TRUMP FOUND GUILTY!

That is Donald J. Trump, defendant in New York versus Donald Trump, found guilty on all 34 felony counts. That is the verdict here.

Dan, how.

Everyone, everyone is.

Okay, we are gonna hear from our old pal Norm Eisen, CNN legal commentator, our former White House colleague. We're gonna hear from Norman a bit. He was in the courtroom. We're gonna hear later from strict scrutinies. Melissa Murray brought her back after she's doing double-duty.

Pod Save America this week, and she's gonna get into the verdict with us. and what happens next. But first, let's hear from the convicted felon himself. This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.

We'll fight till the end, and we'll win, because our country's gone to hell. We don't have the same.

No, it doesn't mean anything. It's only one day. Then he says, we have a note. This courtroom, 1530 of Manhattan Criminal Court, Part 59, is full of the most battled,

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

Even in that room, when he said we have a note from the jury, there's a verdict. Those cynical, you know, they gasped. He said, I will not have any outbursts, no loud outbursts. when the verdict is read. I immediately wrote, here I can, I can read it to you.

I immediately wrote. a jury of 12 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. 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.

And, and so there was that feeling, of course, you never know for 100%. So. and then, you know, then the, the jury came in, they filed in about a half an hour later, they did not look at Trump, they, their head was down. That's a sign. I'm a defense lawyer, most of my life, I never wanted to be a prosecutor.

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

He's now an adjudicated criminal. And he's a democracy criminal. That's what matters so much. 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.

I happen just by happenstance. There is 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. And a couple times in this trial, I think I talked about it with y'all.

once. He's met my eye. He went, glared, 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. He was, I think, angry. He recognizes that this will be very damaging.

And that he may go to jail. He, I think there's a serious prospect that he's going to get a jail sentence. And if he's not reelected, that he served that job.

. I wanted to know, do defendants ever get jail time for this, for this crime? And in the most serious cases, and this is the most serious FBR case in the history of the state of New York in the most serious cases, defendants do get jail time. 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.

New York has indeterminate sentences. So you get a range. The judge also has the power to sentence him to less than a year, I think he probably will get a sentence of less than a year. But that's not good news in in Manhattan, because those sentences are served in jail, not state prison. And the jail for the city of Manhattan, of course, is Rikers.

So that's not great news for the former president. Wow, Trump to Rikers. question mark pod title. If he loses, if he loses the election, if he wins the election, he's gonna put up a bunch of constitutional defenses. At the end of his appeals, I don't think the judge released him on his own recognizance.

I don't think he's gonna have to serve jail time before he's done with his appeals. 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, and we've seen 2018, 2020, 2022.. When that's the question that is put to them. They don't like Donald Trump's way of doing business.

So you know, it's not a great day for Donald Trump.

I offered to help with this stuff. And I actually had a brief tenure after he won, advising Chris Christie's team before Christie was booted out of the transition. So he had his chance.

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. Don't take money or other goodies from foreign governments, amalgamates.

When he did that, it was all downhill from there and landed him. landed him in these 34 felony convictions that he received just a few minutes ago.

emoluments talk about Trump's criminality the first week of the pod. That's right. That's right. I thank you and all of the pod. save America family.

Thank Dan. Thank bass.

All right, Dan. Now that we've got all the the legal stuff out of the way, now we get to talk politics. So, you know, the reaction from Trump and Republicans so far, I would say, has not been necessarily surprising. In addition to what we heard from Trump earlier, you know, the Speaker of the House is already out with a statement saying this is shameful and political. The Trump people have already been fundraising off this.

The minute the verdict was announced, they sent out fundraising appeals about this. You get a bunch of, you know, Twitter conservatives and right wing MAGA people saying, oh, this is only gonna, this is only gonna elect Donald Trump now. That's that's the new thing. It's good. This is actually gonna help Donald Trump and hurt Joe Biden.

