TRUMP FOUND GUILTY!

Transcript

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Speaker 13 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show.

Speaker 14 We are looking at count one,

Speaker 14 guilty. Count two,

Speaker 14 guilty. Count 19, guilty.
Count 20, guilty. Count 33 and 34, guilty.
That is Donald J. Trump, defendant in New York versus Donald Trump, found guilty on all 34 felony counts.

Speaker 14 That is the verdict here in this case.

Speaker 13 Guilty, guilty, guilty. Donald Trump, the twice impeached former president and current Republican nominee, is now running as a convicted felon.

Speaker 13 Late Thursday afternoon, after about only eight hours of deliberation, a 12-person jury of his peers found him guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree as part of an effort to unlawfully influence the 2016 election.

Speaker 13 He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11th, just four four days before he is formally nominated at the Republican National Convention. Dan, how about that? What a day, my friend.
What a day.

Speaker 13 Good things can happen.

Speaker 13 Oh, I'm sorry. Were we supposed to be, this is a very serious and somber day for America, or are we just are we popping champagne? We're popping champagne.
Okay, good.

Speaker 13 I just wanted to make sure you're on. We're not going to pretend.

Speaker 13 Everyone. I know.
Everyone is pretending that we can't be happy. This is a dark day for America.
We've been living in fucking dark days for years now, right? Let's have a good one. All right.

Speaker 13 And this is not to say that we're like, oh, this means we're going to win the election. No, no, no.
That's kind of what it means.

Speaker 13 Yeah, we're going to talk about that later. But today, this day, this weekend, this is a happy time.

Speaker 13 We can go back to being anxious

Speaker 13 and scared afterwards. But right now, happy day.

Speaker 13 Okay, we are going to hear from our old pal, Norm Eisen, CNN legal commentator, our former White House colleague. We're going to hear from Norm in a bit.
He was in the courtroom.

Speaker 13 We're going to hear later from Strict Scrutiny's Melissa Murray.

Speaker 13 Brought her back after she's doing double duty Pod Save America this week, and she's going to get into the verdict with us and what happens next.

Speaker 13 But first, let's hear from the convicted felon himself.

Speaker 15 This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.

Speaker 15 It's a rigged trial, a disgrace. They wouldn't give us a venue change.
We were at 5% or 6%

Speaker 15 in this district, in this area.

Speaker 15 This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people.

Speaker 15 And they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here.

Speaker 15 You have a Soros-backed DA

Speaker 15 and the whole thing. We didn't do a thing wrong.
I'm a very innocent man.

Speaker 15 And it's okay. I'm fighting for our country.
I'm fighting for our Constitution. Our whole country is being rigged right now.

Speaker 15 This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent. And I think it's just a disgrace.
And we'll keep fighting.

Speaker 15 We'll fight till the end and we'll win because our country's gone to hell. We don't have the same country anymore.
We have a divided mess.

Speaker 15 We're a nation in decline, serious decline.

Speaker 15 Millions and millions of people pouring into our country right now from prisons and from mental institutions, terrorists, and they're taking over our country.

Speaker 15 We have a country that's in big trouble, but this was a rigged decision right from day one with a conflicted judge who should have never been allowed to try this case, never.

Speaker 15 And we will fight for our Constitution. This is long from over.
Thank you very much.

Speaker 15 Why should others vote for me to kill him? Are you going to drop out?

Speaker 13 Cry harder. Are you going to drop out? Great question.
I appreciate that person. I do too.

Speaker 13 Of course, the Biden administration,

Speaker 13 you know, the DOJ actually passed on this case. So everything he said about that was a lie.

Speaker 13 So to give us his perspective of what it was like inside the courtroom shortly before Donald Trump walked out and just spoke to the cameras just now, our former White House colleague and pal, Norm Eisen.

Speaker 13 Can you give us a little color from inside the courtroom today?

Speaker 13 What was it like

Speaker 13 the verdict came in?

Speaker 13 There was a little confusion at some point because it seemed like Judge Murshon was going to send the jury home at 4.15. Then suddenly we had a verdict.
What was going on there?

Speaker 16 He said,

Speaker 16 you know, it was a whiplash, right? Because we all thought he said, okay, we're sending the jury home 4.30. We're going to send them home.

Speaker 16 And people were already tweeting, oh, this means the jury is deadlocked. I'm like, I was already like going to fight a social media war.
No, it doesn't mean anything. It's only one day.

Speaker 16 Then he says, we have a note.

Speaker 16 This is a very, this courtroom, 1530 of Manhattan Criminal Court, Part 59, is full of the most

Speaker 16 battled, hardened

Speaker 16 journalists, right? I mean, you guys, Dan trained me how to deal with journalists on a wholesale basis.

Speaker 13 Run far away.

Speaker 13 Mission accomplished.

Speaker 16 When we had a really big problem, he would tell me to run at them.

Speaker 16 Even in that room, when he said, We have a note from the jury, there's a verdict. Those cynical, you know, they gasped.

Speaker 16 He said, I will not have any outbursts, no loud outbursts when the verdict is read. I immediately wrote,

Speaker 16 Here,

Speaker 16 I can read it to you. I immediately wrote, a jury of 12

Speaker 16 Americans today found Donald Trump guilty on 34 charges of election interference and cover-up. I've already filed my, I do a daily trial diary for CNN.
I already filed it.

Speaker 16 I knew that if it came back that fast, and that's part of the gasp, if it comes back that fast in a day and a half, that's a hanging jury, not a hung jury.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 so there was that feeling. Of course, you never know for 100%.

Speaker 16 So,

Speaker 16 and then,

Speaker 16 you know, then

Speaker 16 the jury came in. They filed in about a half an hour later.
They did not look at Trump.

