Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 24, 2024


Do Female Prisoners Have the Right to Not Have a 6'2＂ Man who is a Serial Rapist as a Cellmate？ plus Michael Cohen ADMITS He's a THIEF


Episode Stats


Length

43 minutes

Words per minute

175.73367

Word count

7,617

Sentence count

542

Harmful content

Misogyny

14

sentences flagged

Toxicity

26

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ted Cruz and Ben Fergusons cross-examine a radical judicial nominee. They also discuss the bombshell news that Michael Cohen testified about a crime at the Trump trial. Ted and Ben also discuss why CNN is in serious trouble.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.560 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.180 Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.100 And Senator, it is a rock star week, I got to say, for you on Capitol Hill.
00:00:14.400 You got feisty during some hearings and it's gone viral.
00:00:18.380 What just happened with one of the radical nominees put up by the Biden administration?
00:00:23.840 Well, that's exactly right.
00:00:25.400 Joe Biden has nominated a lot of extreme radicals to the bench.
00:00:28.360 This week we had a hearing with a district court nominee who sent a serial child rapist,
00:00:34.660 who is a man, who decided that he was a woman, sent him into a woman's prison, 1.00
00:00:40.820 disregarded the rights of the women. 0.88
00:00:42.660 It is outrageous.
00:00:44.700 I cross-examine this nominee.
00:00:46.360 We're going to get into that.
00:00:47.180 We're also going to get into what happened at the Trump trial this week.
00:00:50.340 We're going to get into, in particular, the bombshell news that Michael Cohen testified about a crime.
00:00:55.520 We finally found a crime at the Trump trial.
00:00:57.400 It just happened to be Michael Cohen was the criminal.
00:01:00.120 He testified and admitted that he stole tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump organization.
00:01:05.480 That might well be relevant for charging him, but it doesn't prove any crime on the part of Donald Trump.
00:01:12.100 Yeah, very important there.
00:01:13.720 And it's shocking to find out those details we'll have for you in a moment.
00:01:16.760 Let me ask you a question real quick.
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00:03:21.440 Senator, before we get into you and this incredible cross-examination of this radical judicial nominee,
00:03:30.120 I got a bone to pick with you.
00:03:31.320 For four years, you've been abstaining from going on CNN.
00:03:35.640 And in the last four years, CNN's ratings have gone to hell in a handbasket so bad that they drew just 83,000 viewers ages 25 to 54 during the week of May the 13th to the 19th.
00:03:49.780 That is the lowest rating they've had since 1991, according to the Nielsen ratings.
00:03:56.280 And then all of a sudden, you showed up on CNN yesterday for an interview.
00:04:01.000 Are you trying to save the network, sir?
00:04:03.140 Because it's only going to help them.
00:04:06.060 Well, look, once Ben Ferguson left CNN, they were in a downward spiral.
00:04:10.680 I'm glad you remember that.
00:04:12.120 That was about four years ago as well.
00:04:14.000 Thank you.
00:04:14.920 And the company's been hurting ever since.
00:04:17.100 So, you know, I want to do what I can for a poor, struggling, drowning, fake journalistic network.
00:04:24.240 In all fairness, you actually went on there to talk about the important piece of legislation that you've been pushing that deals with IVF.
00:04:32.800 And they gave you a platform to talk about that for a moment before they then tried to come after you.
00:04:38.060 Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
00:04:39.700 And Caitlin, Caitlin Collins, we actually had the first segment.
00:04:42.700 It's kind of funny.
00:04:43.260 My team said this.
00:04:44.040 I was going to be on for two segments.
00:04:45.600 My team said the first segment, they'll play nice.
00:04:47.540 They'll actually let you talk about what you're here to talk about, and you'll have a reasonable conversation.
00:04:51.080 And the second segment, she'll get all nasty, and she'll perform for all of their left-wing stakeholders. 1.00
00:04:57.040 And that's exactly what she did, and she was snarky and interrupted me and didn't want me to answer. 1.00
00:05:01.480 And, you know, played the same gotcha game that we're seeing the media do.
00:05:05.460 Their favorite thing right now to do to Republicans is say, will you swear on a stack of Bibles?
00:05:12.380 Actually, they don't say a stack of Bibles because lefties don't believe in Bibles.
00:05:15.760 But if they did, they would say, will you swear on a stack of Bibles that no matter what, you will fully accept the election results in 2024?
00:05:24.520 And, you know, I laugh and say, well, no, who on earth would do that?
00:05:28.500 Of course, I will accept them if they're legitimate.
00:05:30.480 But we have in every state, we have laws in place to challenge voter fraud when there are irregularities.
00:05:35.960 We have elections that are challenged all the time.
00:05:38.040 The courts overturned election results when there's fraud. 0.97
00:05:40.220 Like, what imbecile would say, even if something's illegitimate, I'll accept it anyway? 0.87
00:05:45.540 I'll accept it if it's fair, if it follows the law, absolutely. 0.97
00:05:51.440 But I'm going to fight to uphold the law.
