Tangle - The "imminent" Trump indictment.
Episode Date: March 20, 2023On Saturday, former President Donald Trump claimed he is going to be arrested on Tuesday and called for supporters to protest on his behalf. Trump is currently under investigation by multiple agencies..., but his post on Truth Social alleging an arrest was imminent appeared to be in reference to a New York grand jury investigation into hush money payments to women who say they had sexual encounters with the former president. Plus, a question about how much Europe is spending in Ukraine compared to us.You can find a full timeline of the Donald Trump & Stormy Daniels investigation to this point here (CBS).You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here and here.Today’s clickables: Quick Hits (0:58), Today’s Story (2:45), Right’s Take (12:21) Left’s Take (7:10) , Isaac’s Take (17:43), Your Questions Answered (22:05), Under the Radar (25:02), Numbers (26:01), Have A Nice Day (26:34)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum.
Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else.
I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the potential indictment of former President Donald Trump.
On Saturday, Trump said he was going to be arrested.
Tomorrow, on Tuesday, we're going to talk about what we know and share some
arguments from the right and the left about what might be coming. Before we jump in, though, as
always, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, Jeffrey Woodkey, an American aid worker
held hostage in Niger, was released after six years
in captivity. Number two, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Russian-occupied
Ukrainian city of Mariupol, his first visit to Ukraine since the war began. Separately,
the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin's arrest on war crime charges.
Number three, today marks the 20-year anniversary of the United States
launching its ground invasion into Iraq that began the Iraq war. Number four, oil prices fell to their
lowest levels in 15 months. Number five, Swiss authorities persuaded the USB group to purchase
the rival Credit Suisse group as central banks continued to try to calm fears of a wave of bank failures.
Last week, former President Trump said he expected to be arrested tomorrow in the Hush Money case being investigated by New York prosecutors.
And he called upon his supporters to protest.
While the Manhattan D.A.'s office isn't commenting, their case centers on whether
then candidate Donald Trump in 2016 directed his attorney, Michael Cohen,
to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had an affair with Mr. Trump a decade
prior. Former President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday
saying he expects to be indicted by the Manhattan DA's office.
Trump wrote in part, quote,
the far and away leading Republican candidate
and former president of the United States of America
will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.
The former president also told his supporters, quote,
protest, take our nation back.
On Saturday, former President Donald Trump claimed he is going to be arrested on Tuesday
and called for supporters to protest on his behalf. Trump is currently under investigation
by multiple agencies, but his post on Truth Social alleging an arrest was imminent appeared
to be in reference to a New York grand jury investigation into hush money payments to women who say they had sexual encounters with the former
president. Trump's lawyer and spokesperson say there has not been any communication from
prosecutors, but Trump says he expects to be taken into custody on Tuesday. District Attorney
Alvin Bragg is leading the investigation into the hush money payments and recently interviewed adult film
star Stormy Daniels. Trump is alleged to have paid Daniels $130,000 in 2016 through his former
attorney Michael Cohen to keep her from publicly discussing their relationship. The specific crime
Trump is being accused of is a campaign finance crime, as the alleged payoff would have been to
influence the 2016 election and therefore an undisclosed campaign contribution
over the applicable limit of $2,700 per donor per election.
Cohen, often described as Trump's fixer,
pled guilty to campaign finance charges from his involvement in the payments
and has already served a three-year prison sentence,
most of which he did under home confinement.
Cohen said under oath that the payments were directed by Trump and that he was reimbursed for almost double their amount
as legal expenses were inaccurately labeled as a retainer agreement. Trump, who was married during
the alleged relationship, has denied ever having affairs with Daniels as well as nearly all of
Cohen's claims and has repeatedly called the allegations and investigation a witch hunt.
It's believed Bragg
could also charge Trump for the crime of falsifying business records, which is a misdemeanor,
but can be upgraded to a felony if prosecutors show Trump was intending to commit fraud by
covering up another crime. The details of this story first came to light years ago,
when Trump was serving as president, and the ensuing investigation has been subject to
interruptions and public scrutiny ever since it began. Now, it appears to be gaining momentum. Bragg reportedly invited Trump to
testify before the grand jury, which usually precedes an indictment. You can read the full
timeline of the story to this point with a link in today's newsletter to a CBS News article which
breaks it down. Shortly after Trump said he was going to be arrested,
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he would use House committees to immediately
investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections
with politically motivated prosecutions. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has been critical
of Trump in his 2024 campaign for president, called it another politically charged prosecution.