Speaker 16 Their head was down. That's a sign.
I'm a defense lawyer most of my life. I never wanted to be a prosecutor.

Speaker 16 And when the jury comes in and not one looks at your client, you're doomed. And then the first count,

Speaker 16 guilty.

Speaker 16 What's the verdict on count one? Guilty. And those beautiful 33 guilties that followed that.
And he is guilty. He's guilty of subverting.
It was so strange.

Speaker 16 I wrote this in my CNN column, not to say alleged election interference, but for the first time I could write election interference, criminal conspiracy, and cover-up.

Speaker 16 He's now an adjudicated criminal.

Speaker 16 And he's a democracy criminal. That's what matters so much.

Speaker 16 And I hope people will recognize that when he says he's going to be a dictator on day one, it's just more criminality ahead.

Speaker 13 Norm, what was Trump's reaction as these the 34 guilty versions were read?

Speaker 13 Grim.

Speaker 16 It's not a good feeling, Dan.

Speaker 16 I happen, just by happenstance,

Speaker 16 there's a place where I sometimes sit that is the last seat on the left as you enter the courtroom right before the door. And that's where he looks.

Speaker 16 And a couple times in this trial, I think I talked about it with you all once. He's met my eye.
He glared,

Speaker 16 grimaced at me. So I made sure, like I was sitting forward in my seat, you know, I was attempting to meet him.
I was looking him in the eye. He was not looking anybody in the eye.
He was looking down.

Speaker 16 He was,

Speaker 16 I think,

Speaker 16 angry.

Speaker 16 He recognizes that this will be very damaging

Speaker 16 and

Speaker 16 that he may go to jail.

Speaker 16 I think there's a serious prospect that he's going to get a jail sentence. And if he's not re-elected, that he serves that jail sentence.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Like, say a little more about the possible jail sentence, because I know you've written in your book that you thought the jail was likely.

Speaker 13 Of course, you know, we know sort of the history of these kinds of cases, and it's a first offense. What makes you think that jail is really on the table here?

Speaker 16 The reason I think that

Speaker 16 jail sentence is on the table is that I looked at 10,000 of these FBR falsifying business records cases in New York since 2015.

Speaker 16 I wanted to know: do defendants ever get jail time for

Speaker 16 this crime? And in the most serious cases, and this is

Speaker 16 the most serious FBR case in the history of the state of New York, in the most serious cases, defendants do get jail time.

Speaker 16 I don't think the judge is going to send him up for the, you know, this is a one and a third to four years.

Speaker 16 New York has indeterminate sentences, so you get a range.

Speaker 16 The judge also has the power to sentence him to less than a year.

Speaker 16 I think he probably will get a sentence of less than a year, but that's not good news in Manhattan because those sentences are served in jail, not state prison.

Speaker 16 And the jail for the city of Manhattan, of course, is Rikers.

Speaker 16 So that's not great news for the former president.

Speaker 13 Wow. Trump to Rikers question mark.
Pod title.

Speaker 16 If he loses, If he loses the election, if he wins the election, he's going to put up a bunch of constitutional defenses at the end of his appeals.

Speaker 16 I don't think the judge released him on his own recognizance. I don't think he's going to have to serve jail time before he's done with his appeals.

Speaker 16 The appeals in this case can take a year, even 18 months. So, but if he, it makes the election a referendum of the American people on Donald Trump's criminality and accountability.

Speaker 16 And we've seen 2018, 2020, 2022, when that's the question that is put to them,

Speaker 16 they don't like Donald Trump's way of doing business. So, you know, it's not a great day for Donald Trump.

Speaker 13 Well, Norm, there was certainly one former occupant of the White House who should have taken your ethics training.

Speaker 16 I tried to give it to him. I tried to give it to him, Fevs.
I volunteered

Speaker 16 The wonderful Max Steyer of the Partnership for Public Service brings the specialists in for both presidential campaigns. And I helped both presidential campaigns with these.

Speaker 16 I offered to help with this stuff. And I actually had a brief tenure after he won advising

Speaker 16 Chris Christie's team before Christie was booted out of the transition. So he had his chance.

Speaker 16 That was the original sin when he chose to take office. And we talked about it at the time.
The Constitution says there's one, there's only one ethics rule in the Constitution.

Speaker 16 Don't take money or other goodies from foreign governments, emoluments.

Speaker 16 When he did that, it was all downhill from there and landed him.

Speaker 16 landed him in these 34 felony convictions that he received just a few minutes ago.

Speaker 13 Normizen, thanks as always for joining the pod. And, you know, hope you go take some time off.

Speaker 16 The pod is, I'm going to, I'm going to take my wife on vacation. The pod is not just news

Speaker 16 for us.

Speaker 16 Y'all sound the alarm and you talk about what we have to do. what we have to do.
We've been having this conversation since that emoluments talk about Trump's criminality the first week of the pod.

Speaker 13 That's right. That's right.

Speaker 16 I thank you and all of the Pod Save America family. Thanks, Dan.
Thanks, Babs.

Speaker 13 Thanks, Norman. Take care.

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Speaker 13 All right, Dan. Now that we've got all the

Speaker 13 legal stuff out of the way, now we get to talk politics.

Speaker 13 So, you know, the reaction from Trump and Republicans so far, I would say, has not been necessarily surprising.

Speaker 13 In addition to what we heard from Trump earlier, you know, the Speaker of the House is already out with the statement saying this is shameful and political.

Speaker 13 The Trump people have already been fundraising off this. The minute the verdict was announced, they sent out fundraising appeals about this.

Speaker 13 You get a bunch of, you know, Twitter conservatives and right-wing MAGA people saying, oh,

Speaker 13 this is only going to elect Donald Trump now.

Speaker 13 That's the new new thing. This is actually going to help Donald Trump and hurt Joe Biden.