00:05:53.620 And they don't accept that answer.
00:05:54.880 And so Caitlin Collins had kind of a meltdown when I gave that answer.
00:05:59.960 Over or under, you're going to be back in the next four years.
00:06:02.040 That's what I really want to know.
00:06:03.360 Oh, I'll probably be back.
00:06:04.720 You know, if nothing else, I sort of enjoy going round and round.
00:06:08.160 You know, it gets the blood flowing.
00:06:09.700 There you go.
00:06:10.600 It's something to do on a random Thursday, right?
00:06:12.660 You got to love it.
00:06:13.660 All right, let's get to the bigger issue here.
00:06:15.620 And that comes up with the Biden nominee.
00:06:18.820 You had one heck of a time with this Biden radical nominee, Sarah Netborn.
00:06:25.140 I want you to set the stage for this nominee that was coming before you guys in the Senate.
00:06:30.520 It's a nominee for the judge for the Southern District of New York.
00:06:33.420 Obviously, there's going to be someone that's pretty liberal.
00:06:35.400 But this went off the charts radical and is now putting women's lives at risk in prison because of decisions that this judge has made in the past.
00:06:45.880 Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:06:47.160 So we had a hearing this week with a total of five Biden district court nominees, and all five of them were quite left wing.
00:06:55.720 And in fact, what Dick Durbin, who's the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, did is he stacked them all together because this one in particular was so egregious that I think Durbin knew that she would draw all the fire.
00:07:07.460 And the other four would basically skate by because you only have a limited number of time to cross-examine.
00:07:12.480 And so this one's record was so bad that the others got very little scrutiny.
00:07:17.020 But this particular judicial nominee is a woman named Sarah Netborn, and she is a magistrate judge in New York that Biden has nominated to be a federal district judge in New York.
00:07:30.920 And that means she's the pick of Chuck Schumer.
00:07:33.680 And I got to say, even for Biden nominees and Biden nominees have been hard left.
00:07:38.420 They've been much more radical than than Obama nominees ever were.
00:07:43.040 Even for Biden nominees, this nominee was wildly outside the mainstream.
00:07:48.940 And well, look, rather that rather than relive it, we should just just just play the cross-examination.
00:07:54.460 Yeah, it's gone viral on social media.
00:07:57.040 More than 38 million have watched this on X so far.
00:08:01.960 Take a listen.
00:08:03.340 Well, Judge Netburn, I want to continue on this line of questioning.
00:08:07.300 In your court, what matters more?
00:08:10.600 The rights of individuals or your political ideology?
00:08:14.360 I apply the law to the facts.
00:08:17.100 I asked a question, which matters more?
00:08:19.420 Well, my political ideology doesn't matter at all.
00:08:22.200 OK, so I don't believe you.
00:08:23.160 And I think this case demonstrates that you are willing to subjugate the rights of individuals to satisfy your political ideology.
00:08:33.800 This case involves a male defendant who raped a nine-year-old boy.
00:08:41.180 Was he guilty of that?
00:08:43.200 Yes, the petitioner pled guilty to that. 0.98
00:08:44.980 OK, so he raped a nine-year-old boy. 0.98
00:08:46.520 He also raped a 17-year-old girl. 0.99
00:08:49.340 Was he guilty of that? 0.98
00:08:50.580 He pled guilty.
00:08:51.660 The petitioner pled guilty to that crime as well.
00:08:53.660 So was he guilty?
00:08:55.040 I hope so, because she pled guilty to it.
00:08:58.240 He was a he when he did this.
00:08:59.820 That's correct.
00:09:01.480 And also criminal deviant conduct, which the record doesn't disclose what that was exactly.
00:09:07.560 Then, after serving in prison, Mr. McClain was released for parole, but then violated the terms of parole by having internet and was sent back to prison.
00:09:17.820 One year after being released again, he was convicted of having child pornography.
00:09:21.360 Is that correct?
00:09:22.580 I'm unclear on exactly the time frame that you're at, but the petitioner was convicted of distributing child pornography.
00:09:28.320 Child pornography that was images of adults violently raping children.
00:09:32.880 Abhorrent conduct. 0.99
00:09:34.800 OK.
00:09:35.440 For which there are real victims.
00:09:37.600 And this individual, six foot two, biologically a man.
00:09:42.680 And a minute ago, you said that when this man decided that he was a she, you said this individual was, quote, I wrote it down, sober and entirely a female.
00:09:55.880 That phrase struck me as remarkable. 0.96
00:09:58.200 Did this individual have male genitalia? 0.67
00:09:59.680 I think what I said, or at least that is a verbatim quote, entirely a female. 0.89
00:10:04.880 Sorry.
00:10:05.240 What I meant to say was hormonally a female.
00:10:07.620 OK, but that's not entirely. 0.89
00:10:09.460 Did this individual have male genitalia? 0.89
00:10:12.440 Yes. 1.00
00:10:12.740 So you took a six foot two serial rapist, serial child rapist with male genitalia, and he said, you know, I'd like to be in a women's prison. 1.00
00:10:27.320 And your answer was, that sounds great to me. 1.00
00:10:30.120 Let me ask you something.
00:10:31.220 The other women in that prison, do they have any rights? 1.00
00:10:34.020 Is that a question?
00:10:35.140 Yes.
