America's Talking - Donald Trump Indicted by New York Grand Jury

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

Former President Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in New York Thursday, potentially kicking off one of the most controversial court cases in decades and the first criminal charges against a former or sitting president. The specific charges and details of the indictment have not yet been released, but prosecutors presented evidence that Trump allegedly paid hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels through a lawyer seven years ago and illegally covered it up as a legal expense before being elected president. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is Casey Harper. The Center Square is Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. We are recording this on Friday, March 31st. Casey, it's been such a slow news week. I was worried we wouldn't have anything to talk about today. Yeah, I know. I mean, I've just been kind of trying to start something up. But, of course, have you been following the news, you know that's not true. And I think we're going to jump into that. Oh, that's right. There's this, the first indictment of a sitting or former U.S. President in American history. So that does seem to be a relevant topic. Casey, you wrote the story that broke late yesterday afternoon. The, of course, we're referring to the indictment of former President Donald Trump. Tell us what we know. Sure. I mean, so this has been speculated becoming, you know, Trump said he would be arrested last Tuesday, if you remember. So this isn't exactly out of nowhere, out of left field, surprise. But as you said, it is unprecedented. What we know is that, the New York grand jury indicted him. It's relating to kind of an alleged hush money payment to a former adult film star, Stormy Daniels, who Trump had some sort of relationship with. And the allegation

kind of is that Trump paid off Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet, but he used his legal firm and then classified it as a campaign expense, basically. And he did this ahead of being president. So, and they would say that that's illegal. To keep Stormy Daniels quiet about an alleged affair that she had with Trump. But Trump, of course, denies at any such affair to place. Right, right. And so Trump's attorney said he's going to be likely arraigned next week. He's going to go through the whole thing. Mugshot, fingerprint is very likely. Now, Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, has said, hey, this is totally political and I'm not going to support extradition, actually, which is really interesting because, of course, Trump lives in Mar-a-Lago in Florida. So, you know, that's a very, I did not

anticipate that wrinkle in this case where DeSantis could somehow insert himself into this indictment and become a martyr along with Trump. So that does add up an extra political layer. And I'm sure we'll talk about the political implications of this here in a moment. But as you can expect, Trump has called this a witch hunt. He's totally denounced it. You know, legal experts vary on this. But I think there might be enough to get Trump on this, but it is a pretty weak case.

It's going to be tough. So, you know, this is just the beginning, though, of this kind of thing. It'll probably be likely drawn out. A lot of people are attacking this prosecutor who's involved, Alvin Bragg, because yes, he is the Soros, George Soros backed prosecutor. which has become a very controversial label for prosecutors nowadays. And they become really controversial because they're not prosecuting lots of crimes. Crime is rising.

And so one of those prosecutors is the one going after Trump. So that adds another layer to the, hey, this is politically motivated. So, you know, more details are going to come out. As you kind of hinted at, we don't know a lot. All the details haven't been released. But we do know this is what we're going to be talking about for weeks and weeks to come. Yeah. So a lot to unpack in this story.

Let's start with the New York District Attorney who brought the cases. as you mentioned, he was backed by Soros. One of the criticisms of him has been that he declines to prosecute many crimes, including violent crimes. He's someone who has promoted what he calls equity in the criminal justice system, saying far too many minority people end up in jail. So he's tried to reverse that, leading to widespread criticism because of freeing at least alleged criminals, including those who allegedly committed violent crimes. But now he's indicting a former president on a charge of paying off a porn star. So how do those two sink is one of the court of schisms of him? Yeah, you're right.

And I think there may be some confusion of how is it that, you know, some people just don't seem to go to jail. Or how can we, you know, if it's still illegal to murder and to break into people's cars and to assault them, how can it be that, you know, fewer people are going to jail and fewer people are spending a long periods of time in jail? And it really does come down to the prosecutors because, of course, law enforcement's arresting and doing what they've always done, gathering evidence. And they handed over to these prosecutors, these district attorneys, depending on the kind of case it is. And they have huge, like very, very broad discretion in what to do with it. They can decide to cut deals with the attorney, which is what they usually do. They don't like taking these kind of cases to court, usually. It's long drawn out.

