Consider This from NPR - Trump, The Defendant

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

The legal and political worlds officially moved into uncharted waters when former President Donald Trump was arraigned on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. NPR's Carrie Johnson breaks down the case against Trump, and the difficult path to conviction for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.And Peter Skinner, an attorney who worked alongside Bragg for several years in the Southern District of New York, talks about what Bragg is like as a prosecutor.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. It was a crisp spring morning in New York City. Perfect weather if you were, say, outside, waiting for the former president of the United States to be arraigned in court. Good morning, Donald! Rise and shine! Time to face justice! Demonstrators in the city were as divided as the rest of the country over the indictment of Donald Trump. On Tuesday, the former president appeared in the Manhattan criminal courthouse to plead not guilty to 34 felony charges. Outside the courthouse, supporters, critics, and hordes of reporters gathered, as they had earlier outside Trump Tower.

You know what? My son faced the inside of a courtroom for jumping turnstiles. I think Trump can face the inside of a courtroom, too. Julie Delorier from Brooklyn was at Trump Tower, holding a poster with Trump in black and white stripes behind bars. She said the charges were a victory for the rule of law. He answers to the same law as I do, as she does, as you do, as you do, as everyone else. Not everyone saw it that way. If he wasn't running for president again to take our country back again, this would never be going on right now. Susan Serbo came into the city from Middletown, New Jersey. She was holding up a Trump 2016 banner and wearing an American flag cowboy hat. Today's my birthday.

Happy birthday. And I can't find a better way than to be out supporting Donald Trump. She dismissed the case as a misdemeanor turned into a felony, calling it ridiculous. In a press conference after the arraignment, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA, said this case was about serious criminal conduct. Under New York state law, it is a felony to falsify business records with intent to defraud and intent to conceal another crime. That is exactly what this case is about. 34 false statements made to cover up other crimes.

These are felony crimes in New York State, no matter who you are. Consider this. After days of speculation, the charges against Trump have been unsealed. We'll break down the case against the former president and take a closer look at the man overseeing the prosecution. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. As we mentioned, the indictment of former President Trump includes 34 felony charges against him. The charges stem from an investigation led by Manhattan

District Attorney Alvin Bragg into hush money paid by a former Trump lawyer to an adult film star just before the 2016 presidential election. Just after today's arraignment, my colleague Adrienne Florido spoke with NPR justice correspondent Kerry Johnson. Kerry, Trump was charged on 34 felony counts. What are the most serious charges here? That's right. The charges were just unsealed in the last few minutes. We're still going through them as well as the statement of facts. But we do know the 34 counts are related to falsification of business records in the first degree. Essentially, the grand jury says that from August 2015 to December 2017, the former president, Donald Trump Trump orchestrated a scheme with others to try to influence the 2016 election. That in a scheme known as catch and kill, they found and purchased negative information about Trump to try to bury it and boost his electoral prospects. And they

violated election laws and made and caused false entries to be made in business records of companies in New York. And then they later took steps to mischaracterize for tax purposes the true nature of payments made in that scheme. We have a statement from DA Alvin Bragg, a written statement. The DA says, Manhattan is home to some of the country's biggest business markets. We can't allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct. And we today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure everyone stands equal before the law. Kerry, what happens next? How does the legal process begin to play out from here? Well, during the arraignment this afternoon at the state courthouse

in New York, Judge Juan Merchan set the next court date for December 4th. This case could head to trial as early as January 2024, according to the prosecutors, though Trump's defense team is targeting spring 2024, which of course will be right in the heat of some of the primaries. So Donald Trump is not only a former president, he's actually running for the White House again in 2024, which to some extent will complicate this schedule and some of these legal proceedings potentially. We do expect as well that the district attorney's office will have to share some information with the former president's lawyers, a process called discovery. And then we may get some legal motions from the Trump team. The former president has already signaled on social media he might want to change the venue from Manhattan to someplace like

Staten Island, which may be more favorable to him, electorally speaking. Trump did not speak as he was leaving the courthouse after his arraignment, but I understand that his lawyer did. What did his lawyer have to say? Yes, one of his lawyers says the indictment itself is boilerplate. He called it disappointing and said they're going to fight it. He said Trump is upset and frustrated and disappointed. He also said this is a sad day for the country. But Trump's lawyers, even before today, had signaled they intend to fight via paperwork and rhetorically. And I expect a lot more of that to come in the hours and days ahead. What about the judge in this case, Carrie? the former president and the Trump organization before. He's no stranger to some of these complicated matters. He also said in court today that the district attorney is not asking for a

gag order, despite a lot of speculation in advance of this proceeding, a gag order on the former president. But he said that he's encouraging both sides to refrain from using language that is likely to incite violence or civil unrest and refrain from any action likely to cause that kind of behavior. We know, of course, the former president has been posting for days now about the district attorney Alvin Bragg, which has led to an uptick in threats against the DA. That's something to monitor moving forward. The former president has also been blasting the judge and one of the judge's children on social media, and we'll have to see if that continues despite this warning today as well. Kerry, former President Trump is also being investigated by the Justice Department for

