:46:24.000But the next step is for every one of us to step up and speak our mind and to take the time to actually educate ourselves, not just read the front page of the New York Times and accept that as gospel, but to do your own homework and understand.