Speaker 13 And then I noticed that Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, who is now running for Senate in Maryland,

Speaker 13 he simply posted a tweet saying, you know, everyone should respect the verdict. And Chris LaSavita, Trump's senior aide,

Speaker 13 said, this is the end of your campaign.

Speaker 13 So they seem to be taking this quite well, is what I'd say.

Speaker 13 And on the other side, Joe Biden tweeted, only one way to keep Trump out of the Oval Office at the ballot box.

Speaker 13 The Biden campaign released a statement saying in New York today, we saw that no one is above the law.

Speaker 13 Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain.

Speaker 13 But today's verdict doesn't change that there's only one way to stop Donald Trump, ballot box, just like what Biden said.

Speaker 13 And then it said, convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.

Speaker 13 And then the White House put out a statement that just said, we respect the rule of law and have no additional comment. Okay.
So that's all the reaction.

Speaker 13 What's your take on the verdict and the potential political impact now that we've had a couple hours, I guess, to really sort of soak in all the takes?

Speaker 13 I mean, the verdict, it is just always in these moments worth stepping back and realizing just how, what an unprecedented historical event this is.

Speaker 13 This is the a former president, like if Donald Trump was not running for office ever again, this would be a gigantic deal, right?

Speaker 13 First former president convicted of 34 counts of a crime crime related to his first election win, right?

Speaker 13 You have a jury of his peers declaring that he tried to cheat to win that election, committed crimes to do so.

Speaker 13 Huge deal. Then you add in the fact that he is the presumptive Republican nominee.
Then you add in the fact that polls show that he is a jump ball away from the White House.

Speaker 13 Then you add in the fact that we are three and a half weeks away from the first debate, potentially, in this campaign. And that's in that debate is scheduled before his sentencing.

Speaker 13 So he will not be on house, but not be able to use house arrest as an excuse to get out of that debate.

Speaker 13 Might have have to do the second debate with an ankle bracelet on. He might have to do it by Zoom.

Speaker 13 It's a giant event, right? And we're going to get to the politics.

Speaker 13 The politics are interesting and important and fascinating, but it's just with all things Trump is just always worth just trying to take a step back for a second and try to place it, the absurdity of it and the danger of it in the broader scope of history because it's a huge deal.

Speaker 13 It is a huge deal. And yeah, you're right.

Speaker 13 I mean, like, even setting aside the politics, it does raise the stakes of this election in another way, which is like if we, if this country goes ahead and elects a convicted felon to be president, then yeah, we are in some tough times.

Speaker 13 And we've been in some tough times in politics for the last seven, eight years now since Donald Trump walked onto the scene. And now this, I do think this raises the stakes in the election even higher

Speaker 13 because now we have a very vengeful and angry Donald Trump running to become president, who has now been convicted by a jury of his peers.

Speaker 13 I would say this is not the biggest thing, but Donald Trump being elected president after being convicted of 34 felony counts would be the end of scared straight as a strategy with kids in school.

Speaker 13 I mean, that's,

Speaker 13 yeah, like you can talk about the politics and the polls, and we're going to get into all that, but it's just like, the man who wants to be in charge of, like it says in the uh, in the faithfully executing the laws laws of this country, has broken, has been convicted by a jury of his peers of breaking the laws that he now wants to faithfully execute as president of the United States again.

Speaker 13 That's where we are right now. And again,

Speaker 13 he's now been convicted of cheating in the 2016 election.

Speaker 13 He was unlawfully influencing the 2016 election by falsifying business records in furtherance of this hush money scheme. He is also been charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Speaker 13 And we are waiting for the Supreme Court that he created, the Supreme Court majority that he created to decide whether he is immune from prosecution for that, for trying to overturn the 2020 election that he lost.

Speaker 13 So he's been convicted of trying to unlawfully influence the 2016 election he won.

Speaker 13 He's been charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election that he lost. And now he is running to be president again in the 2024 election and is currently leading in the swing states.

Speaker 13 That's where we are, Dan. That's where we are.
All of those polls were conducted before the conviction. Just for the conviction.
That is true. That is true.
Well, so then what do you think?

Speaker 13 Let's go right there.

Speaker 13 What do you think about the political impact of this? We've been talking about it since before we got a verdict. Now that the verdict is out, it's starting to sink in.
What do you think?

Speaker 13 I think the prevailing narrative that the conviction won't really matter is, I think, pretty disconnected from both what the polls actually say and the reality of an election that is likely to be this close.

Speaker 13 It is certainly true that upwards of three-quarters to 80% of voters are not going to change their mind.

Speaker 13 I mean, even in the Maris poll, there's a swath of voters who say Trump's conviction makes them more likely to vote for him.

Speaker 13 I'm going to guess those voters weren't previously prior to the conviction in the undecided pool. I'm going to guess that they were pretty hardcore Trump voters.

Speaker 13 And there are a lot of voters who don't think they care. We've already seen that

Speaker 13 voters, when asked about the various, Trump's various crimes, have rated this one to be less severe, although many, most of them think these charges raise serious questions about Trump and are serious, just not as serious as stealing classified documents and over and participating in a scheme to violently overturn an election.

Speaker 13 So we're really greeting on a criminal curve here. But there are a swath of voters who

Speaker 13 are deeply uncomfortable, and they keep telling pollsters in poll after poll after poll, deeply uncomfortable with sending a convicted felon to the White House.

Speaker 13 And that doesn't mean they're all going to end up in Joe Biden's camp.

Speaker 13 It doesn't mean they're all going to decide today the next time Nate Cohn personally calls in as part of his poll, they're going to tell him that they're for Joe Biden.

Speaker 13 But it means that there is an opening with a set of voters. And CNN

Speaker 13 last month in a poll focused in on the 25%, there were 25% of Trump voters

Speaker 13 who said that they would reconsider their support if he were convicted of a crime.