00:10:35.560 The other women in that prison, do they have any rights? 1.00
00:10:37.660 Of course.
00:10:38.160 Do they have the right not to have a six foot two man who is a repeat serial rapist put in as their cellmate?
00:10:46.780 Senator Cruz, I considered the facts presented to me and I reached a decision.
00:10:51.360 I asked you a question.
00:10:52.400 I asked you a question. 0.88
00:10:53.980 Do they have a right not to have a six foot two man who is a serial rapist put in as their cellmate?
00:11:01.100 Do those women have a right to that? 1.00
00:11:02.660 Every person who's incarcerated has the right to be safe in their space.
00:11:06.980 But you didn't think so.
00:11:07.940 And in fact, I'm going to give some quotes from your order because Senator Kennedy is right.
00:11:15.220 This is not a judge's order.
00:11:16.760 This is a political activist.
00:11:18.040 By the way, the beginning of your order says, at birth, people are typically assigned a gender.
00:11:26.640 I got to say that would astonish a lot of Americans.
00:11:28.840 A lot of Americans think you go to the hospital, a baby is born, and congratulations, you have a little boy, a little girl.
00:11:34.720 The assigned a gender.
00:11:36.420 I know you went to Brown, but it sounds like it's in a college faculty lounge with no bearing on reality.
00:11:43.420 The Bureau of Prison argued what I'm saying right now, that if you put this person in a female prison, there will be a risk of sexual assault to the women.
00:11:52.020 And you know what you did?
00:11:53.680 You said you didn't care about the women.
00:11:55.100 I'm going to quote what you wrote.
00:11:56.260 You wrote, quote,
00:11:56.960 The Bureau of Prisoners claim pedagogical interest in protecting female prisoners from sexual violence and trauma.
00:12:03.500 This interest is legitimate.
00:12:04.880 That's kind of you to say.
00:12:06.540 But there are no signs that Petitioner is at risk of reoffending.
00:12:10.440 The record is devoid of evidence of incidents of violence or assault during Petitioner's incarceration when she was the perpetrator, only the victim.
00:12:17.500 A theoretical risk of sexual assault by the prisoner without more cannot support the BOP's position.
00:12:23.360 No evidence theoretical.
00:12:24.740 Have you dealt, in what universe is someone who is a serial repeat child rapist not at a risk of reoffending?
00:12:35.780 Senator, as I do in every case.
00:12:38.000 I know you've been told to repeat the line, I follow the law.
00:12:40.960 I asked a question.
00:12:42.440 In what universe is someone who is a serial repeat child rapist not at risk of reoffending?
00:12:50.080 Sir, I looked at the facts that were before me in this case.
00:12:53.940 It's all of the evidence, including the statements of every warden who had supervised this petitioner.
00:13:00.080 You also wrote, the BOP also posits that permitting Petitioner to live among women will be traumatizing and possibly dangerous to them.
00:13:06.940 This concern is overblown.
00:13:09.320 I have to say, if I were the father of one of those women, and you decided that my daughter's cellmate was going to be a six-foot-two man who over and over and over again committed violent sexual assault,
00:13:24.740 I would say the entire justice system is absurd, and it is clear on your record your political ideology matters a heck of a lot more than the rights of those women that you endangered.
00:13:37.860 I think you're a radical, and I think you have no business being a judge.
00:13:40.880 Senator, I want to take a moment and explain to people the strategy when there is a judge that is nominated in this scenario.
00:13:53.000 One of the first questions that the team that is supposed to be helping here, right, on the Biden side would say is,
00:13:59.460 okay, hey, let's look at a record, are there any liabilities out there, are there any cases that you can't explain,
00:14:06.440 are there going to be things that are going to embarrass us or hold us up,
00:14:09.740 is that now, like, completely gone from the nomination process if you're on the left, on the Democrat side,
00:14:15.940 where, hey, it doesn't matter how radical you are, if we like you and we think you're one of us,
00:14:20.420 we'll just nominate you no matter what you've done in your past?
00:14:23.700 So, Ben, I'll say it's worse than that.
00:14:25.400 The more radical you are, the more of a plus it is.
00:14:27.660 They're deliberately looking for people who do things like this.
00:14:31.480 The fact that this woman is a left-wing radical who sees this transgender six-foot-two man
00:14:38.060 who claims he's a woman and wants to be in a women's prison and says,
00:14:41.360 great, puts ideology above the law, puts ideology above the rights of women. 1.00
00:14:47.480 By the way, to today's radical leftists, there's a hierarchy of whose rights matters.
00:14:53.600 And to the left, transgender people rights matter more than women's rights. 0.61
00:14:58.920 And so the women's rights just don't matter at all. 1.00
00:15:01.440 And, you know, it's very easy for a privileged leftist to say this because, you know what,
00:15:05.840 this judge, she didn't have a cellmate who was a serial rapist.
00:15:09.380 She was just subjecting other people to that.
00:15:11.920 And so it made her ideology feel very good.
00:15:15.540 And qualified her is what you're saying.
00:15:17.540 This is what qualified her.