The Trump campaign criticized other Republicans, including Florida governor and presumptive nominee
Ron DeSantis, for remaining quiet on the issue. Currently, Trump is being investigated by federal
prosecutors over the January 6th riots, by the D.C. Attorney General over financial fraud on
the presidential inaugural committee, by the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney over criminal election interference in Georgia, by the Securities
and Exchange Commission, or SEC, over rules violations in his plans to take his social
media company public through a SPAC, and by the FBI and Justice Department over his handling of
classified documents. The Congressional House Select Committee recently completed its investigation
into his role on January 6th.
Today, we're going to be taking a look at some reactions from the left and the right
to a potential indictment in this case, and then my take.
First up, we'll start with what the left is saying.
The left is mixed about the looming indictment, insisting on Trump's guilt but unsure if charges will stick.
Some said Trump must be indicted in order to hold up the rule of law.
Others suggest the conviction may be difficult to land and could also prevent indictments on the more serious charges against Trump. In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols said Trump is doing it again.
Let us begin with the obvious thing that just happened. This morning, Donald Trump threatened to summon a mob for the second time in two years to his defense, Nichols said. The former president
of the United States and a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the White House in
2024, facing a
possible indictment in New York, claimed to know the exact day on which he would be arrested and
then called his supporters to protest. Trump and his cult know what a call for protest means.
The last time he rallied his faithful supporters this way, they stormed the U.S. Capitol, which
resulted in death and destruction and many, many prison sentences.
Spokespeople from the former president's office have already walked back Trump's statement,
noting that they have not been told of any specific date for an indictment or an arrest.
Indeed, any attempt to book Trump is unlikely to happen as soon as Tuesday for many reasons. But that's not the point. Trump's message today to the American people has already come through
loud and clear. I am too dangerous to arrest. Despite my political feelings about Donald Trump, I'm
agnostic on whether he should be indicted and arrested for possible financial violations
involved in the payoff to the porn star Stormy Daniels, Nichols said. Personally, I have no
doubt he broke the law, and part of me is now growling that if you can get Al Capone for tax
evasion instead of murder, file the tax case already. But as my colleague David Frum noted, juries tend to
be forgiving of personal misdeeds by political leaders, shown, for example, by the 2011 acquittal
of former Democratic Senator John Edwards, and the hush money scandal is not the strongest
possible case against Trump. In the New York Times, Charles M. Blow said Trump
must be prosecuted. Donald Trump may finally be indicted. Finally, he said. But there's also
hand-wringing about whether this is the best case to be the first among those in which Trump is
likely to be criminally charged, the strength of this case compared to others, and the historic
implications of indicting a former president for anything. And with regard to those implications, the central considerations always seem to be the importance of any precedent set
by prosecuting a former president and the broader political significance, what damage it might do to
the country. Often left out of that calculus, it seems to me, is the damage Trump has already done
and is poised to continue to do. Prosecution is not the problem. Trump himself is,
Blow wrote, and any pretense that the allegations of his marauding criminality are a sideshow to
the political stakes and were therefore remedied in 2020 at the ballot box rather than in the jury
box is itself a miscarriage of justice and does incalculable damage. Any case against Trump must
hang on the evidence and the principle that justice
is blind. The political considerations, including gaming out what might be the ideal sequence of
cases across jurisdictions and by their gravity, only serve to distort the judicial process.
The justice system must be untethered from political implications and consequences,
even the possibility of disruptive consequences. In MSNBC, Jessica
Levinson laid out the risks of indicting Trump on these charges. If New York County District
Attorney Alvin Bragg indicts Trump on charges related to his hush money payment to adult film
star Stormy Daniels, it could threaten every other investigation against him. That's why,
for some of Trump's biggest critics, the prospect of an indictment related to the Daniels case leads to little but existential dread. That's not because the facts show Trump
engaged in no wrongdoing, quite the opposite. It is because of all the legal cases Trump faces,
this one may be the hardest to prove. If Trump successfully defends himself against an indictment
for his role in the payment to Daniels, we can predict he will use it as vindication that any and all charges brought against him are merely so-called witch hunts.
Again, Trump should face criminal charges. He must be held accountable for crimes he allegedly
committed before, during, and after he was in office. Overwhelming evidence indicates that
Trump incited or assisted in an insurrection aimed at obstructing an official proceeding,
namely the certification of electoral college votes, she wrote. A recorded telephone call shows he tried
to commit election fraud in Georgia. The alleged crime spree didn't stop when Trump left office.