Speaker 13 That quarter of Trump's vote is younger than the average Trump voter. It's more diverse than the average Trump voter, more likely to believe the election,

Speaker 13 Biden legitimately won the election. So

Speaker 13 these are voters who, many of them, I would guess, are the same voters we're seeing in the swing states who are currently saying they're voting for Donald Trump and Ruben Gallego and Donald Trump and Bob Casey.

Speaker 13 And so these are very gettable voters for Joe Biden. And a conviction is an argument to make for those voters.
And so it's going to take time and energy and effort. It's not going to happen overnight.

Speaker 13 But this can really be a big deal with a certain set of voters that is more than big enough to decide the election.

Speaker 13 The certain set of voters that don't like criminals in the White House. Yeah.
Which is just a smaller swath than you like. It's a certain certain flavor.
It's a certain flavor of voters.

Speaker 13 No, I mean, you mentioned the,

Speaker 13 there was a new NPR PBS Marist poll. Maris poll is actually, it's a very high quality pollster.

Speaker 13 And they found that, you know, 75% of registered voters, something more than 75% of registered voters said that the verdict would not impact their vote choice at all.

Speaker 13 But I got to, and there's some other polls like that, and they're being cited all over the place.

Speaker 13 I got to say, if you called me, if I was taking the poll and you said, would a verdict impact your vote?

Speaker 13 I would say no, because I've already decided that I'm never going to vote for Donald Trump for anything ever, as long as I live.

Speaker 13 So of course there's going to be a huge percentage of people who say that it's not going to impact their vote because most people have decided already because most people know Donald Trump and know Joe Biden and have experienced both of them now for the last eight years.

Speaker 13 And, you know, they've made up their mind. So you're right.

Speaker 13 It's always always going to be about the voters who either haven't made up their minds yet or have made up their minds but are like open to changing their minds, right?

Speaker 13 Which we know is like, I don't know, anywhere up to 25% of the electorate, probably, if you believe a lot of these polls. But again, we don't know because it's early.

Speaker 13 Now, you said we obviously have a lot of work to do to make that argument. How do you think Democrats, Joe Biden, his campaign should handle this going forward?

Speaker 13 Because that's the big question because we know it's going to you know dominate news coverage for I hope the weekend at least we're recording this on Thursday but everyone like you know the news moves on fast these days no one remembers anything like how how do Democrats and Biden keep this in the news and really brand Donald Trump as a convicted felon which he is you have to call him a convicted felon over and over and over again.

Speaker 13 It has to be it's basically should be at the end of every sentence that involves Donald Trump. Donald Trump, a convicted felon, wants to cut your social security and ban abortion nationwide.

Speaker 13 You have to say it. And there are two reasons to say it.
Like I am generally skeptical of the idea that

Speaker 13 we should do Democrats who do their messaging as a way to just trigger Trump into reacting. I find that to be

Speaker 13 overly trolly, I would think, and not particularly effective with swing voters. But in this case, yeah, if he re this will cause him to react, and that that is fine.

Speaker 13 But we just have voters have to know that he's a convicted felon. And polls are showing that more and more people are paying attention to this trial as it has gone on.

Speaker 13 I'm sure this is people will know about the verdict and hear about the verdict, but we're still going to have to keep talking to him about it because the voters we need the most, that swath of voters are willing to change their minds, are the ones we see over and over again in polls who engage with politics the least, who consume the news the least, who talk about politics the least.

Speaker 13 And so this is going to be a process with them.

Speaker 13 The second thing, and I think this is critically important, is to remind people that this was, this is not the Biden administration or the deep state or anything like that.

Speaker 13 This was a jury of Donald Trump's peers that was selected with input from Donald Trump's attorneys. They are the ones who rendered this verdict.
Yep.

Speaker 13 And I think that is critically important because trust in institutions is way down across ways, but people still believe in juries. And we have to remind people that this was a decision from a jury.

Speaker 13 Yes. No, I totally agree.
Now, There was a report last week that maybe Biden was going to speak about this when it happened. That has obviously not happened.
I guess he's currently at Rehoboth Beach.

Speaker 13 He probably saw this on television at Rehoboth with his family, like all the rest of us did, just watching it on TV. I wonder what he will say or what he should say in the days to come.

Speaker 13 It seems like the White House or the campaign intimated that

Speaker 13 he would speak in an informal setting about it, probably when asked. by a reporter.
I think the big question then is what happens in the debate.

Speaker 13 And like if you're in debate prep with Joe Biden over the next couple of weeks, how do you handle this? Because my instinct is that Joe Biden has to talk about this. Yes.

Speaker 13 And he has to be, he has to talk about it in the right way, basically just how you said it, right? It's a jury of his peers.

Speaker 13 Again, DOJ, Biden's own Justice Department, declined to prosecute this charge. They could have prosecuted the federal charge here.

Speaker 13 They did not, even though they did prosecute Michael Cohen and got a guilty plea from him. So it had literally nothing to do with the Biden administration.
This was a decision by Alvin Bragg.

Speaker 13 And of course, Trump's defense lawyers, like you said, had input into the jury and everything. So how do you think that Biden should talk about it and how much should Biden talk about it?

Speaker 13 I think he should talk about it in high leverage moments. It should be part of the debate for sure.
He should bring it up in the debate. He should talk about the debate.

Speaker 13 I think he should explain why it is. He should use the bully pulpit, right, that he has to try to explain what it is Trump was guilty of, right?

