The Daily Signal - Jury Finds Trump Guilty on All 34 Counts, SCOTUS Delivers Win to NRA, Iran’s Supreme Leader Praises College Protests | May 30

Starting point is 00:00:00 Former President Donald Trump has been found guilty of all 34 counts he faced in the Manhattan criminal case. I'm Virginia Allen. Welcome to the Daily Signal, top news for Thursday, May 30th. The 12-member jury in Trump's trial reached a verdict this afternoon. The jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts. The guilty verdict came out shortly after we originally released this show, so this is an updated recording. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged. Trump in 2023 with those 34 counts of falsifying business records, supposedly, to cover up hush money payments to Pornstar Stormy Daniels. As the verdict was announced today around 5 p.m., you could hear shouts outside the courtroom. And right after that verdict was announced, Trump stepped outside

Starting point is 00:00:59 the courtroom and gave brief remarks to reporters. Let's take a listen. It's a rig trial, a disgrace. They wouldn't give us a venue change. We were at 5% or 6% in this district in this area. This was a rigged disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people, and they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here. You have a sore respect, DA, and the whole thing.

Starting point is 00:01:32 We didn't do a thing wrong. I'm a very innocent man, and it's okay. I'm fighting for our country. I'm fighting for our Constitution. Our whole country is being rigged right now. This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent. And I think it's just a disgrace.

Starting point is 00:01:56 And we'll keep fighting. We'll fight till the end and we'll win. Trump did not answer any questions from reporters after those remarks. The jury reached its decision at the end of its second day of deliberations from the start of this case. Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky predicted that the jury was going to find Trump guilty regardless of the facts and regardless of the law. In April, Hans joined us here on the Daily Signal podcast and he said, this case is just bogus from start to finish. It's in Manhattan. It's a Manhattan jury. And I'll tell you, quite frankly, I think if the DA charged Donald Trump with eating a ham sandwich, the jury would find him guilty. Well, Hans' prediction was right. The jury has indeed found former President Donald Trump guilty. We're going to learn more in the coming days about the sentencing schedule and whether this case will be appealed, which it is anticipated that it will be appealed.

Starting point is 00:02:53 Trump could face prison time, but again, we are still waiting on the details of that sentencing schedule. We will keep you all up to date in the coming days. The Supreme Court issued a ruling today, siding with the National Rifle Association and the First Amendment. The justices ruled that the NRA has the right to pursue legal action against a New York state official for encouraging companies to sever ties with the NRA. Here with us to explain more is Heritage Foundation Legal Fellow Jack Fitzhenry. Jack, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So Maria Volo, she used to serve as a superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Starting point is 00:03:35 And during her time in that position, the NRA claims that she violated. the group's free speech rights. What exactly did Maria Volo do that caused the NRA to take legal action and say that their First Amendment rights were violated? So as superintendent of the Department of Financial Services, Ms. Volo regulated entities like insurance companies that did business with the NRA.

Starting point is 00:04:00 Now, in 2017, she launched an investigation into some of these insurers claiming that their practices didn't comply with New York state law. And in retrospect, it appears that at least in some cases she was correct that they were the insurance policies that were promoted by the NRA were not in all cases compliant with New York law. The problem is that during this investigation, which rolled over into 2018, we had the tragedy of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, which obviously gained a lot of public attention and prompted a backlash to gun ownership.

Starting point is 00:04:32 So in the wake of the Parkland shooting, Ms. Volo and then Governor Andrew Cuomo sort of made it their mission to launch a statewide crusade against the NRA because of its pro-gun advocacy. And they began using all kinds of levers of state power to suppress NRA, gun advocacy, whether directly or indirectly, Ms. Vulo's activities would have been an indirect instance of that because she attempted to interfere with the business relationships that the NRA had with these insurers. And she did so by essentially coming to them oftentimes in private conversations and saying, listen, we're aware of a whole bunch of infractions that you've committed, some of them technical,

Starting point is 00:05:13 some of them totally unrelated to the NRA. The thing is that we, the New York Department of Financial Services, will be less interested in investigating these and enforcing any penalties on you if you cut all ties with the NRA. Okay. So this is how she was using her authority as head of Department of Financial Services to indirectly either suppress NRA speech or, in the alternative, to retaliate against them for the speech they had already made on behalf of gun rights. So then the NRA says that feels like a violation of our First Amendment rights, files a lawsuit,

Starting point is 00:05:49 and then ultimately the Supreme Court is asked to weigh in. That's right. So it helps to keep in mind the stage of litigation we are at here. This case is not over. It's in fact, in a rather early state. Quite right, quite right. So what happened is that the NRA files its complaint for First Amendment violations, both coerced speech by the government and retaliation by the government. The district court is quite happy to let the case proceed along its normal pace. The state of New York, less so.

Starting point is 00:06:18 They would like to see the claims dismissed right at the front end. They don't want to litigate this. They lose at the district court, but they're allowed to take what's called an interlocutory appeal to the Second Circuit. The Second Circuit agrees with the state of New York and says what Ms. Vula was engaged in was a combination of legitimate regulatory enforcement, because remember there were violations, and non-coercive government speech. Now, the category of government speech can sound a little bit foreign, but it makes total sense, right? Like politicians, officials of all source, whether elected or not, need to engage in some

Starting point is 00:06:51 amount of speech with the public, to dialogue with the public, sometimes even to advocate for their views with the public. So there is such a thing as a kind of government speech. And provided that it's non-coercive, governments have every right to advocate stridently for their views and even to criticize opponents. We're quite accustomed to this. But you can cross that line when your criticism then takes a kind of concrete form of coercive action, right, using that state regulatory authority to punish your opponents.

