The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Trump Cries "Witch Hunt" over Michael Cohen's Raid | Mariska Hargitay

Episode Date: April 11, 2018

President Trump goes on an angry rant about the FBI's raid of his personal lawyer's office, and Mariska Hargitay discusses her HBO documentary "I Am Evidence." Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to Comedy Central. Hey, everybody, John Stewart here. I am here to tell you about my new podcast, The Weekly Show, coming out every Thursday. We're going to be talking about the election earnings calls. What are they talking about on these earnings calls? We're going to be talking about ingredient-to-bread ratio on sandwiches. I know you have a lot of options as far as podcasts go, but how many of them come out on Thursday. Listen to the weekly show with John Stewart wherever

you get your podcast. April 10th, 2018. From Comedy Central's World News Headquarters in New York. This is the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Ears Edition. Thank you so much. Welcome to the Daily Show. Thank you for tuning in. I'm Trevor Noah. Our guest tonight, our guest tonight, the star of Law and Order, S.V.U. and the producer of the new HBO documentary, I Am Evidence.

Mariska Huggate is here, everybody. For first, for first, Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal lawyer and VIP customer at Joseph A Bank. Y. Yesterday, thanks to the FBI, he had a really, really bad day. Let's start with those dramatic raids on the office and home of President Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen. A referral from special counsel Robert Mueller led to the search warrants targeting Michael Cohen and investigators found emails, financial documents and some client communications possibly involving

President Trump. We're told that Cohen is under investigation for possible bank fraud, campaign finance violations and other potential crimes connected to the 2016 election. I'm sorry but this is just ridiculous. Even Trump's lawyer is being investigated. Like how corrupt is your circle if your lawyer uses his one phone call to call you? It seems like everyone in Trump's world is corrupt. Like, I bet even when he goes to confession, he's like, forgive me father, for I have sin. And he's priest who's like, yo, you should hear the shit, I've been getting into,

just a week, I'll tell you. I'm just kidding. Trump doesn't know about church. Now, uh, now, any any time the time time time the time the time the the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the FBI the f. the f. tr. tr. true. tru. true. tr-I's, tr-I's, tr-I's, tr-I's. tr-I's. tr-I's. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tr-I. tru. tru. tru. tru. tru. tru. tru-I. tru-I. tru-I. tru-I. tru-I. tru-s. tru-I. tru-I. tru-I. tru-I. Now, uh, now any time the FBI raids a lawyer's office, it's a really, really big deal. But it's an even bigger deal when that lawyer is Michael Cohen. Because to President Trump, he's more than just a lawyer. My job is, I protect Mr. Trump. That's what it is. If there's an issue that relates to Mr. Trump that is of concern to him, it's of course concerned to me. And I will use my legal skills within which to protect Mr. Trump to the best of my ability.

At the Trump organization, he's done a bit of everything, running a mixed martial arts company, securing real estate branding deals, and even taking care of transportation. You know the famous Trump plane, there was an engine issue that he actually took care of and got a really good deal on. Yeah, just what you want in an airplane, a discount engine. You're gonna be crashing like, ah we're gonna die! But at a greatly reduced rate, so much savings! But yeah, basically Michael Cohen is Trump's go-to guy for everything. So if Trump has ever done anything shady, which I know sounds ridiculous, but stick with me here, stick with me here.

This FBI raid has a good chance of finding it, which is why yesterday, President Baby got a little cranky. So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, good man, and it's a disgraceful situation. It's a total witch hunt. It's an attack on our country in a true sense. It's an attack on what we all stand for. You know, the American ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of having a lawyer, pay off your shy chick. Now, in Trump world, what's happening here is a giant conspiracy, right? It's Robert Mueller trying to take Trump down for political reasons. The

only issue with that argument is that the conspiracy would have to involve every single person in law enforcement. Explain how many hoops they had to go through to get this raid of Michael Cohen's offices. Robert Mueller did not make this decision. It seems he came upon some sort of potential criminal activity. He then hands it off effectively to Rod Rosenstein, who's the deputy attorney general, says, look, we found this, you decide what to do with it. Rod Rosenstein then makes a referral, meaning basically says to the deputy attorney general, says, look, we found this, you decide what to do with it. Rod Rosedus and Sine then makes a referral, meaning basically says to the Southern District of New York, look, here's what we got, you decide what to do with this.