Speaker 13 And I think this is where election interference is really important the fact that he falsified these business records not simply just to hide personal misconduct or to hide an affair he did it to

Speaker 13 trick voters right to lie to the public right that he committed a you know he perpetuated a fraud on the public in order to gain power and that is a way to tell a broader story about how trump does everything

Speaker 13 Yeah, and I think, like, if someone asked me why this was a big deal who hadn't really been paying attention, I would say, yeah, well, he used, he used his money.

Speaker 13 He did what he always does, which is he used his money and influence to hide the truth from the American people.

Speaker 13 And I think one of the prosecutors made this point during the trial, but they said, you know, is it a big deal that Donald Trump had an affair with a porn star 10 years ago?

Speaker 13 I don't know, but that was for the voters to decide. And what he did is he broke the law so that they wouldn't have that choice.

Speaker 13 He took that choice away from them and he made it with, you know, he made these choices with David Pecker and Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels lawyers and everything like that.

Speaker 13 And then he hid it from people because he thinks that the rules don't apply to him and he only cares about himself.

Speaker 13 And so just like he tried to overturn the election that he lost, he cheated on the election that he won because he thought that the Access Hollywood tape was going to end the campaign.

Speaker 13 And then if this came out too, who knows? Maybe he could have lost the election. We don't know that.
But again, he took that choice away from the American people.

Speaker 13 He tried to hide the truth from the American people because he's rich, because he has influence, because he's well connected. And that is how he got, that is how he's governed as president.

Speaker 13 That's how he he would govern again. He doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself.
He will screw anyone over, even his supporters, even the people who are loyal to him.

Speaker 13 He does not care because he is only in it for himself. And right now, he is running for president again so that he can escape the legal consequences that were already rendered by a jury of his peers.

Speaker 13 The other important language here, and I've seen this polled, we've had many opportunities to look at polling over various Trump crimes over the last couple of years here, but is the point that no one in America, no one is above the law, not even a former president.

Speaker 13 Yeah. I think that's just, that's a very, that's that, I think that's how Biden should talk about it, right? That, and I think that's, that's the way to, the way to explain it.

Speaker 13 So what do you think the Trump campaign does to try to mitigate the potential damage here? We've already seen, like I said, they are fundraising. They are saying that, you know,

Speaker 13 we've raised more money in the last, you know, our sites crashed because so many people are donating. They're already doing that.

Speaker 13 They're, of course, trying to delegitimize the verdict in the minds of the American people, not just from the Trump campaign, but from like nearly every elected Republican, probably.

Speaker 13 So they're going to pull that. They're going to try to delegitimize the verdict.
And then what else do you think they're going to do here?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I think the primary thing is to maximize it for fundraising and organizing purposes. We saw the preview in this and that.

Speaker 13 uh much discussed new york times story about donald trump's outlaw image this the you know don't forget, these are the people who raised millions of dollars off of his mugshot by putting it on t-shirts.

Speaker 13 The only tweet Donald Trump has sent since January 6th, 2021 was the mugshot.

Speaker 13 I think, and

Speaker 13 the second thing is

Speaker 13 they were prepared for this, right?

Speaker 13 You had the statements from Governor Reynolds, Mike Johnson, just Republican politicians all across the spectrum had statements in the can to put out as soon as the verdict came in to show that the party was going to stick with Trump.

Speaker 13 And it's also why Chris La Cavita probably foolishly went after Larry Hogan for speaking out, which is to use blunt force and fear to show every Republican, you stay in line or you pay a price.

Speaker 13 Now, this is probably good politics for Larry Hogan, to be honest, but for everyone else, you see why

Speaker 13 you're either going to say something supportive or you're going to keep your trap shut. And then it is to turn on the fire hose of propaganda and disinformation to muddy the waters here, right?

Speaker 13 To make it seem like this is, it's rigged. It's the Biden Department of Justice.
It was a corrupt judge. Other people, you know, we'll see this in the sentencing.

Speaker 13 There'll be other, you know, other people who've committed, who've done similar things, haven't gotten sentenced, haven't gotten charged.

Speaker 13 And it's just, it is a fire hose of disinformation and propaganda.

Speaker 13 And that has been known in the past to provide just enough cover for Trump to avoid full account political accountability for some of these things.

Speaker 13 Because there are a bunch of voters who don't really love Donald Trump, aren't really happy with the way things are going.

Speaker 13 They're angry at Biden for whatever reason, for high prices, and they're looking for permission to stick with Trump. And he's trying to give them that permission.

Speaker 13 He doesn't have to do it for a lot of voters. It's just, you know, 50.1% of that swath of voters that we were just talking about to keep him in his camp to win this whole thing.

Speaker 13 Yeah. And I do think like the best retort from Democrats is like thousands of people have gone to jail for this very offense, right? This case,

Speaker 13 these felony charges are prosecuted in New York all the time in the first degree, much like it was for Donald Trump. So why does Donald Trump get off and not them? Why should the law not apply?

Speaker 13 It's like what you were saying about no one's above the law. Why should the law not apply to Donald Trump?

Speaker 13 Just because he's a rich guy running for president and all the other people who were found guilty of falsifying records, business records in the first degree, like they should go to jail, they should be punished, but Donald Trump shouldn't when he was convicted by a jury of his peers who had nothing to do with the Biden administration or the prosecutor or all that bullshit.

Speaker 13 And by the way, he's got a whole bunch of other felony charges.

Speaker 13 And the only reason he's not sitting in a courtroom in Florida right now is because the judge that he appointed is slow walking the case.

Speaker 13 And the only reason that he's not sitting in a courtroom in D.C. right now is because the Supreme Court majority that he created is delaying the case.

Speaker 13 So like, let's not pretend this was some political vendetta to just get Donald Trump when Donald Trump has been treated.

Speaker 13 more fairly than most people on trial and also has been using his connections and his influence to evade the law in a whole bunch of other cases. Right.

Speaker 13 And let's not pretend like this is an isolated incident on a otherwise unblemished record of civic participation and innocence, right?