And then I noticed that Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, who is now running for Senate in Maryland, he simply posted a tweet saying, you know, everyone should respect the verdict. And Chris LaCivita, Trump's senior aide, said this is the end of your campaign.

Ballot box, just like what Biden said. And then it said, convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president. 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. 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?

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

This is, it's a giant event, right? And we're going to get to the politics. 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.

now, he's now been convicted of cheating in the 2016 election. Uh, this way, he was unlawfully influencing the 2016 election, uh, by falsifying business records and furtherance of this hush money scheme. He, uh, is also been charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election. 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'd lost. So he's been convicted of trying to unlawfully influence the 2016 election.

He won, uh, 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. That's where we are, Dan.

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?

We've already seen that, um, 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 the R serious, just not as serious as stealing classified documents and over and participating in a scheme to violently overturn an election. So we're really grading on a criminal curve here, but there are a swath of voters who 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. And that doesn't mean they're all going to end up in Joe Biden's camp. It doesn't mean they're all going to decide today.

The next time Nate Cohn personally calls them as part of his poll, they're going to tell him that they're for Joe Biden. But it means that there is an opening with a set of voters and CNN, uh, last month, in a poll focused in on the 25%, there are 25% of Trump voters. who will, who said that they would reconsider their support if he were convicted of a crime, that 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 was. Biden legitimately won the election.

So the, 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. And so these are, 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 is not going to happen overnight, but this can really be a big deal and end up with a certain set of voters who's that is more than big enough to decide the election.

I got to say, if you called me, if I was taking the poll and you said, would a verdict impact your vote? 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. 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. And you know, they've made up their mind. So you're right.

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

Like, I am generally skeptical of the idea that are, we should do Democrats who do their messaging as a way to just trigger Trump into reacting. I find that to be overly trolly, I would think, and not particularly effective with swing voters. But in this case, yeah, if he, this will cause him to react and that, that is fine. 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.

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 them 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 at least, who consume the news at least, who talk about politics the least. And so this is going to be a process with that. The second thing, I think is a critically important is to remind people that this was, this is not the Biden administration or the deep state or anything like that. 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.

I wonder what he will say or what he should say in the days to come. It seems like the white house or the campaign intimated that, you know, he would, 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. 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 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. Again, DOJ, Biden's own justice department declined to prosecute this charge. They could have prosecuted the federal charge here. 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 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?

That he has to try to explain what it is Trump was guilty of. Right. 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 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.

And what he did is he broke the law so that they wouldn't have that choice. 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, and Stormy Daniels, lawyers and everything like that. And he, and then he, hid it from people because he thinks that the rules don't apply to him and he only cares about himself. 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. And then, if this came out to, 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. 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. That's how 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. 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.

I think that's just, that's a very, that's the, I think it's how Biden should talk about it. Right. And I think that's, that's the way to, the way to explain it.

they're going to try to delegitimize the verdict. And then what else do you think they're going to do here?

Um, I think, and the second thing is you, they were, they were, they were prepared for this, right? You had the, 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. And it's also why Chris Lassa Vita probably foolishly went after Larry Hogan for, um, speaking out, which is to use blunt force and fear to show every Republican, you stay in line or you pay a price. Now, this is probably, this is probably good politics for Larry Hogan, to be honest, but for everyone else, you see why you're going to, you're really going to say something supportive. We'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. To make it seem like this is, it's rigged. It's the Biden department of justice as a corrupt judge, other P, you know, we'll see this in the sentencing. There'll be other, you know, other people who've committed, who've done similar things, haven't gotten sentenced, haven't gotten charged. And it's just, it is a fire hose of disinformation and propaganda.

And that has been known in the past to provide just enough cover for Trump to avoid full account of political accountability for some of these things, because there are a bunch of voters who are, don't really love Donald Trump, aren't really happy with the way things are going. 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. 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.