00:15:19.480 Seek out people like this.
00:15:21.040 This is who they're looking for.
00:15:23.040 And I'll tell you, for a district judge, in all likelihood, this person was selected by Chuck Schumer.
00:15:29.500 The way it works for district judges is the home state senators have enormous sway. 0.73
00:15:35.320 So to give you a sense, for the past 12 years that I've been in the Senate,
00:15:38.940 practically every district court nominee from the state of Texas,
00:15:44.580 John Cornyn and I have submitted to the White House one name for each vacancy.
00:15:48.880 And that's been true under Democrat and Republican presidents.
00:15:53.660 As a practical matter, the senators typically pick the district judges.
00:15:58.500 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00
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00:16:29.720 So they look at her or she looks at these cases and says,
00:16:33.600 Hey, I want to move up the ranks.
00:16:36.080 I got to do something that signals to them that I'm an activist.
00:16:39.620 I'm an extremist.
00:16:41.420 And that gets me to the front of the line.
00:16:44.020 Because if you're normal and sane, and you would say, 0.86
00:16:46.700 Of course, I'm not going to put a serial rapist in a women's prison who's a six foot two dude. 1.00
00:16:51.860 Then you may get passed up by the entire Democratic administration.
00:16:56.660 Look, it's one of the striking things under Biden.
00:16:59.720 The judicial nominees under Biden have been much, much, much more radical than they were under Obama.
00:17:05.680 Listen, I was not a fan of Obama's nominees, to put it mildly.
00:17:08.340 They were all quite left wing.
00:17:10.720 But Biden has made them look positively middle of the road.
00:17:15.140 They are seeking out radicals.
00:17:17.260 They're seeking out people who are extreme.
00:17:19.080 We had one, another, actually, New York district court nominee,
00:17:23.300 who described himself in his own words as a, quote, wild-eyed liberal,
00:17:27.680 who said every morning he wakes up motivated by hatred for conservatives.
00:17:34.200 Well, apparently that's how you get selected by Chuck Schumer.
00:17:37.020 He got nominated.
00:17:38.700 And I and others made the point, look, there are actually some Republicans,
00:17:42.600 some conservatives in the state of New York.
00:17:44.180 If, God forbid, you find yourself in this judge's court,
00:17:47.360 how are you supposed to believe you can get a fair treatment and equal justice under the law
00:17:52.380 from a judge who told you he woke up that morning motivated by his hatred for you?
00:17:57.720 Well, it didn't matter.
00:17:58.780 The Democrats all voted party line.
00:18:00.380 They got behind him.
00:18:01.460 He's now a judge in New York.
00:18:02.820 He was confirmed by this Democrat Senate.
00:18:05.820 There was another judge nominated in Connecticut.
00:18:08.600 So the Connecticut senators decided they wanted this judge.
00:18:11.940 She was a law professor. 0.98
00:18:12.920 She signed a letter to the governor of Connecticut arguing during COVID that he should release
00:18:19.380 every single prisoner from pretrial detention with no qualifications.
00:18:24.320 So that included murderers, that included rapists, that included child molesters.
00:18:28.380 All of them should be released from prison because of COVID. 0.69
00:18:32.460 That's just nuts.
00:18:33.920 There was another judicial nominee from the Central District of California
00:18:37.040 who, again, in a Law Review article, argued that the laws restricting where sexual predators
00:18:45.340 can live should be struck down and pedophiles should be able to live next to daycare centers
00:18:53.840 and kindergartens.
00:18:54.840 Listen, I urged the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.
00:18:58.760 I said, I get that it's a Democrat president.
00:19:03.060 You're Democrats.
00:19:03.920 You're going to confirm most of the nominees.
00:19:06.180 You know, when Trump was president, we confirmed most of the nominees.
00:19:09.520 But you know what we did when Trump was president?
00:19:11.300 We rejected several of them because the Constitution gives the Senate the responsibility to advise and consent.
00:19:18.820 And there were some of the nominees the Trump White House missed on.
00:19:22.900 And even though he was a Republican, we said, nope, this is not going to do.
00:19:26.980 And they withdrew those nominees.
00:19:29.240 And they gave you a better nominee, right, after that?
00:19:30.920 Yes, we got much better nominees.
00:19:33.040 That's actually the constitutional process.
00:19:35.260 That's doing our job.
00:19:36.880 The Democrats are just like the Politburo.
00:19:39.600 And on this judge that said that you should not restrict where sexual predators live, I said, I don't care how blue a state you live in, whether New York or Connecticut or New Jersey or Hawaii or Vermont, whatever state you're in.
00:19:55.180 I promise you, gather 50 or 100 of your constituents, get them together and ask them, hey, do you think pedophiles should live next to a kindergarten?
00:20:02.740 They're all going to say no.
00:20:04.180 No, no normal, rational person answers yes to that.
00:20:07.940 But in this Biden White House with this Chuck Schumer Democrat Senate, those are the kind of radicals they want to be federal judges.
00:20:17.120 Yeah, it's a great point.