Speaker 13 I mean, he's already in the last year, I mean, he's been convicted of a found guilty of a massive perpetuating a massive fraud on the state of New York. He has been involved in defamation.

Speaker 13 He's been as a declared someone guilty of sexual assault by a court.

Speaker 13 We all watched him try to steal the election. He tried to have his vice president hung.
What on national television? He was impeached twice.

Speaker 13 He was impeached twice. Everyone who's like, no one should be fucking sheepish about this.
I mean, it's ridiculous. Like, we were all there on January 6th.
We all saw the month leading up to it.

Speaker 13 What are we doing here, people? It's ridiculous. Anyway, okay, that made me feel better.

Speaker 13 When we come back, we will be talking to Strict Scrutiny's Melissa Murray about the verdict and what comes next.

Speaker 21 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 18 Oh, you're just gonna go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 21 I'm Dan Pashman from The Sporkful. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 21 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at bon appetite, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 13 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

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Speaker 13 All right. With us to dig in a little more into the verdict and what's next,

Speaker 13 we have our friend Melissa Murray, co-host of Strict Scrutiny. Melissa, welcome back.

Speaker 18 Thanks for having me. I feel like I've been here twice in two days.
I think that's exactly right. Like I've gone nowhere.

Speaker 13 I like just finished hearing you talk to Tommy about this. So first thoughts on the verdict.

Speaker 18 Well, in the words of the immortal Stormy Daniels, that was fast.

Speaker 18 Good stuff. Good stuff.

Speaker 18 So this morning, you know,

Speaker 18 I am going to LA tomorrow. And I was like, you know, it's going to suck because this verdict's going to come out on Friday.

Speaker 18 Because once they started asking, once the jury started asking for information about the meeting between Pecker and Cohen and whatnot and more information about sort of the conspiracy aspects of this, I was like, oh, they're really digging in and they're looking for

Speaker 18 the links that bring Trump into this. So they're already at the main stuff.

Speaker 18 And I always figure, like, if they were already asking for that kind of stuff and were reviewing that, they weren't going to go beyond this weekend.

Speaker 18 I mean, they've already lost one Memorial Day weekend, like having to be on this story. I mean, they didn't have to.
deliberate over Memorial Day, obviously, but they want their lives back.

Speaker 18 And I just figured by Friday, this would be over. I wasn't expecting it to be today.

Speaker 18 That was actually much more surprising. So the fact that they came in at around 4.30 and that it's unanimous on all of the counts, like, you know, amazing.

Speaker 18 And big props to the people of New York and to the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who in April 2023, lots of people, including former folks from the DA's office like Mark Pomerantz, were really questioning his judgment about bringing this case as opposed to something more sweeping.

Speaker 18 But he seemed to have figured out the sweet spot and he got a conviction on all of those counts.

Speaker 13 Do you think this was a winnable case that the defense lost and Trump lost because he probably made his defense lawyers do all kinds of things that they wouldn't have argued maybe if Trump wasn't their client?

Speaker 18 100%.

Speaker 18 Like this is a white guy with resources and three relatively good lawyers, one very excellent criminal defense lawyer who apparently got sidelined. We don't exactly know why.

Speaker 18 I speculate it's perhaps because she has a uterus.

Speaker 18 But Susan Necklace, who is one of the defense lawyers, is a very good lawyer. And it wasn't clear that she was always on the same team as her client.

Speaker 18 And the other lawyers, there are a couple of times where submissions were made to the court and she refused to sign them.

Speaker 18 And, you know, one might speculate she refused to do so because she would like to continue practicing in this jurisdiction with the reputation she now enjoys.

Speaker 18 But, you know, he seemed really attached to Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, Bovet. I'm not actually sure how you say it.

Speaker 18 But Todd Blanche is not really a defense lawyer. He's a former prosecutor.
He's a very experienced prosecutor, but he doesn't have a lot of experience doing criminal defense cases.

Speaker 18 And I do think this was a winnable case, but maybe not by him, right?

Speaker 18 So the defendant always has the easier time of it, especially a white defendant with lots of resources because the government has such a huge burden to bear.

Speaker 18 Like they have to prove the defendant's guilt on every count beyond a reasonable doubt. That's very, very hard.
And all the defense has to do is say like they didn't do that.

Speaker 18 They actually don't have to put on any defense at all. And indeed, they really didn't here.
But what they do have to do is offer a counter narrative to the prosecution.

Speaker 18 And here the prosecution crafted this narrative that didn't depend on Michael Cohen. It depended on those documents, which don't lie, which are irrefutable.

Speaker 18 And Michael Cohen and all of the other witnesses were merely corroboration for the documents.

Speaker 18 And the defense never really put up a counter narrative that could go toe-to-toe with the narrative those documents created.

Speaker 13 So sentencing is July 11th. What happens between now and then?

Speaker 13 Is the idea that the judge

Speaker 13 just on July 11th unveils what he believes the sentence to be, or are there arguments, emotions in between?

Speaker 18 So there's going to be stuff in between.

Speaker 18 And one of the big things that happens is, you know, Donald Trump's going to have to come back down to downtown Manhattan and go to another part of the courtroom building.

Speaker 18 And if he thought the courtroom was shitty, he's going to love this part.

Speaker 18 He's going to be taken to the probation department where he's going to be interviewed and he's going to be asked about his criminal history. He doesn't have one, so that'll go pretty quickly.

Speaker 18 It'll be asked about his health, all kinds of things. And all of that information will be compiled by a probation officer into what is known as a pre-sentencing report.

Speaker 18 And that pre-sentencing report will go to Judge Murchon, who will use it as he thinks about what the appropriate sentence is.