They always want to cut a deal. So that's why you always have these guys pleading guilty. They get a lot of their charges knocked down and they spend a shorter amount of time in prison. But what's become even happening even more recently is there's just whole categories of crimes that they're not prosecuting altogether or they're almost never prosecuting unless it's just egregious and there's a lot of political pressure. They're just kind of letting it go. This is only added to the political layer here because if you wanted him to be consistent, he would say, like, well, I just, you know, I'm kind of a laxon crime guy. But it's not, you know, it just doesn't make sense because you're not going to prosecute certain violent criminals and you go after Trump. Of course, it does make sense because this is New York.

we're talking about here. I mean, it's a very liberal state. The politics have always been very liberal. This is, you know, Hillary Clinton's state. So New York and California are the kind of epicenters of the Democratic Party. So it's not surprising that this is happening. Let's touch on the DeSantis Florida angle. You mentioned that DeSantis condemned the indictment last night and said he would not support any extradition efforts. Trump lives in Florida. Of course, Mar-a-Lago. I think the most likely scenario is that Trump will turn himself in and there will be no extradition. But what's interesting about this angle is DeSantis and Trump over the past several months have become political rivals. Trump has already announced that he's running for president in 2024.

We'll get into that a little bit more later. DeSantis has not announced, but there's widespread speculation that he intends to run. Both of them are Republican, so they'd be opponents in the GOP primary for president. Trump has heavily criticized DeSantis in recent months, including coming up with some nicknames. DeSantis last night was so upset over this. What he says is weaponizing the criminal justice system, so Democrats go after Republicans. So despite the criticism from Trump, DeSanis took a hard stand on Trump's side last night. Yeah, I mean, this is highly political. And interestingly, I mean, I thought really DeSantis had a great chance of challenging Trump, but his poll numbers have not looked great recently as

as Trump has attacked him more. DeSantis, you know, Trump has been the wrecking ball for so many Republican candidates. If you remember in the 2016 Republican primary, I mean, Rubio was seen as a rising star. He was going to, you know, take it all. And he was just destroyed by Trump in a debate. Christie survived a little better, but, you know, he didn't make it. Ted Cruz was the last Republican to be taken down. You had all these, you know, really strong Republican candidates who couldn't even win a primary.

Because once Trump turned his focus on them, he does, he did what he does best, which is, I'm kind of dismantle people in the public square. I think we're seeing that already begin with DeSantis. He's really right now considered the only threat to Trump. And he hasn't even announced yet and it's not looking too good. I want to point out. One detail is interesting on this Stormy Daniels stuff is actually Stormy Daniels sued Trump for defamation because Trump says he never even had an affair with her, let alone, you know, all this stuff going on. And now she owes him $300,000 in legal fees. And she said that she will go to jail before she pays a penny. So this is really, she definitely has a bone to pick with Trump and as she owes him over a quarter of a million illegal fees. This story has a lot of tentacles. And as you said, it's not going away anytime soon.

We very well could be writing at the center square and talking about this for certainly months, maybe even years to come. But we're running out of time here, Casey, briefly in the criminal case and the criminal indictment against the former president, just what are the next steps? What can we expect to happen in the coming weeks? Yeah, I mean, I think more details to come out. So you can expect it's going to be probably a combination of leaks and actually official statements from Trump's lawyers and others. You can expect Trump to be very loud about this. But I think you could really, I would say not much because maybe this is going to drag out. And I suspect Democrats want to drag it out.

So it goes well into election season. Right. And the indictment handing down, it was sealed. So we don't know. We know some general stuff about it that it's connected to the store at Stormy Daniels payments and alleged cover up. But some outlets are reporting that it's, it's up. to 30 charges, but we don't know what those specific charges are, correct? Correct.

Thank you for your very blunt answer, Casey. I mean, you're right. Yeah, yeah, you're right. All right. As usual, thank you for your insight into this very important story. Listeners can keep up with Casey Harper's coverage and more at thecentersquare.com or Casey Harper. I'm Dan McHaleb. Please subscribe.

And thank you for listening. Freedom and liberty are important to all of us. If you're looking for civil, intellectual conversations with those. shaping the future of freedom, try the Future of Freedom podcast with me, Scott Bertram. We speak with leaders across the country in the greater conservative and libertarian movements. In-depth conversations about where the next intellectual battles will happen across the country. It's the Future of Freedom podcast. Find it at America's Talking.com or wherever you get your podcasts.