Then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York makes a decision to then seek out a search warrant. A judge then signs off on it. The standard standard a judge to sign off on this is high. Okay, that doesn't sound like a witch hunt to me. Because witch hunts were really simple, right? Back then it was just like, she shrank my penis, burn her at the stake. That's pretty much all you needed. Like, it's like, what we're hearing here is just way too much legal procedure to be considered a witch hunt. Like if people in Salem have this kind of due process they would have never burned

anyone like no one would have died. We'll be like, she shrank my penis! Let's burn her at the stake! All right, all right, but first you must fill out this official complaint. Okay and then we'll burn her. No, no wait, wait, then we we have to see what the witness is in this case, in thi, in thi, in th, in the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the, th, th, th, thi, thi, thi, thi, to, to, to to be, to be, to be, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, th, th, thi, th, th, th. th, th, th, th, th. th. th. th, th. th, th, th, th, th, th. th. th. th, th. th. th. th. thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, the, theee. thea. tea. tea. tea. tea. tea. thea. thea. thea, the. the. this case say and we have to see how big your penis originally used to be. What was that? Yeah we need to know how big your penis actually was. Well you know what forget it man I just I actually made up the witch thing because Hester wouldn't let me smash. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell the true. Well look man you can you can tell that this rate has got tru-trotted tru p trattled because trattled went to bed fuming and he woke up ranting. This morning the president wrote this, attorney-client privilege is dead.

I'm sorry, just the way they said, he went to bed, ranting, and woke up fuming. It's like, he was like, ugh, ugh. Like, poor Trump. I imagine him in bed this morning, just tears streaming down his face like, no, my attorney-client privilege is dead. At least I still got you white privilege. Don't ever leave me.

Don't ever leave me. Don't ever leave me. Oh look, the fact is, attorney-client privilege doesn't apply when prosecutors have probable cause to believe that you and your lawyer were committing a crime together. It doesn't work. So I think it's pretty clear that Trump is probably just shouting out legal terms that he's heard on law and order. Tomorrow he'll be like, objection, double jeopardy, your honor, habeas corpus. We'll be right back. John Stewart here.

Unbelievably exciting news. My new podcast, The Weekly Show. We're going to be talking about the election, economics, ingredient to bread ratio, on sandwiches. Listen to the weekly show with John Stewart, wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back to the daily show. My guest tonight is an award-winning actor, an advocate for sexual assault survivors and the producer of the new HBO documentary, I Am Evidence. Mariska Hagateen. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I am very happy to be here. This is so much fun having you because I mean, like, Law and Order, I've watched my whole life and I watched your show in South Africa. It's big. And I always wonder, like, when you've played a character like Olivia Benson for as long as you have, do you sometimes feel like you like know the law? Like do you ever feel like you are in law enforcement sometimes? No, absolutely.

I feel like I do. And I'm also somebody that jumps in and gets confused about what my real job is. There have been times in my life where I've seen something on the street and I jump in like, hey, put that down, get in here, come here. And I've done it so many times, I'm like, Merska, you need to calm down. Yeah, but seriously. I feel like you play your character so convincing to that, if you did that to me in real life, I'd be like, yeah, it's law and order. this this when you do something right for 19 years I started the show when I was four and when you do this why is he laughing that feels weird I'm gonna

be 23 anyway I I I when you do something for this long you know your body sort of reacts to right right so when I get when there's crisis I go into crisis mode I like that I like that I like that a lot. I go into lieutenant mode. I'm not in that mode right now. I'm not in that mode right now. The show is an interesting one because you know law and order has so many different spin offs, but special victims unit is one that connected with so many people in a visceral way because we were used to glamorous crimes. You know, it was all the murder, it was the this, it was the swindling, it was the, but special victims unit tackled something

that like a lot of people have experienced, unfortunately. You know, the Me Too movement has exposed how pervasive sexual assault and harassment have been. And that's what your show has been covering for so long. You went through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through through an interesting experience where people who were victims and survivors of sexual assault or harassment reached out to your character like they wrote you fan mail and asked you for help. Like they actually went, I need your help. Did people not know that your character wasn't real or was it something else? You know I think that for so long, survivors have been living in a culture of shame and