Speaker 18 And so, you know, things that are considered are the defendant's past criminal history, if there is one, whether or not the defendant is likely to be a recidivist and do this again,

Speaker 18 things of that nature. And so that can take some time to compile the PSR, you know, a couple of weeks.
I think the July 11th sentencing date is probably a little ambitious.

Speaker 18 Like this is likely to be appealed and there may be questions about whether Judge Murchan is willing to impose a sentence while those appeals are pending.

Speaker 18 He could decide to just sort of put everything on pause until the appeals are decided. It could be the case that he is more reluctant to sentence in view of the coming election cycle.

Speaker 18 I mean, if the sentence, and I think it's more likely that it's something like probation as opposed to incarceration, if he's on probation, it's going to be very hard for Donald Trump to fly around the country doing campaign events, right?

Speaker 18 I mean, just like it is a cramp in your style necessarily to be a convicted felon and be under a criminal sentence.

Speaker 18 So hard to say when that's actually going to happen, but there are a lot of interim steps between what we just saw in the courtroom and what will happen in the courtroom again when he's sentenced.

Speaker 13 I want to ask about the sentence because... I know on Wednesday's pod with Tommy, you were like a little more skeptical that he might actually serve jail time.

Speaker 13 I'm still skeptical.

Speaker 13 Still skeptical. Can you tell us about like why we just have to, you know, Norm Eisen and Norm thinks that jail is, he's not sure about jail, but he thinks jail is on the table.

Speaker 13 What makes you think that they just won't, that the judge will be reluctant to do this?

Speaker 18 So jail's obviously on the table. Lots of things are on the table.
Probation, house arrest. I think the reason for me that jail and incarceration seems unlikely.

Speaker 18 And again, like I'm totally happy to be wrong on this. This is not like having a fight with my husband where like I have to be right.
I'm happy to be wrong.

Speaker 18 But the reason why I think jail is less likely here is because we've already seen Judge Murchan

Speaker 18 really come up close to the question of whether or not Trump should have some kind of incarcerative sanction for violating the gag order.

Speaker 18 And Judge Murchand himself said, like, I'm really loath to put you in jail. You are a former president.
You may be a future president. I'm really loath to do that.
And none of that has changed, right?

Speaker 18 He's still a former president. He may be the future president.

Speaker 18 And I think given the nature of the offenses, the fact that he has no recorded criminal history, it's just, I think, a lot easier to sentence him to some kind of alternative sanction, whether it is house arrest or probation, as opposed to throwing him in Rikers.

Speaker 18 And to be clear, if he went to Rikers, he's not having the same Rikers experience as like, say, the Central Park Five, now the exonerated five. So, I mean, he's getting a very different experience.

Speaker 13 You mentioned the appeals process. Can you sort of take us through what that might look like and how long that might take and where it goes? And what are the courts that might end up hearing that?

Speaker 18 So, I believe the defense has, I think,

Speaker 18 I just looked this up. I want to say it's like 60 days to file an appeal,

Speaker 18 maybe longer. But they have some period of time in which they can present an appeal.
And the appeal could be to all kinds of things.

Speaker 18 So, you know, they could appeal various decisions that were made in the course of the trial on the view that any one of those decisions reflected a clear error that was prejudicial to the defendant over the course of the trial.

Speaker 18 You know, to me, the most obvious appealable issue is the bootstrapping of the charges. The idea that these

Speaker 18 falsification of business records charges were, in most cases, misdemeanor offenses, but when they are done in furtherance of or in the concealment of other crimes, they then become felonies.

Speaker 18 And it's not really clear, A, whether you can have the other crime be a federal crime.

Speaker 18 And that was one of the universe of crimes that the prosecution had identified, a federal campaign law that was violated.

Speaker 18 They also identified state-level tax laws as well as state-level election laws, but that could be an appealable offense, like the bootstrapping.

Speaker 18 I think there are all sorts of ways in which that might play out.

Speaker 18 I actually thought it was going to be a bigger issue at the trial and it turned out not to be, but I think it could be a very big issue on appeal.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 is there a possibility that, so it goes to an appeals court? Would it go to the like the state Supreme Court of New York possibly?

Speaker 18 Yeah, the New York court, which is interestingly called,

Speaker 18 Judge Murchan is actually on the New York Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in New York is the trial-level court.
The intermediate appellate court is known as the appellate division.

Speaker 18 That would be the next step. And then after that is the court of last resort in New York State, and that is the court of appeals.

Speaker 13 And there's no way this could go to the Supreme Court, right? Or could it?

Speaker 18 It could.

Speaker 18 I mean, like, you know, if he petitioned for sort of post-conviction federal habeas relief, that could then be swapped over to the federal courts and then use a district court, an intermediate appellate court, and then on to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 18 I mean, there are lots of different permutations that this could take. And yes, it could go to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 18 And of course, the Supreme Court is already fat on a diet of Trump-related cases, so it will be of no moment to them.

Speaker 13 But if Trump were to, Norm hinted at this, but if Trump were to win the election, then there would be a whole array of

Speaker 13 constitutional issues that would be at the same time. Can you just talk a little briefly about what those questions would be?

Speaker 18 So if he wins the election, and like

Speaker 18 I feel creepy and gross saying that. So, you know, full disclosure, I'm not trying to manifest something.

Speaker 18 If he does win,

Speaker 18 then we have the sort of unprecedented circumstance of

Speaker 18 a president-elect who has been convicted in a state of crimes.

Speaker 18 Now, there are certain things that won't be able to happen, so he's not going to be able to pardon himself because these are state-level charges.

Speaker 18 So, he's not going to be able to sort of wipe this conviction away, as he could if he won and he had been subject to a federal conviction.

Speaker 18 But there are questions about whether or not a sitting president can serve a sanction

Speaker 18 for state-level criminal convictions. I mean, like, we've never had that sort of situation.