An FBI search and court documents strongly suggest that he unlawfully took classified documents
and kept them at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. And there's plenty of evidence to show
that before Trump took office,
he and the Trump Organization committed not just civil violations,
but also financial crimes by lying about the value of Trump properties to pay lower taxes
and get better deals on loans and insurance.
For the sake of rule of law and legal political accountability,
let's hope Bragg and his office know something we don't
about the strength of this case against the former president. All right, that is it for the leftist saying,
which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right are skeptical of the indictment,
saying the case is flimsy or Trump is exaggerating the threat of an arrest. Some argue the indictment would be a
mistake and amounts to a political prosecution. Others say Trump is already the worst actor in
this drama, but we should all calm down and see what the indictment actually is before prejudging.
In The Hill, Jonathan Turley called the potential indictment high on ratings and short on
the law. Trump faces serious legal threats in the ongoing Mar-a-Lago investigation. But the New York
case would be easily dismissed outside of a jurisdiction like New York, where Bragg can count
on highly motivated judges and jurors, Turley said. Although it may be politically popular,
the case is legally pathetic. Bragg is struggling to twist state laws to effectively
prosecute a federal case long ago rejected by the Justice Department against Trump over his payment
of quote-unquote hush money to former stripper Stormy Daniels. In 2018, yes, that is how long
ago this theory has been around, I wrote about how difficult such a federal case would be under
existing election laws. Now, six years later, the same
theory may be shoehorned into a state claim. It is extremely difficult to show that paying money
to cover up an embarrassing affair was done for election purposes as opposed to an array of
obvious other reasons, from protecting a celebrity's reputation to preserving a marriage, Turley said.
In this case, Trump reportedly paid Daniels $130,000 in the fall of 2016 to cut off or at
least reduce any public scandal. The Southern District of New York's U.S. Attorney's Office
had no love lost for Trump, pursuing him and his associates in myriad investigations,
but it ultimately rejected a prosecution based on the election law violations.
It was not alone. The Federal Election Commission chair also expressed
doubts about the theory. Prosecutors working under Bragg's predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr.,
also reportedly rejected the viability of using a New York law to effectively charge a federal
offense. More importantly, Bragg himself previously expressed doubts about the case,
effectively shutting it down soon after he took office.
the case, effectively shutting it down soon after he took office. With DoorDash. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,
a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown.
When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime,
Willis begins to unravel a criminal web,
his family's buried history,
and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th,
only on Disney+.
In The Washington Examiner, Quinn Hillier said everyone should stop prejudging an indictment
that hasn't happened yet. With rumors rampant of an impending arrest of former President Donald
Trump, everybody, including Trump, needs to calm down. This includes pundits prejudging the case
before it even has been filed. As usual, the worst actor in this drama is Trump himself.
This is a man who already helped inspire an attack on the U.S. Capitol
in which 140 law enforcement officers were injured, Hillier wrote.
The last thing he should be doing, but of course the very thing he already has done,
is calling for protests if he is arrested.
These are not the words of a statesman.
They are not the words of a patriot. This is the sort of incitement one would expect from a Caudillo in a banana republic.
Still, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg really should be careful. On one hand, it is
entirely wrong for blathering commentators to say that a particularly high bar should protect
former presidents from indictment. The other glory of our system, after all, is that nobody
is above the law. Presidents, no less than prison guards, should be subject to an indictment if the case is
solid, without needing a tacit extra layer of protection so that only the most serious crime
should be subject to legal action. On the other hand, it is certainly the case that former presidents
shouldn't be indicted on lesser grounds than anyone else would be.
Tenuous cases and newfangled legal theories shouldn't be tested on former presidents,
largely for political effect.
In National Review, Andrew McCarthy said Trump's claim of a Tuesday arrest is highly unlikely.
There seems little doubt that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's indictment of Donald Trump is imminent.
As I said last Friday, I'd bet on the early part of this coming week because A, the grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the
matter appears to meet on Mondays and Wednesdays. B, most of the critical witnesses have been
interviewed, including Trump's former self-described fixer Michael Cohen, who testified last Monday and
Wednesday. C, the prosecutors also reportedly touched base last week with Stormy Daniels,
the porn star whose real name is Stephanie Clifford,
to make sure she was ready and willing to testify.
And D, the prosecutors invited Trump himself to testify.
He declined, as one would expect.