isolation. When I started the show, I started, I'd come off ER. And so when you're getting normal fan mail, you get, hi, I love your show, can I get an autographed photo? And all of a sudden, when I started S SVU after the show had been airing for a while, I started getting a very different kind of fan letter with victims actually disclosing their stories of abuse and many for the first time. And in those letters there always was the same theme again of shame, stigma,

and isolation. And then saying I've never told anyone before and not feeling safe to tell anyone, or feeling scared that they wouldn't be believed or it wouldn't be received right. So I think that they went to this fictionalized character that maybe was the first person that showed empathy and compassion. and they knew that Olivia was always for the victim first and felt safe there and hopefully now that is indeed changing. Right and that's a powerful connection for people

to have with a character and with a show and it's something that I think many people would find overwhelming. I don't know if I'd be able to handle that. I don't know how I would handle it. But you took it and turned it into something really positive. You started your foundation joyful heart. What is joyful heart all about? Thank you. Well, I, you know, when I started getting these letters, as you can imagine, I was shocked and wanted to respond and was so, it was so, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, and, and, to, to, to, to, to, and, and, to, and, and, and, and, to, and, and, to, to, to, and, to, to, to, and, and, to, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, to, to, and, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to respond and was so, it was very painful receiving these

letters and I didn't know how to respond so I tried to educate myself and I was so enraged when I learned about the statistics of sexual assault that that one in three women and one in six men will be abused in their lifetime. I mean, these were crazy statistics, and I thought if those were the statistics, one in four women will be assaulted by her 18th birthday. How is it that everybody wasn't talking about this? This was an epidemic. So that's when I started educating myself and when I did my research for the role of playing

Olivia, besides hanging out in police precincts and with cops and doing write-alongs, I also went through a 40-hour training to become a great crisis advocate, which taught me how to deal with survivors, because I knew I wanted to play this character in a different way with all of myself and all of my humanity and empathy and and femininity and not in a different way with all of myself and all of my humanity and empathy and and and femininity and not in you know a female in a man's world and not in a in a sort of male way you know playing this hard-ass you know badass you know badass detective who as we all have different sides of us also has compassion empathy and humanity as I said so that's when I sort of put a structure to my anger

and started the Joyful Heart Foundation to help victims reclaim, you know, they're reclaimed their lives, reclaimed possibility and joy. And then in 2009, I learned about the rape kit backlog. In 2009, I learned about, there was a study done by Human Rights Watch that exposed this unbelievable travesty in our nation that when a woman was brave enough and courageous enough

to come forward after being assaulted and would go through a four to six hour often completely invasive and often retraumatizing examination and they would do you know a sexual assault evidence you know collection kit and poke them and prob them and you know it's a humiliating painful process and then we found out them and you know it's humiliating painful process. And then we found out that these kids were sitting on shelves in police storage facilities. And you would assume that in America, in this country, obviously if the evidence collection kit was taken, it would be processed. Right. And we found that that that wasn't the case. And I found out the first case was, um, the first case was, um, the first case was, um, the first, the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the kit, the kit, the kit, the kit, the kit, the kit, the kit, the kit, the kit, the kit, the kit, the kit, was, was, ki, ki, the kit, was, was, the kit, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, th, th, th, and th, and th, and th, th, th, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, the kit, the kit, the kit, the kit, their their their their their their kit, their kit, their kit, was, their their their kit, the the their kit, kii kit, the kii kit, kii kit, was, kii kit, kii, their kit was, taken, it would be processed. And we found that that wasn't the case. And I found out, the first case was,

the first time I found out about was the study done in California, in Los Angeles, that there were 12,069 kits. So the following year, I went to testify before Congress. And that's when I met this amazing badass of a woman named Kim Worthy who was the Wayne County prosecutor who was also testifying and when we met it was we were done. You know it was a little bit of a match made in heaven. And you've been on a journey ever since and this documentary Ithink, is in many ways a culmination of that journey. Because this story is illuminating in so many different ways.

