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What happens next in the Trump indictment · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Friday, March 31st. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Former President Donald Trump has been indicted by a New York grand jury. He's been under investigation in connection with hush money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. This is the first time in American history that a former president is facing criminal charges.
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  Basu: Joining me to talk about what we know and what we don't know at this point is "Apple News" editor Gideon Resnick. Hey, Gideon.
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  Gideon Resnick: Hey, Shumita. How's it going?
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  Basu: Good. So there's a lot this morning that we still don't know because judges in New York typically keep indictments sealed until defendants appear in court. Hush money payments can be legal, but it can be illegal to cover them up by falsifying business records. And a hush money payment in an election might be an illegal violation of campaign finance law. But let's start with the question that's probably on a lot of people's minds, Gideon: What happens next?
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  Resnick: Yeah. So, in the immediate future, we know one of Trump's lawyers says that he is likely to surrender and appear for an arraignment on Tuesday. We don't expect Trump to be placed in handcuffs or publicly arrested or anything like that, though he will have to go through the process anyone charged with a crime would. He'll be fingerprinted, he'll have a mug shot taken. And during the arraignment, Trump will also have a chance to enter a plea, and a judge will decide whether he needs to pay bail. Now, assuming that Trump pleads not guilty and there's no plea deal arranged, he will then go on to face a trial.
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  Basu: Right. Which would then end up meaning finding a jury, which will have its own challenges. So what has Trump said so far reacting to this news?
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  Resnick: Yeah. Nothing too surprising. Trump's attorneys said, quote, "He did not commit any crime. We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in court." That has been their position throughout this entire process. Trump separately said that Democrats have, quote, "done the unthinkable: indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant election interference." So things we would have come to expect at this point.
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  Basu: So let's talk for a bit about the prosecutor in this case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He is a Democrat. What should we know about him?
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  Resnick: Yeah. So Bragg was elected in November 2021. He's overseen the indictment of Trump confidant Steve Bannon on charges including fraud and money laundering. That case is still ongoing. Bragg won a tax evasion conviction of Allen Weisselberg, who is the Trump Organization's chief financial officer. So he was sentenced to five months in jail. And Bragg also won a conviction of the Trump family businesses on tax fraud. The company has paid $1.6 million in fines.
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  Basu: Okay. So what is Bragg up against in this case?
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  Resnick: You know, it's a really interesting question. "The Wall Street Journal" says, despite Bragg's past successes going after Trump associates and the Trump Organization, this case is really "far from a sure bet." That is in part because a key character in all of this is Michael Cohen. As a lot of our listeners will remember, Cohen is Trump's former lawyer. He's the man who paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to not go public about an affair she says she had with Trump years earlier, which Trump denies. Cohen is almost certain to testify, but he has had his own legal troubles and has pleaded guilty to several crimes, including a campaign finance violation for that payment to Daniels. Now, Cohen says that Trump knew about how Cohen had structured the payments to Daniels. Trump's lawyers say he was just following Cohen's legal advice. But if a trial does happen, it could indeed turn on whether a jury thinks that Cohen is a credible witness.
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  Basu: And meanwhile, the backdrop to all of this, of course, is that Trump is still running for president. So how is this gonna impact 2024?
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  Resnick: You mean legally or politically?
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  Basu: I guess I mean both, but let's start with legally.
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  Resnick: Yeah, I mean, legally, we really don't have much precedent for this - I think that's fair to say - a major candidate running under indictment. Trump is also facing other investigations involving efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, the handling of classified documents that were found at his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago. But legal experts seem to think there is nothing that would keep him from continuing to run. There's kind of nothing in the Constitution on that. So you're gonna have this split screen here like kind of nothing we've seen in history, where a former president, twice impeached, is asking the American public to vote him in as president again while he fights these ongoing legal battles.
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  Basu: Right. Which I guess brings us to the political question here: How does Trump's base see all of this? And how are other Republicans reacting? Are they gonna stick by him?
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  Resnick: Yeah. I mean, I think we'll have to just sort of wait and see. But the early indications are that Republicans at least are offering supportive statements at the moment. And Trump has framed this as a Democratic attack against him for quite some time. He has often, to his political benefit, gotten supporters behind him when he gives the appearance of being undermined or being targeted. It actually gives the base something to kind of rally around. And he still has big leads in many Republican primary polls at this point. Going back to those Republican lawmakers in leadership at the moment, a lot of them, as I said, are kind of following Trump's lead in bashing the investigation, calling it politically motivated and meant to harm his reelection bid. Here's Mike Pence on "CNN."
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  Mike Pence: I think the unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage. And it appears to millions of Americans to be nothing more than a political prosecution that's driven by a prosecutor who literally ran for office on a pledge to indict the former president.
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  Resnick: And many other key Republicans are still publicly backing Trump, including other potential 2024 candidates. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has called the indictment, quote, "un-American." So I guess at this point, I wouldn't count on this indictment being some sort of fatal political blow based on how Trump supporters and the party, frankly, have reacted in the past.
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  Basu: Gideon, we'll keep watching. Thank you so much.
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  Resnick: Yeah. Of course. Thank you.
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  Before we let you go, some other big stories that we're following in the news right now. More than 65 million people are at risk of powerful thunderstorms today, more than a dozen states, from Texas to Alabama and as far north as Wisconsin and Michigan. Forecasters say the severe weather system is almost certain to have tornadoes. It's the latest hit for the South and Midwest, coming after tornadoes killed dozens in Mississippi earlier this month.
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  Gwyneth Paltrow is not liable in the civil trial involving a ski collision between her and a man named Terry Sanderson. A Utah jury also ruled in her favor in her counterclaim against Sanderson. Jurors deliberated for a little over two hours. Sanderson sued for millions in damages for injuries he claimed. Paltrow's suit was for $1 plus legal fees, which the jury awarded her.
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  Today, millions of Americans are at risk of losing their health coverage. A pandemic-era rule that kept states from dropping people from Medicaid is expiring. So tomorrow, states can remove people from the rolls. Many low-income families now need to do extensive paperwork to prove they're still eligible. "NPR" talked to Stephanie Jorgensen, a single mom of two, about just how hard that can be.
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  Stephanie Jorgensen: Gathering all of the verifications is the most stressful part. I have a master's, and it's still a fight every step of the way.
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  Health experts estimate that as many as 18 million people could lose Medicaid coverage in the coming months.
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  And in sports, the women's Final Four is tonight. In one game, South Carolina takes on Iowa, and in the other, LSU plays Virginia Tech. "Apple News" Sports Editor Shaker Samman is our resident guide to all things March Madness. He has his eyes on the South Carolina versus Iowa matchup. South Carolina are the defending champions, and Iowa has the player who's really been the runaway star of the tournament: Caitlin Clark.
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  Shaker Samman: It's really the closest college basketball equivalent I can think to, to LeBron's Cavs against the Warriors, with Kevin Durant and Steph Curry and all them. But I am so excited to see those two teams show down.
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  The men's Final Four games are Saturday. Many of the strongest teams have been knocked out. Of the four left, Shaker says UConn seems like the one to beat.
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  Samman: They came into the tournament seeded forth in their region, somehow, and since then, they've looked like the best team in the country. Connecticut has the number-three offense and the number-11 defense in the country, and they could steamroll teams.
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  You can find more on March Madness and all of the stories that we talked about today, including in-depth coverage of Trump, in the Apple News app.
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  And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around. We have our next episode of "Apple News In Conversation" queued up for you next. It's about why there's so much poverty in America and what you can do about it, with Matthew Desmond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the book "Evicted." That's playing next, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
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