Judging Freedom - Trump Keeps Slugging it Out in NYC

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Donald Trump fights NY AG Letitia James' proposed $10,000-a-day fine for failing to turn over documentsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, April 21st, 2022. It's about 2.40, 2.50 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Not far from where I'm in, I'm in northwest New Jersey, but about 75 or 80 miles east of here in New York City, a battle continues to brew in the prosecutions or attempted prosecutions of former President Donald Trump. And there are two issues that have come up today. Former President Trump has been ordered to surrender all of the financial documents of the Trump organization going back for the past 20 years. And he was ordered to do so by a judge. The judge threatened to hold him in contempt.

His lawyers sat down with the government's lawyers, and they agreed on what documents he would surrender. And they also agreed if he failed to surrender them, he'd owe a $10,000 a day fine. I mean, for a guy who claims to be worth a couple of billion, a $10,000 a day fine. I mean, for a guy who claims to be worth a couple of billion, a $10,000 a day fine is extremely modest, but that's what they agreed to. He claims he surrendered 900,000 pages of documents. The government says it didn't get everything it's supposed to get, and it now wants to enforce the $10,000 a day fine, not on the Trump organization, but on Donald J. Trump personally.

This is not a criminal investigation, even though the lawyers doing the investigating are in the office of the Attorney General of the State of New York. It's odd. The Attorney General of the State of New York cannot summon a grand jury and seek an indictment. That can only be done by a district attorney in Manhattan, which leads to the second issue involving former President Trump today. The district attorney in Manhattan, Cy Vance, who left office last December 31st, was on the cusp of indicting President Trump personally for bank fraud, for insurance fraud, and for tax fraud, basically lying about the value of assets under oath in order to get favorable treatment, telling the bank an asset was worth more than it was so he can get more of a loan, telling an insurance company a building was worth more than it's truly worth so he can get

more insurance, and telling the government that the same building was worth more than it's truly worth so he can get more insurance and telling the government that the same building was worth a lot less so we would pay less in taxes. That is at least the the allegation. That investigation is being done no longer by Cy Vance but by his successor in office Alvin Bragg. Mr. Bragg is a former federal prosecutor. A month into Mr. Bragg's term, the two leading assistant district attorneys who had been investigating Trump quit because they felt that Mr. Bragg was not interested in indicting the former president, whereupon Bragg went on CNN and said, we are interested in indicting him, and I'm sorry these two guys quit, and it's a serious investigation, and it moves forward. Okay, so that's where it was until this morning,

or actually last night. Last night, Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer and well-known fixer, you know, a guy who sort of threatened, cajoled, weaseled favors out of people for Trump, said, I'm sick and tired of waiting. If you guys don't present this evidence that I have given you and that you have from many sources to a grand jury, in nine days, I'm going to stop cooperating with you. Now, I never heard of this happening. I've been in the legal community for nearly 50 years. In my years as a criminal defense lawyer and as a judge, I never heard of a witness threatening the government. This is not a very good thing to do, Mr. Cohen, but he apparently did it.

How will the government react to this threat? Will Donald Trump now be indicted in the next nine days? Will the government indict Mr. Cohen for threatening them? Who knows? Stay tuned. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. You can't make this stuff up for judging freedom.