We learn about these rape kits that are taken. We learn about the experiences of these women who have survived these horrific incidents. And then we learn that there are just backlogs, there are kits that are sitting on shelves and rapists are walking free in the streets. Some people may say, okay, that's bad, but there's a story in particular where one woman's rape was tied to another woman's rape 13 years later. Is this a story that you come across often? Well, you know, the rape kit backlog, which of course, after we found that there were, you know, this was the same story in every city, right? And there are estimated hundreds of thousands of rape kits sitting in police storage facility,

and there are so many reasons to test these kits, but not testing them clearly sends a message to survivors saying, you don't matter, and and your kit doesn't matter and your case doesn't matter. And it certainly tells purpose traders, well, it doesn't matter, continue. What we learned is that by putting the DNA in the CODIS, which is the national database, we kept finding hits and that there were so many serial rapists. Kim found in Detroit, I think out of 11,000 kits, the the their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, and their, and their, and their, and th, and th, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and tapes, and tapes, and tapes, and tapes, and tapes, and tapes, and th. And, and th. And, and th. And, and th. And, and th. And, and th. And, and th. And, and th. And, and th, and th, and th, and th, th. And, thi. And, t were so many serial rapists. Kim found in Detroit, I think out of 11,000 kits, there were eight hundred, 879 serial rapists. So in the movie, which was very, you know, difficult to put together, this was my first documentary and we interviewed 14 women all with the most,

who were so extraordinarily brave, but with these compelling stories, and I'll tell you, I could have made a documentary on each one of these women with their stories. But you know, a document, how do you tell the story, how do you weave it together? And then we found that one of the rapists was indeed a trick driver who hadn't had had been.. to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to put to put to one of the rapists was indeed a trick driver who hadn't been apprehended and one of the women was waiting 11 years, 14 years, for the precinct to call her back. They never did, and in the meantime, he was busy assaulting other women. It's so... Yeah, it's a story that is enraging.

It's frustrating. And at the same time, uplifting because of what we see in the documentary, we see the work that your organization is doing, we see the work that these women are doing, fighting this process. What can be done, though? Some people go, it's a backlog. The police department cannot do anything, but New York City has done something, what can be done?

And I wanted to make this movie because it's so hard, hard-hitting. And again, when I found out about it in 2009, you know, my head almost exploded. I just remember going, this can't be, this can't be. And I remember doing a satellite media tour the following year. thiiiiiii. And I. And I. And I, and th. And th. I, they. And their, th. Wee, th. Wee, th. Wea, their, th. Wea, their, their, their, their, their, their, wea, wea, their we can't their we can't their we can't their, we can't their, we can't their, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't their, we can't, we can't their, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't, wea, wea, wea, their, the their, th. Wea, th. Wea, th. Wea, the. Wea, the. Wea, we're thean't their th. Wea'n't their their their their their their their thean. Wea, we're their, we're their, and I remember doing a satellite media tour the following year and none of the journalists nobody knew they go wait what they would stop me and say you're telling me that the woman goes through this examination they're not testing the kids and so this is an incredibly you know how do you measure sexual assault in this country? How do you measure how women are being treated? And that's what I thought, this is a perfect sort of

microcosm of how we treat women, how we treat survivors. And it's sort of like, it's sort of holds a mirror up to the country and says, this is what we're doing, so let's change it. The good news is that Joyful Heart, the thou-augh, that that that that that that that that that that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I that I thii, thi, thii, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, th, th, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, thi, thi, th is what we're doing, so let's change it. The good news is it's fixable. The good news is that Joyful Heart, my foundation that I founded in 2004, has made the Rapekit backlog our number one advocacy priority. And so we have made these six pillars of legislation that we're trying to push through. And we are changing legislation in every state. New York doesn't have a backlog, thank God and certain states by states and

cities by cities are cleaning up their backlog. Right. So you can go to end the backlog. to the toock. And find out what you can do right to your legislators right to your congressmen and we can change it. We just have to be persistent and never give up. I think th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th. And I tho tho tho tho tho tho that that tho tho tho tho tho th. And th. And, and th. And, and th. And, and tho tho tho tho tho tho tho tho tho tho tho tho tho th. And tho th. And th. And th. And th. And th. And th. And, th th th th th th tho tho tho tho tho that that, that, the the the the the an try to try to try try try try to try try try try try try thate tho tho to your congressmen and we can change it. We just have to be persistent and never give up. I think that sounds amazing. Thank you so much. I am evidence debuts Monday April 16th at ATM on HBO and for more information about how you can help visit end the backlog. to org. Mariska Hoggate everybody. The Daily Show with Trevor No. Ears Edition.

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My new podcast, The Weekly Show. We're going to be talking about the election. Economics, Ingredient to Bread Ratio on sandwiches. Listen to the weekly show with John Stewart. Wherever you get your podcast.