00:20:18.700 And it's sad that these are the people getting these jobs and then they could sit there for years on end affecting people's lives in a major way.
00:20:25.220 And we're going to talk about the Trump trial in a minute.
00:20:27.040 It's a perfect example of that.
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00:22:29.040 Senator, I want to move into the Trump trial now because I think it's a perfect example of the radicals that get on these courts and what can happen.
00:22:38.920 We know that the federal government seven, eight years ago said no to even taking this case on.
00:22:45.220 They thought it was ridiculous.
00:22:46.520 They chose not to move forward with it because they didn't think there was anything there. 0.72
00:22:50.520 And then you've got an activist judge or activist DA in Alvin Bragg who says, hey, hey, vote for me and I'll go after Trump.
00:22:57.020 And then he finds the perfect judge, the perfect place in Manhattan where 90% of the people vote against Donald Trump last time.
00:23:05.140 You go to trial and all of a sudden we find a crime that's been committed now.
00:23:09.480 But it wasn't Donald Trump that committed that crime.
00:23:11.980 It's the key witness for the government who had to admit in court that he took money, stole money from the Trump organization.
00:23:20.840 How is this trial not at that point just immediately canceled saying, hey, we're going to have a mistrial.
00:23:25.260 What's over? Well, listen, this has been a partisan circus from day one.
00:23:29.620 As you noted, the district attorney is a hard left wing Democrat partisan.
00:23:34.060 He was elected with with money from George Soros.
00:23:37.820 He came in with an agenda, an agenda to get Donald Trump.
00:23:41.740 And it didn't matter what the charge was.
00:23:43.940 He was going to try to take Trump down so that they got particularly creative in this this case to to to create a prosecution where there was no crime.
00:23:53.320 Now, we all know about the the alleged affair with Stormy Daniels and the hush money.
00:23:59.040 And and that is salacious, but it's not, in fact, criminal.
00:24:02.960 So here's their argument.
00:24:04.680 And it's it's a bootstrap on top of a bootstrap.
00:24:07.580 They argue, first of all, that paying Stormy Daniels to keep quiet and not tell her story.
00:24:14.420 That constituted a illegal campaign contribution under federal campaign finance laws.
00:24:22.380 Now, if that were the case, it's not the Manhattan D.A. that prosecutes violations of federal campaign finance laws.
00:24:30.100 It's the federal government.
00:24:31.140 The federal government looked at this and concluded, nope, we're not going to bring a case here.
00:24:35.440 So that's a problem there.
00:24:37.660 They're predicate crime.
00:24:38.840 They don't have the jurisdiction to prosecute.
00:24:41.500 So they then have a different New York statute that makes it a crime to keep fake fraudulent books.
00:24:48.400 And the problem is that that crime is ordinarily a misdemeanor.
00:24:53.260 But in this case, they elevate it to being a felony.
00:24:55.640 How by saying, well, the fraudulent books are in furtherance of a crime, in this case, the federal crime that the federal government declined to bring.
00:25:04.720 And so it is literally a non-crime on top of a non-crime because the payment to the lawyers that allegedly went out to Stormy Daniels were labeled as legal expenses.
00:25:18.620 And that's what they're claiming is the crime of covering up the non-crime of the campaign finance offense.
00:25:25.020 Now, their star witness is Michael Cohen.
00:25:27.860 This is a lawyer who has lied over and over and over again.
00:25:31.900 He lied during the trial.
00:25:33.180 He got caught lying during the trial.
00:25:35.440 He's someone who has a long history of lying.
00:25:38.380 But even with that long history of lying, I really didn't think he would sit on the stand and admit himself to being a felon, to having stolen from Trump.
00:25:51.160 And I'll tell you what, listen to what CNN's legal expert, Ellie Honig, said on this.
00:25:59.060 I think the revelation, though, this morning about the theft of $30,000, which was doubled because they covered his taxes, so $60,000, it came out in a glancing, unclear way on direct.
00:26:11.440 It came out like a bomb earlier today.
00:26:14.220 I don't know how much they can do to fix that.
00:26:16.620 At a certain point, it is the fact Michael Cohen did steal this money.
00:26:20.900 And what makes that really so important, Wolf, is it's not as if Michael Cohen was just stealing on the side.
00:26:25.820 That would be bad enough.
00:26:27.220 The problem is he was stealing from the exact reimbursement at issue in this case.
00:26:31.340 So the prosecution's core argument is Donald Trump knew what that $420,000 was all about.
00:26:36.540 He was totally read in on it.
00:26:38.380 It turns out Michael Cohen was stealing from him within that $420,000.
00:26:42.160 Does Michael Cohen's acknowledgment, admission that he stole tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump organization, potentially open him up to further criminal prosecution?
00:26:52.240 It's a great question.
00:26:53.080 The answer is not anymore because the statute of limitations has run out.
00:26:56.860 But it's a very fair question to ask, gee, folks, of the jury.
00:27:00.860 They gave him a free pass.
00:27:02.360 He committed larceny.