It's like what you were saying about no one's above the law. Why should the law not apply to Donald Trump? 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. And by the way, he's got a whole bunch of other felony charges. 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. And the only reason that he's not sitting in a courtroom in DC right now is because the Supreme court majority that he created is delaying the case. So like, let's not pretend this was some political vendetta to just get Donald Trump, when Donald Trump has been treated more fairly than most people on trial and also has been using his connections and his influence to evade the law and a whole bunch of other cases.

I mean, I'm, it's ridiculous. Like we were all there on January 6th. We all saw the month leading up to it. What are we doing here? People?

It's ridiculous anyway. Okay. That made me feel better. Uh, when we come back, we will be talking to strict scrutinies, Melissa Murray, about the verdict and what comes next.

All right. With us to dig in a little more into the verdict. and what's next. Uh, we have our friend, Melissa Murray, co-host of strict scrutiny, Melissa. Welcome back.

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. And I just figured by Friday, this would be over. I wasn't expecting it to be today. Um, 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. Um, 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. But he seemed to have figured out the sweet spot and he got a conviction on all of those counts.

Um, 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. And the other lawyers, there are a couple of times where submissions were made to the court and she refused to sign them. Um, 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. But he seemed really attached to Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, Bove.

I'm not actually sure how you say it. Um, 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. And I do think this was a winnable case, but maybe not by him.

Right? 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. 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.

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. And here are the prosecution crafted. this narrative that didn't depend on Michael Cohen.

It depended on those documents, which don't lie, which are irrefutable. And Michael Cohen and all of the other witnesses were merely corroboration for the documents. And the defense never really put up a counter narrative that could go toe to toe with the narrative those documents created.

And he's going to be asked about his criminal history. He doesn't have one. So that'll go pretty quickly. 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.

And that pre sentencing report will go to judge Mershawn, who will use it as he thinks about what the appropriate sentence is. And so, you know, things that are considered are the defendant's past criminal history, if there is one. And whether or not the defendant is likely to be a recidivist and do this again, all things of that nature. And so that can take some time to compile the PSR, you know, couple of weeks. I think the July 11th sentencing date is probably a little ambitious.

Like this is likely to be appealed. And there may be questions about whether judge Mershawn is willing to impose a sentence while those appeals are pending. 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. 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?

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

This is not like having a fight with my husband where, like, I, have to be right. I'm happy to be wrong. But the reason why I think jail is less likely here is because we've already seen judge Marchand really come up close to the question of whether or not Trump should have some kind of incarcerative sanction for violating the gag order. And judge Marchand 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? He's still a former president. He may be the future president.

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. 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 fives. I mean, he's getting a very different experience.

To me, the most obvious appealable issue is the bootstrapping of the charges. The idea that these pulsification 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. And it's not really clear a, whether you can have the other crime be a federal crime. And that was one of the universe of crimes that the prosecution had identified. A federal campaign law that was violated.

They also identified state level tax laws as well as state level election laws. But that could be an appealable offense like the bootstrapping. I think there are all sorts of ways in which that might play out. 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.

And that is the court of appeals.

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.

Himself because these are state level charges. 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. But there are questions about whether or not a sitting president can serve a sanction for state level criminal convictions. I mean like. we've never had that sort of situation.

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. 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 is not related to what I've done in the conduct of my job. It's when I was governor, but it's just too much stuff for me to deal with while I'm presidenting. 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.

Like, there are certain constraints around the job of being president that are incompatible with serving a criminal sentence. Like, 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 rap sheet. So, you know, we are truly in the upside down. We should fly a flag.

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.

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All right, everyone have a fantastic weekend. Have a, have a few extra, Martha, Rita's.

That is just the, it's a, it's a small thing for today, but it's just a real funny footnote for me.

He's, I don't know. He's got to go on, keep it, I guess. Talk about the, uh, talk about this season of survivor when he's legally allowed, I guess. I don't know. Unbelievable.

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