And such an invitation to the target of a grand jury investigation
is typically one of the last steps, if not the last step,
taken by the state before asking a grand jury to vote on a proposed
indictment. All that said, though, reports that Trump will be arrested on Tuesday are premature
and probably inaccurate. They appear to have been generated by the former president himself
and apparently are not based on discussions between the Trump camp and the DA's office,
McCarthy said. The Times says state prosecutors are still tying up some loose ends.
This potentially includes the presentation of another unidentified witness to the grand jury.
If that's true, it could result in some delay in the grand jury's voting of the indictment.
In addition, I would not expect Trump to be arrested in the familiar sense of that term,
i.e. police taking him into custody and placing him in handcuffs. The former president has Secret Service protection.
The USSS will keep Trump secure,
and the NYPD will make sure he is efficiently processed
and produced for his court appearance.
All right, that is it for the left and the right's take, which brings us to my take.
Two things I want to get out of the way first.
One, I think the evidence strongly suggests that Trump had an affair with Stormy Daniels
and that Trump's team paid her not to share her story.
I know that might be controversial to many of my readers, but the paper trail is pretty
overwhelming.
It's actually kind of amusing how obvious the paper trail is pretty overwhelming. It's actually
kind of amusing how obvious the whole thing is, which is why Michael Cohen was sentenced to three
years in prison. Whether Trump actually instructed Cohen to pay off Daniels, or if Daniels simply
invented the sexual encounter to entrap Trump, is another matter. We'll never know the former,
but the latter seems very unlikely to me based on how Trump and his team have handled the allegations. Two, I am not at all convinced this indictment is actually imminent,
and certainly don't think liberals should start dreaming about a world where Trump gets the perp
walk in handcuffs or ends up in an orange jumpsuit. That just isn't going to happen.
Unsurprisingly, the New York Times appears to have very well-placed sources in the Manhattan
District Attorney's Office, which I don't, and their reporting certainly seems to suggest an
imminent indictment. But after years of such rumor, I agree with Hillier that we should all
wait for the actual thing to happen before talking about it as if it has happened already.
As for whether it should, there are some interesting things getting lost in that debate.
First, Alvin Bragg,
the Manhattan District Attorney, is being framed by the right as some unhinged liberal prosecutor
out for blood. Ironically, it wasn't so long that the left was mad at Bragg for not pursuing this
case more earnestly. In fact, two prosecutors under Bragg resigned because they thought he
wasn't being aggressive enough. In a rather shocking, unusual, and unprofessional move,
one wrote an entire book
detailing the case against Trump, despite the fact he hasn't even been charged yet.
Now, Bragg, the same guy who had the ire of liberals not so long ago, is being accused of
political hackery by the right for purportedly preparing this indictment. It's worth stating
plainly that Bragg should be left to do his work. Threats from congressional Republicans to investigate him
or criticism of how he has acted in New York City
are not really the federal government's business.
Bragg was democratically elected in a competitive primary
and then in a landslide general election over a Republican opponent.
It was a 67-point margin by New Yorkers.
He has done precisely what he campaigned on doing, and he has slow-walked
this investigation enough he's managed to piss off a lot of his own supporters. All this being said,
that Trump almost certainly did pay off Daniels, that Bragg has drawn the ire of both sides,
that an indictment might not even happen, and that Republicans in Congress are wrong to threaten to
investigate a district attorney, I really don't think this indictment would be a smart move. I say this assuming that it is what we think it is based on the extensive reporting,
leaks, and the history of the charges we know about. There are a lot of reasons I say this.
First, the story here is ancient history, and the charges here are flimsy. Bragg himself has said so
and has thoroughly laid out under what the right is saying. The charges have basically been scoffed
at in other settings. Paying hush money is not illegal. In fact, it's precisely
the kind of contractual agreement that victims or people like Daniels want. However slimy it may
feel, it's just how things often work in our legal system. In order to peg Trump for a crime, again,
if it is what we think it is, the DA would essentially be going after him for a
campaign finance violation that amounts to a misdemeanor unless there's some underlying felony
that we don't know about. Not only would Trump beat that charge politically, because most of
the country would understand it to be overzealous, he'd also have a good chance of beating it in
court. All that would have to happen is the prosecutors fail to prove intent, or Trump shows
he was acting on advice of his legal team, or there's no smoking gun around, i.e. an email from
Trump asking Cohen to shut Daniels up. Even folks like Jessica Levinson, under what the left is
saying, who desperately want to see Trump held criminally liable for something, understand
how difficult this case would be to prosecute successfully. Indicting a former president is unprecedented. Certainly, Trump has some legitimate legal walls closing in on him.
