Latest / NO FILTER / _Tagged as a convicted felon__ What Trump_s trial revealed about power and accountability(MP3_160K)

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_Tagged as a convicted felon__ What Trump_s trial revealed about power and accountability(MP3_160K) · NO FILTER

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This was a trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupted.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: It's a rigged trial, a disgrace.
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  Speaker 2: It wouldn't give.
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  Speaker 1: Us a venue change. We were at five or six
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: percent in this district, in this area.
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  Speaker 2: This was a.
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  Speaker 1: Rigged, disgraceful trial that the real verdict is going to
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: be November fifth.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: By the people.
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  Speaker 3: That was Donald Trump. Exactly one year ago today, just
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: moments after him, Manhattan jury convicted him of thirty four
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  Speaker 3: felony counts of falsifying business records. Despite at one point
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  Speaker 3: being indicted on ninety one felonies in Florida, Georgia, Washington,
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: d C. And New York. Trump only went to trial once,
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  Speaker 3: this time in his original home state. Judge Van Maschan
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: declined to sentence Trump before the election. He ultimately handed
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  Speaker 3: down a punishment of unconditional discharge in January, just days
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: for the start of Trump's second term, joining US now
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: criminal justice reporter for The New York Times Jonah Bromwich.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: He was inside the courtroom for Trump's criminal trial and
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: is now out with a new book that recounts it,
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: titled Dragon on Center Street, New York Versus Donald J. Trump,
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  Speaker 3: Johnna Congratulations on the book. Thank you for being here.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: We'll get to the politics of the trial in a moment,
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  Speaker 3: but let's just start with the dead day to day,
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  Speaker 3: the day to day of being in that courtroom, the
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  Speaker 3: court room that I as a Metro reporter used to cover.
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  Speaker 3: So many people have seen so much history, but none
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  Speaker 3: like this. This was a former and future president United
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  Speaker 3: States sitting on trial.
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  Speaker 2: It was just an unbelievable, extraordinary thing to go into
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  Speaker 2: this courtroom every day because Donald Trump, as we know,
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  Speaker 2: as we see every day now, is so used to
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  Speaker 2: being the center of at tension, in command of a room,
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  Speaker 2: and what we saw for seven weeks in Manhattan was
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  Speaker 2: really the opposite of that. He would go into this
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  Speaker 2: court room on one hundred Center Street and he would
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  Speaker 2: sit down in the defendant's chair, and the attention would
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  Speaker 2: not be on him. It would be on the prosecution
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  Speaker 2: making this complicated case not just about hush money paid
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  Speaker 2: to one person or two people, but three people. And
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  Speaker 2: they said that that corrupted the twenty sixteen election, the
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  Speaker 2: only election that at that point the time that the
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  Speaker 2: trial was running, that Donald Trump had ever won. So
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  Speaker 2: this was an extraordinary scene to see Donald Trump sit
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  Speaker 2: silently as his adversaries and allies came in and testify
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  Speaker 2: about that first election win, and it was kind of
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  Speaker 2: an amazing thing to behold and not something that many
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: people got to see unfortunately.
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  Speaker 3: I will say that feels like a lot longer ago
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  Speaker 3: than just one year. There's been so much history between
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  Speaker 3: now and then. It also is just striking. Of course,
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  Speaker 3: there was a thought that that case and the three
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  Speaker 3: others four would imperil him, would finish off his political chances.
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  Speaker 3: But we heard Trump there that sound we just played
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  Speaker 3: a second ago saying that it would be the voters
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  Speaker 3: that November who would render ultimately the verdict. And that's
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  Speaker 3: what happened. He won. So while you were in there
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  Speaker 3: day and day out, did you have that was there
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  Speaker 3: a sense of a weight, if you will, about the
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  Speaker 3: election on the horizon that that was colored what you
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  Speaker 3: were seeing each and every day.
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  Speaker 2: You know, for me, not so much, because I'm a
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  Speaker 2: legal reporter, I'm a courts reporter. I covered this trial
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  Speaker 2: as kind of an adversarial contest between the prosecution and
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  Speaker 2: the defense, and I was thinking a little less about
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  Speaker 2: the political consequences. But the people who were thinking I
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: think a lot about the political consequences were Trump and
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  Speaker 2: his team, including his defense team. And one of the
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  Speaker 2: bets that I think Donald Trump has made and certainly
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: made during the twenty twenty four election, was that the
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  Speaker 2: political was paramount, that if he were only to win
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: and put all his focus into winning the election, his
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  Speaker 2: legal problems would kind of fade away, would fall away,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: and that ended up happening. It was a gamble, but
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: it was a gamble that worked, and it informed their
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  Speaker 2: strategy at this trial, as well as their strategy as
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  Speaker 2: they fought the federal indictments against him.