00:27:03.860 It's a higher degree of felony than what Donald Trump is charged with.
00:27:07.740 Yet they gave Michael Cohen a free pass, even though he's now admitted that he stole what amounts to $60,000.
00:27:13.580 It goes to his credibility.
00:27:14.560 It goes to his relationship with the DA.
00:27:16.700 You look at his quote, and it's just, obviously, he knows he's got the get-out-of-jail-free card because it was a simple question.
00:27:24.900 So you stole from the Trump organization, question mark.
00:27:28.120 Cohen, yes, sir.
00:27:29.940 It's almost like he's proud of it.
00:27:31.560 He's like, yeah, I was stealing from the guy.
00:27:33.480 And by the way, this is the one he admits to.
00:27:35.380 We have no idea what else he may have done that we don't know about.
00:27:37.700 Yeah, but look, the DA has an objective here, and it's not actually to prosecute crimes.
00:27:42.060 It's not actually to enforce the law.
00:27:43.780 It's to get Donald Trump. 0.97
00:27:45.360 So the DA is quite happy with he stole from Donald Trump because their objective, the radical left, has decided Donald Trump is the devil.
00:27:52.900 And they will do anything, anything, anything possible to get him.
00:27:55.560 And by the way, the media is in terror.
00:27:59.760 We, at a prior pod, covered Anderson Cooper freaking out how badly the trial is going.
00:28:04.780 Take a listen to what Jake Tapper and Laura Coates said about this Michael Cohen testimony.
00:28:09.240 Yeah, no, it's fascinating stuff.
00:28:12.560 And I have to say, I'm still kind of reeling from the revelation that Michael Cohen stole money from the Trump organization.
00:28:20.920 And that wasn't, at least to my knowledge, that the prosecution didn't get that out earlier because it's not as though the prosecution is going to be helped by further evidence that Michael Cohen is a shady character.
00:28:35.460 I mean, let's, I'll get to the newest stuff in a second, but like, I mean, what's just, what's your reaction to that news?
00:28:42.520 Because that was just kind of stunning.
00:28:44.060 I'm shocked that we are hearing it for the first time on day three of cross-examination of Michael Cohen, that the prosecution did not take the sting out, did not front it, because it goes to the heart of the actual case.
00:28:54.220 It's not just about establishing him as a liar.
00:28:56.940 They've done that.
00:28:57.620 The prosecution fronted that.
00:28:58.940 We knew that he has convictions.
00:29:00.480 But going to the heart of what you were telling your employer about what money you were owed and the extent of it, we're talking about $420,000.
00:29:09.460 We've already seen the payment structure here.
00:29:10.340 Right, this isn't like $15.
00:29:11.720 It's not $15.
00:29:12.620 And we, I mean, if you, if you go to the tablet, you can break down what was already known.
00:29:16.500 We've known about what the breakdown of the money is.
00:29:19.280 $130,000 to Daniels and her attorney.
00:29:22.740 You've got $50,000 to this Redfin.
00:29:24.680 This is important here.
00:29:25.500 This was mentioned today, that he only gave Redfinch $20,000 and handed them in a brown paper bag, by the way, just thinking about how odd that is.
00:29:35.160 And just one quick note.
00:29:36.440 Redfinch is this political organization that apparently, according to Michael Cohen, helped them goose these bogus internet polls about which candidate is in the lead, etc., etc.
00:29:47.700 And also, according to Lanny Davis, provided adoring fans for Trump's announcement of his candidacy in June 2015.
00:29:57.840 Sorry.
00:29:58.020 Really important point to add why this is.
00:30:00.020 They only got $20,000 of it.
00:30:01.780 And even though the bill was for $50,000.
00:30:04.280 And you have $180,000, which is, again, the double of these two combinations.
00:30:07.980 And then a bonus for Cohen.
00:30:09.420 Remember, all that we have so far to link Donald Trump to these payments, in part, is the statement that, quote, unquote, he approved it.
00:30:17.540 We also know that we have information about where the checks were, how it was signed.
00:30:23.000 But remember, Makani, that was one of the comptrollers of the Trump organization, taking notes from Allen Weisselberg about the money payment.
00:30:30.500 So this is part of what we're talking about.
00:30:32.740 Why this is so important here is because the heart of the matter is that Donald Trump was complicit, caused to have this happen, and knew about the money that was going.
00:30:43.420 And why?
00:30:43.880 If they can establish Michael Cohen as somebody who is not to be trusted about the amount of money as well, then they might be able to suggest that Donald Trump had no idea what he was truly paying.
00:30:53.320 By the way, I think it's pretty clear Donald Trump had no idea what he was paying.
00:30:56.740 Otherwise, why would you be giving this money to a guy that is all of a sudden a bunch of the money is disappearing?
00:31:02.000 Like, it completely blows the case out of the water. 0.99
00:31:05.340 The prosecution's argument is Michael Cohen is a liar, but he's a thief, too. 0.95
00:31:11.840 Like, that's kind of a problem. 0.98
00:31:13.960 But you know what?
00:31:15.520 The corporate media is so corrupt, they're trying to defend him.
00:31:18.780 Listen to Lawrence O'Donnell from MSNBC trying to explain that the fact that Cohen was stealing from Trump, it's really not a problem.
00:31:28.220 It's okay.