Starting point is 00:07:20 Second Circuit thought that the coercion wasn't there. The Supreme Court disagreed unanimously, 9-0 in an opinion written by, of all people, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which probably strikes some people as surprising, right? It reminds us that the justices are more even-handed than sometimes we give them credit for just because the NRA is a party to the litigation. It doesn't mean that the justices, even the Democrat-appointed ones, will ignore them. So Justice Sotomayor wrote for a unanimous court and said, the Second Circuit had made a mistake here.

Starting point is 00:07:53 And that mistake was to look at each individual allegation in isolation. What it should have done is take all the allegations together and see whether there was a picture of government threats, right? government threats against individual third parties. And unanimously the court found that there was a plausible threat there, as alleged. What happens now is that they have to go back to the lower courts, and it's the NRA's burden to the process of discovery adduce facts that will prove its allegations. So that's where they stand right now.

Starting point is 00:08:23 Okay. So this case is obviously, as we've said, as far from being over. If the NRA wins the case, what will that mean for both for them, for the NRA themselves and for New York? Well, in the immediate practical sense, it will mean that the NRA is able to do business with insurers in the way that it was able to before Ms. Vulo's campaign against them. She's no longer with the state, but the DFS is still there. So in a practical sense, they'll be able to do business with those insurers again. In the broader constitutional sense, it would be a win for broad speech protection

Starting point is 00:08:58 against indirect government coercion. This is sort of a gray line area. You know, where does the government's permissible speech end and truth that threats and coercion begin? It can sound in the abstract, simple enough to distinguish, but in individual cases, it's a fact-bound determination that can remain sort of slippery, so much so that it was argued on the very same day

Starting point is 00:09:25 as the NRA case that the federal government was engaged in permissible government speech rather than coercion when it told social media platforms that they had to kick off people like doctors J. Badracharya or Martin Koldorf who advocated against the lockdowns. So those two cases have sort of intersecting legal merits. There are different stages. So it's a little dangerous to look at the win here and necessarily predict a win for the doctors. that that case is Murthy v. Missouri. We're yet to have a decision there. But if the NRA is successful, it will ultimately help better define the boundary between

Starting point is 00:10:10 what governments can advocate for and when they need to back off using their regulatory power to police disfavored speech. Jack Fitzhenry of the Heritage Foundation, Jack, thanks for your time today. Thank you. The pro-Palestine and anti-Israel protests on U.S. college campuses have caught the attention of Iran's Supreme Leader. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Homini wrote an open letter to American university students taking part in the protests. He told them, you are standing on the right side of history.

Starting point is 00:10:43 Iran's supreme leader has praised the terrorists who carried out the October 7th attack on Israel and has said Iran is proud of them. The letter from Homini to the college students reads, in part, you have now formed a branch of the resistance front and have begun an honorable struggle in the face of your government's ruthless pressure, a government which openly supports the usurper and brutal Zionist regime. The Iranian Supreme Leader continued, the greater resistance front, which shares the same understandings and feelings that you have today, has been engaged in the same struggle for many years in a place far from you. The goal of this struggle is to put an end.

Starting point is 00:11:28 to the blatant oppression that the brutal Zionist terrorist network has inflicted on the Palestinian nation for many years. After seizing their country, the Zionist regime has subjected them to the harshest of pressures and tortures. Homony also wrote on X that his advice to the student protesters is to become familiar with the Quran. Now to some economic news, unfortunately, we learned today that the economy is doing worse than experts thought. it would be doing during the first quarter of this year. The U.S. economy was expected to grow at a rate of 1.6% in the first quarter from January to March. But in reality, America's GDP or gross domestic product only grew 1.3%. That is the weakest quarterly growth rate since the spring of 2022, according to the

Starting point is 00:12:20 Associated Press. Let's take a look at some of the numbers. Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antony says that new numbers out today show that the inflation-adjusted disposal income is down $1.4 trillion over the last three years. Meanwhile, Antony says that the median home price is now $391,000. That's a 45.7% increase in just four years. The New York Fed President John Williams said today that he does anticipate inflation rates will come down this year, but noted that The central bank needs to see more progress on the economic front before it lowers rates. With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks for being with us here for the Daily Signal's top news.

Starting point is 00:13:05 If you have not had the chance, be sure to check out our morning show right here in this same podcast feed. Tomorrow morning, I'm pleased to be sitting down with Julie Kirshner. She is the head of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. We discussed the threat of terrorism at America's southern border. Make sure to catch that conversation tomorrow morning. Also, be sure to hit that subscribe buttons. You never miss out on new shows from The Daily Signal. And if you would, take a minute to leave us a five-star rating and review.

Starting point is 00:13:34 Thanks again for being with us today. We'll see you right back here tomorrow morning. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Bluey and Kate Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Mary Margaret O'Lehan, and Tyler O'Neill. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com.

The Daily Signal - Jury Finds Trump Guilty on All 34 Counts, SCOTUS Delivers Win to NRA, Iran’s Supreme Leader Praises College Protests | May 30

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