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  Speaker 4: John, I congrats on the buck. Despite all of the
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  Speaker 4: legal trouble that Donald Trump faced in recent years, he
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  Speaker 4: really only was we only saw accountability in some way
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: in New York, his former home state. Can you talk
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  Speaker 4: to us a little bit about what that legacy means
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  Speaker 4: in the context of the district attorney who actually decided
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  Speaker 4: to bring that case. I mean, it's a very unusual situation.
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  Speaker 4: You have the first black Manhattan DA who really is
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  Speaker 4: camera shy, as you note, he's not someone who is
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  Speaker 4: known as an activist prosecutor, really doesn't even like the spotlight,
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  Speaker 4: and he ultimately is the one who ended up bringing
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  Speaker 4: this successful case against the former and now current president.
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  Speaker 4: Talk to us a little bit about how to think
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  Speaker 4: about that legacy.
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  Speaker 2: Sure, So what you have in this Manhattan case is
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  Speaker 2: this extraordinary collision of two separate but related movements. So
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  Speaker 2: Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District attorney who brought this case,
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  Speaker 2: came as part of this progressive prosecutor moment as people
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: worth rethinking the criminal justice system, saying it was unfair,
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  Speaker 2: it was racist, it needed to be re envisioned as
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  Speaker 2: something that could be more fair. And Alvin Bragg ran
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  Speaker 2: specifically on treating people who had committed petty crimes or
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  Speaker 2: were accused of petty crimes less harshly, and going after
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  Speaker 2: people who had committed very serious crimes. And so I
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  Speaker 2: think that his thinking about the criminal justice system led
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  Speaker 2: him to this case against Donald Trump, which is again
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  Speaker 2: a more complicated case than is often acknowledged. Is not
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  Speaker 2: just about a single hush money payment, but it is
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  Speaker 2: rather about the corruption of the twenty sixteen election, as
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  Speaker 2: Bragg and his prosecutors envisioned it. So this case really
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  Speaker 2: meant something there. But I think Trump is so dominant
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  Speaker 2: in our media atmosphere, on television, on social media, in
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  Speaker 2: a way that institutionalists like brag really haven't found themselves
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  Speaker 2: comfortable with. And so this collision didn't advantage Trump in
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  Speaker 2: the courtroom. He really struggled there, obviously he was convicted,
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: But it did advantage him outside of it. And that's
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  Speaker 2: where we saw his most major win, his political win,
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  Speaker 2: and the reason that this has really seemed not to
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  Speaker 2: matter in the way that I think his liberal critics
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  Speaker 2: had hoped it would.
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  Speaker 5: And Jonah, I as Peter Baker, thank you for doing this,
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  Speaker 5: congratulations of the book, very excited about it. Talk a
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: little bit about the notion of accountability. Right, the judge
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  Speaker 5: in the end gives him a sentence. Let's say that
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  Speaker 5: wouldn't be very consequential other than the fact that he
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: was convicted. Right, So if in fact, you don't pay
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  Speaker 5: a price, you don't have a penalty, you don't have
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  Speaker 5: a fine, you don't go to prison, you don't have
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  Speaker 5: a probationary status. If none of these things apply, then
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  Speaker 5: what does that say about the trial in the first place?
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  Speaker 5: I mean, why have a trial if you're going to
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  Speaker 5: convict but then not have a punishment at the end
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  Speaker 5: of the day. Or is the fact of the conviction
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  Speaker 5: enough of the punishment in a case like this.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I think this is a really important question.
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  Speaker 2: I see the trial as really a hinge between Trump
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  Speaker 2: one and Trump two in the sense that during Trump
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  Speaker 2: one there were so many investigations into Trump, and I
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: really think his critics had hoped that they would find
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  Speaker 2: a legal solution to a political problem. So first Mueller
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: and then the Manhattan DA's investigation sie Vance originally running it,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: and so then once Trump was out of office, those
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: critics got their wish in the sense that there was
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: a trial. And one of the things that I saw,
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  Speaker 2: certainly from a lot of the commentary, a lot of
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  Speaker 2: the discussion around this was people thought they didn't want
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: necessarily to see justice carried out per se, but what
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  Speaker 2: they wanted was a legal problem that would prove insurmountable
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  Speaker 2: for Donald Trump, such to erase him from the map.
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  Speaker 2: And I think it says a lot about where we
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  Speaker 2: are and where the rule of law is both that
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  Speaker 2: that didn't work, that he was kind of tagged as
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  Speaker 2: a convicted felon, but that didn't seem to matter to
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  Speaker 2: voters as much as people might have thought. And now
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  Speaker 2: what we're seeing from the rule of on his second term,
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  Speaker 2: and his complete comfort seemingly with attacking it straight on,
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  Speaker 2: with making really aggressive movements, with being an energetic executive,
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  Speaker 2: and daring the courts to keep up.
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  Speaker 4: Wow.
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  Speaker 5: The new book, Dragging on Center Street, New York Versus
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: Donald J.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: Trump, is on sale now author and New York Times
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: criminal justice reporter Jonah Bromwich