00:31:28.680 Inside the courtroom, even though almost every day, you have the strength of beyond mortal men, but what was worth it to you today?
00:31:41.200 What did you see?
00:31:41.900 What did you hear?
00:31:42.580 Well, you know, the courtroom is where I began as a writer and a reporter a long time ago.
00:31:49.740 So this is a homecoming for me in terms of a workplace.
00:31:54.100 The shocking thing at the end of that cross-examination, and I just can't tell you how, just how stunning it was, because it's the thing that I was waiting for.
00:32:03.100 I saw everything Todd Blanche, I've seen every minute of cross-examination, I've seen every single question he's asked, and he sat down and ended his cross-examination without asking a single question about the $130,000 that appears on the Allen Weisselberg notes about how they were structuring the payment to Michael Cohen.
00:32:29.380 He asked about the $50,000 that's irrelevant to the $130,000, and that's where he very effectively got Michael Cohen to say, to agree, that yes, he stole $30,000.
00:32:42.980 Later, when Cohen was asked about that on redirect by the prosecution, it didn't really sound like stealing $30,000.
00:32:50.900 It sounded a lot like Michael Cohen doing the little that he could within that calculation to rebalance the bonus he thought he deserved, and it still came out as less than the bonus he thought he deserved and the bonus he'd gotten a year before.
00:33:06.640 I mean, I love how he's like justifying the stealing because he thought he deserved the bonus.
00:33:13.060 You know, trying to rebalance the bonus.
00:33:14.760 You know, if you steal from your employer, you're just trying to rebalance what they're paying you because you know you're worth more, so steal away.
00:33:23.920 That is MSNBC's defense.
00:33:26.140 Yeah, and it's not a big deal to pay people in brown paper bags for work, right?
00:33:32.120 That's also very normal, apparently, in the minds of MSNBC as well.
00:33:36.120 So we'll completely overlook that as well.
00:33:38.760 Final question on this.
00:33:41.180 Donald Trump, you're right, not going to take the stand.
00:33:44.500 That, I think, is obviously a smart decision, as you described it.
00:33:47.560 I think it was in the last podcast, the one before that.
00:33:50.180 He's not going to.
00:33:51.400 Yeah, which is what we predicted on this podcast before that decision was made.
00:33:56.680 I said on this podcast, the chances that Donald Trump will go on the stand are 0.00%.
00:34:02.220 Well, that was proven right.
00:34:04.140 He's not going on the stand because his lawyers are not incompetent in committing malpractice.
00:34:09.820 So when you're looking at this now, what do you think is going to happen?
00:34:14.140 What's your gut?
00:34:16.060 I don't know.
00:34:17.020 I remain worried.
00:34:18.120 Listen, on the merits, this case is frivolous.
00:34:20.360 And I will point out also that the judge, one of the things he did is he blocked the Trump campaign from putting on the witness stand the former chairman of the FEC, Brad Smith.
00:34:31.220 Brad Smith is a law professor, is one of the most well-respected campaign finance experts in the country.
00:34:37.720 Campaign finance law is famously complicated.
00:34:40.800 And Brad Smith was prepared to testify that paying hush money does not constitute a campaign expense.
00:34:51.280 If that's correct, the entire case goes out the window.
00:34:54.720 And it's interesting.
00:34:55.620 So after the judge blocked him from testifying, Smith did an interview, did an interview with the Washington Examiner, where he described what he would have testified to.
00:35:09.520 And Smith said, here's what Smith said, quote, judges instruct the juries on the law, and they don't want a battle of competing experts saying here's what the law is.
00:35:20.220 They feel it's their province to make that determination.
00:35:23.260 The problem, of course, is that campaign finance law is extremely complex, and just reading the statute to people isn't really going to help them very much.
00:35:32.580 The goal of his testimony, Smith said, was, quote, to lay out the ways the laws has been interpreted in ways that might not be obvious.
00:35:40.560 As an example, Smith cited the phrase, quote, for the purpose of influencing an election, which has been heard during much analysis of the trial.
00:35:48.800 Quote, you read the law, and it says that anything intended for the purpose of influencing an election is a contribution or an expenditure, Smith explained.
00:35:58.940 But that's not, in fact, the entirety of the law.
00:36:02.920 There is the obscure and separate from the definitional part idea of personal use, which is a separate part of the law that says you can't divert campaign funds to personal use.
00:36:12.380 That has a number of specific prohibitions, like you can't buy a country club membership, you can't normally pay yourself a salary or living expenses, you can't go on vacation, all those kinds of things.
00:36:23.460 And then it includes a broader general prohibition that says you can't divert campaign funds to any obligation that would exist even if you were not running for office.
00:36:33.620 What's the point of that?
00:36:36.120 Quote, we would have liked to flag that exception for the jury and to talk a little bit about what it means.
00:36:42.240 And also, we would have talked about, quote, for the purpose of influencing an election is not a subjective test, like what was my intention.