But this story? Hush payment over an affair during a campaign season eight years ago?
It's hard to imagine this one sticking, either in court or in the public's mind.
All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered.
Today's question is from Maria in Rochester, New York. Maria said, while you were wearing
your pretend presidential cap, one of the reasons you provided for supporting Ukraine
was that Ukraine's security is Europe's security. If so, then why does the U.S.
aid to Ukraine dwarf the aid being provided by the European countries?
It can't be because we have deep pockets.
The U.S. is in huge debt, so we are borrowing money to give to Ukraine.
Shouldn't Europe step up?
So, Maria, it's a great question.
First, the numbers on Ukraine aid are a little difficult to parse
because there is money committed versus money actually sent.
There's military support versus financial aid.
Let's put all of that into one bucket. money committed versus money actually sent. There's military support versus financial aid.
Let's put all of that into one bucket. Humanitarian support, financial support,
and military support since the war began. And let's qualify it that it's money that's actually been sent, not money that's been allocated and might be sent in the future.
At the end of February, that total was $75 billion of assistance. The numbers from Europe
are also difficult to parse. First,
European Union countries are members of the European Union, which has allocated over $30
billion of financial and humanitarian aid. Then, every individual country is given some
combination of military, financial, and humanitarian aid. The top three are the United
Kingdom, $8.7 billion, Germany, $6.6 billion, and Poland, $3.6 billion, for a
sum total of $19 billion. So the entire European Union combined and the top three European countries
separately have contributed $49 billion compared to our $75 billion. There are a couple of ways
to look at this. One is that the U.S. is spending more than it should, and the rest of Europe should step up its investment. Generally speaking, I believe this is true. Europe should be
giving more. It's one of the best and most cogent criticisms from former President Trump. Europe
needs to invest more in its own defenses. But there is a good counter-argument. For instance,
by share of GDP, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland are all spending more than
the U.S. Bulgaria, Norway, and the United Kingdom and Canada are all spending slightly less,
but basically the same. So we are spending the most, but we are also the largest and richest,
despite our debt, with the best-funded military, and we have basically spent and developed ourselves
into this position. When you act as principal of the
world and build up the world's biggest military, your allies expect you to play principal and use
your military might when the times call for it. In other words, some European countries are
absolutely stepping up, especially when you measure by economic size some are doing more than we are.
I believe Germany and France in particular should be doing more than they are. But part of the catch-22 about being the United States is that when you are this rich and this well-armed,
you're almost organically expected to do the most, which is what we are seeing in real time right now.
All right, that is it for our reader question, which brings us to our under the radar story.
A new report from a team of researchers presents the strongest case yet that COVID-19 originated
in a Wuhan wet market and links the virus to raccoon dogs that were being illegally sold in
Wuhan. An international team of virologists and evolutionary biologists say they found crucial
data to fill the long sought gap of how exactly the virus jumped from animals to humans. Genetic sequences were pulled out of
swabs taken in and near market stalls around the pandemic's start that had long shown evidence of
COVID-19. But scientists who examined the data said it lacked genetic material of an animal.
Now, these researchers say they have found strong evidence of a genetic material that matched a raccoon dog, a small fox-like animal native to China. The Atlantic
broke the story on what we now know, and there's a link to it in today's episode description.
All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of voters in 2018 who said they
believed Trump had an affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels is 56%. In 2018, the percentage of
voters who said they didn't know or had no opinion was 35%. In 2018, the percentage of voters who
said they did not believe he had an affair was 9%. Zero is the number of former presidents who
have ever been indicted on any criminal charges. One is the number of former presidents, Richard Nixon, who have ever been pardoned after
office. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Forest coverage in Scotland
is almost back to where it was 1,000 years ago. For centuries, the Scottish forest was the stuff
of war. Nearly 20% of the
land in Scotland was covered by forests, but by the mid-18th century, it had dropped to just 4%.
Around then, the trend reversed as the country moved to reforestation efforts.
And after nearly two centuries of growth, they're almost there. This is part of a larger trend,
with the world having more trees today than it did 35 years ago.
Good, good, good has the story on the trees and our world and data has the reforestation numbers.
There are links to both in today's episode description.
All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to retangle.com and become a member. Otherwise, we'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one.
Peace. Thank you. We'll see you next time. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police
procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a
witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history,
and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th,
only on Disney+.