Speaker 18 Like, maybe it's something that the Supreme Court has to get involved in eventually and determine, like, you know, maybe it's something that gets deferred until after his term of office.

Speaker 18 Like, you'll recall when Bill Clinton had the whole issue with Paula Jones in the civil case, one of the things he argued is, like, I can't go be a defendant in a civil lawsuit because I'm president of the United States, even though this lawsuit's not related to what I've done in the conduct of my job.

Speaker 18 It's when I was governor, but it's just too much stuff for me to deal with while I'm presidenting.

Speaker 18 I think there's a fair argument to be made that you can't be on house arrest when you are president of the United States, even if the House is the White House.

Speaker 18 Like there are certain constraints around the job of being president that are incompatible with serving a criminal sentence.

Speaker 18 And again, these are questions of first impression for constitutional law because weirdly, our originalist forefathers never imagined that someone that we might elect to the highest office in the land would be someone who had a wrap sheet.

Speaker 18 So, you know, we are truly in the upside down. We should fly a flag.

Speaker 13 I was just about to ask before you went, like, which flag do you think is flying outside the Alito home this evening? Is there a flag for this?

Speaker 18 Well, according to Justice Alito, Mrs. Alito has a flag for almost everything, for veterans, for holidays, for sports teams, the Phillies, all of it.

Speaker 18 So I'm sure she has in her arsenal a flag, a flag for when your preferred presidential candidate is credibly convicted by a jury of his peers on 34 counts. So I don't know what that would be.

Speaker 18 I'm not a flag aficionado, but

Speaker 18 I'm sure she has the right flag for the moment.

Speaker 18 And since it is her house that she jointly owns with him, I know that he won't be able to stop her from doing it because she has rights, which he, as her husband, honors and respects her choices.

Speaker 18 Right.

Speaker 13 Justice Alito would never tell a woman what to do. Never.

Speaker 18 Never. He's a feminist.
Dad. I mean, I think we saw that from the letter.
That letter was like, it was almost as though Jermaine Greer or Susan Sontag had written that letter. So feminist.

Speaker 13 A feminist, just like Donald Trump, as we learned in this trial.

Speaker 13 Melissa Murray, thank you as always for joining and spending time with us on Pod Save America all week long. Thanks for having me.
Have fun out here in Los Angeles.

Speaker 18 Oh, I will. I'm going to see the Sarah McLaughlin concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

Speaker 13 Amazing. Great spot.

Speaker 13 I'm ready.

Speaker 13 All right, before we go, two quick housekeeping notes.

Speaker 13 The first is, you know, we agree with Joe Biden that we still have to beat Donald Trump at the ballot box, which is why, even though we're very excited today, everyone's got to work very hard over the next five months to make sure that a convicted felon is not elected president of the United States.

Speaker 13 That's what Vote Save America is for. If you haven't signed up, go to votesaveamerica.com/slash 2024.
You can sign up. The folks at VSA will give you all kinds of work to do.
You can donate money.

Speaker 13 You can do volunteer shifts all over the country. You can join Team East or Team West.
It's a fun competition. Anyway, go to VSA and check it out.

Speaker 13 Also, just in time for June, the Crooked Store has launched our Pride or Else collection. It includes designs for everyone, whether you're leading the parade or showing up as an ally.

Speaker 13 The collection also includes fresh versions of our best-selling Leave Trans Kids Alone, you absolute freak smirch. That's evergreen, unfortunately.

Speaker 13 Most importantly, a portion of proceeds from every order go to Crooked's Pride or Else Fund in support of organizations working to provide gender-affirming care and life-saving resources to queer and transgender communities across America.

Speaker 13 Prep for Pride at crooked.com slash store.

Speaker 13 All right, everyone. Have a fantastic weekend.

Speaker 13 Have a few extra Martha Ritas. I was going to say,

Speaker 13 Martharitas.

Speaker 13 If there isn't a Martharita glass in the crooked store by the end of next week, I don't know what you guys are doing.

Speaker 13 Can you believe, Dan, that John Lovett is not here for this verdict for this day? Of all the years we have dealt with Donald Trump.

Speaker 13 He's just.

Speaker 13 That is just a fun.

Speaker 13 It's a small thing for today, but it's just a real funny footnote for me. I would say I think often about what happens when he first gets access to the internet when this is all over.
I know.

Speaker 13 Well, this is this is all we gotta talk about this because there's a couple different shows he's got to do here. He's got to explain himself to me and Max for offline.

Speaker 13 He's got to come on Pod Save America and we got to like quiz him about the news.

Speaker 13 He's, I don't know, he's got to go on Keep It, I guess, talk about the talk about this season of Survivor when he's legally allowed, I guess. I don't know.
Unbelievable.

Speaker 13 Actually, you know what? Seems kind of like justice. It is justice.
It is justice. Finally, two people who've evaded accountability their whole lives.

Speaker 13 Here's hoping that John Lovitt had better luck at the tribal council than Donald Trump did in Manhattan. Bye, everyone.

Speaker 13 If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.

Speaker 13 And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 13 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.
Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

Speaker 13 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Kira Wakeem is our senior producer.
Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 13 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 13 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelaviv, and Molly Lobel.

Speaker 13 There are a lot of issues on voters' minds right now. Six big ones could help decide the election.
Guns, reproductive rights, immigration, the economy, healthcare, and the war overseas.

Speaker 13 On the Consider This podcast from NPR, they unpack the debates on these issues and what's at stake. Listen to Consider This, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 21 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 18 Oh, you're just going to go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 21 I'm Dan Pashman from the Sporkful. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 21 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at bon appetite, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 13 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 21 Every episode of The Sporkful, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh. The Sporkful, get it wherever you get your podcasts.