00:36:51.260 It's an objective test.
00:36:52.740 So, hiring campaign staff is for the purpose of influencing an election.
00:36:57.960 Renting space for your campaign office, buying ads, maybe doing polling, printing up bumper stickers, travel to campaign rallies, renting venues for campaign rallies.
00:37:06.100 All those things exist only because you're running for office.
00:37:09.800 But under the personal use rules, a lot of things candidates do running for office are not considered campaign expenditures.
00:37:16.660 Things like paying for a weight loss program or a gym membership, nicer clothes, teeth whitening, or all that sort of thing.
00:37:24.780 It may be true that you do those things in part to help get yourself elected, and you might not do them otherwise.
00:37:31.720 But they are not obligations that exist simply because you're running for office.
00:37:37.540 Lots of people do those things.
00:37:39.940 And what he argued is that, in this instance, I can tell you, it is my personal belief, is that clearly paying hush money or paying for a nondisclosure agreement does not constitute a campaign expense.
00:37:58.320 That's what the former FEC chairman would have testified to.
00:38:01.180 Quote, to use an example I've often used, it's not a campaign expense if a business person is running for office and his businesses are getting sued.
00:38:09.940 And he goes to his company's lawyers and say, I wish to settle these lawsuits against us.
00:38:14.300 We've got some wage employment lawsuits and a woman is alleging sexual harassment.
00:38:18.460 We've got 36,000 employees.
00:38:20.440 We've got to make these three complaints and the press will make a big deal about them.
00:38:24.660 So I want you to settle these.
00:38:26.480 And the company lawyers say, no, these are great cases we should win.
00:38:29.700 We shouldn't settle them.
00:38:31.040 He says, I don't care.
00:38:32.140 I'm running for office.
00:38:33.000 I don't want press stories on it.
00:38:34.240 I want you to settle them quietly.
00:38:35.900 Well, he cannot use campaign funds to pay that settlement, even though he's clearly doing it for the purpose of influencing his campaign.
00:38:44.900 It's kind of similar to what went on here, Smith continued.
00:38:49.160 Quote, so my personal belief is that this clearly would not have been a campaign expenditure, never had to be reported, and therefore was not misreported.
00:38:59.900 And you know what the judge said?
00:39:01.880 The jury can't hear a word of that because it demonstrates, he didn't say this part, but because it demonstrates that the prosecutor's case is utter and complete garbage. 0.97
00:39:12.840 Unbelievable bias in this case, and it's another example of that.
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00:41:14.760 Lastly, on this issue, Senator, the war on truth is really, I think, incredible.
00:41:21.080 You can see it, and you mentioned this earlier in the media's coverage of the Trump case.
00:41:25.180 You had MSNBC.
00:41:26.620 You and I were texting back and forth on this, because it was a headline that was so laughable.
00:41:31.440 And the headline was, How Michael Cohen's Past Lies Make Him a More Credible Witness.
00:41:39.140 And they weren't the only ones to try to pull this, you know, Jedi mind trick on people.
00:41:43.980 The New York Times had a headline.
00:41:45.960 It says, When Michael Cohen's Lies Helped the Case Against Trump.
00:41:50.360 What world are we living in where this is what the media comes up with afterwards is spin it?
00:41:55.020 Well, listen, number one, the media, unfortunately, regularly lies.
00:41:59.720 They engage in lies.
00:42:00.680 They view their role as propagandists.
00:42:02.780 It's not, they're not interested in the truth.
00:42:04.960 They're not interested in reporting both sides.
00:42:06.620 They're not interested in facts.
00:42:08.320 They frame their mission as saving democracy, which means pushing this country to the left.
00:42:14.220 And as it concerns Donald Trump, it means doing everything you can to destroy Trump and make
00:42:18.640 sure no matter what, that he's not reelected president of the United States.
00:42:22.440 The spins are rather pitiful.
00:42:24.080 The idea that, well, you know what?
00:42:27.060 Cohen lies so much that he's really a believable witness.
00:42:30.260 Like, that's just weird.
00:42:33.580 And I got to say, the media's lies about Cohen's lies making him more credible are so absurd, 0.98
00:42:40.160 it just shows they're really bad liars.
00:42:42.540 Yeah, and they're going to continue to do this to push this case.
00:42:45.600 Like you said, there's still reason to be very concerned.
00:42:47.880 We're going to keep covering it.
00:42:49.140 That we promise you.
00:42:50.420 Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
00:42:52.940 We have a week in review of things you may have missed during the week.
00:42:56.700 On Saturdays as well, hit that subscribe or auto-download button.
00:43:00.700 And on those in-between days, make sure you grab my podcast.
00:43:04.520 I'll keep you up to date.
00:43:06.520 The Ben Ferguson podcast, it is free.
00:43:08.860 You can download it wherever you're listening to this show right now.
00:43:11.940 And the Senator and I will see you back here for the week in review on Saturday.
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