his handling of classified documents and his role in the January 6th Capitol riot. He also faces potential charges in Fulton County, Georgia, over efforts he made there to overturn the state's 2020 election results. What does it mean that this case involving hush money payments to a porn star went first? And how does the action in this case potentially affect those other cases? You know, we're still going through the indictment here, Adrian, but what I can say is that some legal experts expected this case filed by the Manhattan DA to be potentially the weakest. And so we do know that the prosecutor in Fulton County, Georgia, has been very actively investigating attempts to pressure state officials there to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And Adrienne,

just before this proceeding in Manhattan today, federal appeals court here in Washington sided with the special counsel Jack Smith, saying that Jack Smith should be able to question some of Donald Trump's top White House aides, former aides in the White House, including Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, about January 6th and those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. So a big defeat today for the former president there. That was NPR's Kerry Johnson speaking with my colleague, Adrienne Florido. For weeks, President Trump and his supporters have attacked the prosecutor who brought this case against him, Alvin Bragg. He is an experienced prosecutor from Harlem, a Democrat, the first Black person to ever serve as Manhattan District Attorney. We wanted to know more about him and his style as

a prosecutor. And for that, we went to Peter Skinner. He worked with Bragg for several years in the Southern District of New York. My co-host, Mary Louise Kelly, caught up with him before Trump's arraignment began. So let's dive right in. I want to ask about a specific case that you prosecuted with Bragg. This was a money laundering case, and I gather it was complicated. This was back when you were both assistant U.S. attorneys in New York. Give me some detail on how he approached it. Well, so Alvin and I were trial partners in the Southern District of New York where we used to work together. You typically tried cases as teams.

You know, in those cases, you're working very closely with someone in a very kind of intense environment for weeks or months. So you, you know, you get to know them fairly well. Yeah. You want someone who's first and foremost capable and help you get the job done in the courtroom, but you also want someone who you're going to get along with. And Alvin checked those boxes. I'm told there's a good story from this trial, a moment where the judge had told the jury, look, go take a long lunch and then everybody's going to come back and we'll do the charge conference, meaning where you finalize the jury. What happened? That's right. And this was a judge who didn't allow cell phones in the courtroom. So we got back to the conference room. Kind of the first thing everybody always did was look at their phone.

My phone had a whole bunch of missed messages and voicemails from my wife that I started to listen to. She was telling me that the roof of our apartment had collapsed. Oh, my God. She was home with our two young kids, one of them an infant. And it was torrentially raining out, so rain had somehow collapsed the roof. And, you know, she needed me to come home right away, obviously. And I was kind of looking around in the trial room, you know, panicked because I was the one who was supposed to handle the charge in front of the judge that afternoon. I'd written the charge, and, you know and I was supposed to take the lead on it. And Alvin obviously knew the charge,

was familiar with it, but it just wasn't what he was prepared to do. But he didn't hesitate. He was immediately like, you have to go home. You have to be with your family, take care of this. I will cover the charge. It's not a problem. And he did.

He went in alone. He handled the charge. He did it well. And this was kind of no small thing. I mean, I think a lot of other people in that situation would have said, well, let's get you home as quick as we can after you handle the charge. But Alvin didn't hesitate. And I think that it's kind of a good story that describes how he approaches things.

He's decisive. He's queer-eyed in a difficult situation. Did y'all win this money laundering case? We did. We did. We won the trial. Congratulations. I wonder how we apply all this to this current moment. Because whatever the outcome, Alvin Bragg is making history.

As we keep noting, first criminal indictment of a former president of the United States. Is this a guy you would have pegged to put himself in the middle of something so big? Certainly not intentionally, but I am happy that he is one there making these decisions. You know, I think that the man that I know would be very careful and deliberate in making these decisions would do them for the right, you know, for the right reasons. You have since moved on, you've gone into private practice, so I know it's been a few years since you've worked with him, but have you tracked his career enough to gauge whether things he has gone on to do have prepared him for this moment? I mean, it's an unprecedented situation, so nobody has direct experience, but does he bring the correct background to this? Yeah, I think he does. I mean, he has worked for most of his career in a variety of different prosecutorial positions. He's led multiple

different prosecuting offices. He's worked as a defense lawyer earlier in his career, which I think is also an important part of being an effective prosecutor, being able to appreciate the perspective of the defense. So I really think that he does have the necessary background to try and make these important decisions. If you were double teaming this along with him again, any advice you'd give him? Just do the right thing, right? I mean, at the end of the day, all you can really do is show up, be prepared, do the best you can on a daily basis, and try to make sure that you're doing the right thing. That was Peter Skinner speaking with my co-host Mary Louise Kelly. Skinner is a former colleague of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. He's now in private practice,

a partner at Morrison Forrester. At the top of this episode, you heard reporting in New York City from NPR's Jasmine Garst. And as we record this episode, we are awaiting a speech from Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort. We'll have more coverage on our morning news podcast up first and on the radio. Go to stations.npr.org to find your NPR member station. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.