The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump's Coming Arrest, and Political Prosecution Hypocrisy, with Victor Davis Hanson, Arthur Aidala, and Dave Aronberg | Ep. 520

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by lawyers Arthur Aidala and Dave Aronberg to discuss the indictment of President Donald Trump, whether there's prosecutorial discretion being applied here, the political nature of the indictment and arrest, all the key players in the case, whether DA Alvin Bragg has more evidence than the alleged Stormy Daniels hush money situation, what will happen during tomorrow's Trump arraignment, whether the case will go to trial or settle, if Trump could become president still if he's convicted, an update in the classified documents case against Trump, and more. Then Victor Davis Hanson, author of "The Dying Citizen," joins to discuss the massive political hypocrisy in the Trump potential prosecutions, Clinton and Biden potential crimes getting ignored, how the GOP should fight back now, the tricky position Gov. Ron DeSantis is in, Megyn's recent trip to D.C., and more.Aidala: https://omny.fm/shows/the-arthur-aidala-power-hourAronberg: https://twitter.com/aronbergHanson: https://victorhanson.com Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday. Hold on tight. This is going to be a history-making news week. At this hour, former President Donald Trump is leaving his Mar-a-Lago estate to head to around this thing. and will likely sit for a mugshot that will undoubtedly become the corporate media's defining image of the 21st century. Tony Maynard to discuss it all. Someone who knows the Manhattan court system very well, and of course has been a trial attorney in very, very high profile cases from Harvey Weinstein. Harvey Weinstein has now been retained to represent Ghislaine Maxwell.

You name it. Arthur Aydala has been involved in several of the biggest high profile cases we've had in New York over the past couple of decades. Trial attorney and managing partner of Aydala, Fortuna and Kamens. Also with me, Dave Ehrenberg. Dave is the state attorney. He's a prosecutor for Palm Beach County, Florida, where Mar-a-Lago happens to be located. And he can give us some insights on what the DA and his strategy may be here. Guys, thank you so much for joining me on what feels like a historic day. I mean, certainly tomorrow is, but the trip north

has presumably begun. Trump said he'd be leaving around right now to head up to New York and deal with this. Good gracious. Let me start with you on it, Arthur, as our big New York trial attorney. What do you make of what's happening right now? I just want to read you a text I just got from Joe Takapina, Mr. Trump's attorney. I can't wait for tomorrow to be over, honestly. I have his other trial in three weeks. So just so everybody knows, I went to high school with Mr. Takapina. He was a year ahead of me and looks much older than I do. But we also then wound up working in the Brooklyn District Attorney's office together. We also shared office space together. So I know Joe very well. So I just want to make that clear because, you know, I may be a little biased. I'm being totally honest. Wait, when he says they have the other case in three weeks, what's he referring to? The civil case, the civil case that's in front in federal court about a sex crime. But it's a civil thing. Those statute of limitations are clearly way gone in front of a very storied Southern District judge, Judge Lewis Kaplan, appointed by Clinton. And that's the case that actually brought Mr.

Takapina into Trump's world. Well, actually, Megan, the case that the reason why Mr. Trump knows of Mr. Takapina. I'm already confused. I'm already confused. Hold on. So I'll back up, Joe, like the federal sex crimes case against Donald Trump? It's the E. Jean Carroll case, Megan. Thank you. Oh, that one. Oh, that's nonsense. Okay. That's the civil trial.

Yeah, yeah. That's what I said. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I thought we were talking about criminal. That's a civil trial by the woman who claims he assaulted her years ago. Oh, whatever. Trump's got about 200 civil cases against him right now.

So I'm less interested in that. But I get it. Tack a penis handle like that. That one's actually going to trial. And the way Joe came into Trump's world is Kimberly Guilfoyle, who obviously you and I know, has a long-term relationship with Joe from TV. And when she had to be interviewed on the, I believe the January 6th stuff, she had Joe do that. And then the ball went rolling from there first to do the civil case, which starts in three weeks,

and then to do the criminal case, which is tomorrow's case. Okay. Okay. Got it. All right. So the audience by this point has heard most of these stats, but of course this is the first time in U S history and U S history that we've ever seen the indictment of a former sitting U S president. I mean, it's absolutely stunning. He's not sitting of a former, I said of a former sitting U S president of a former U S president. I mean, it's absolutely stunning. He's not sitting. I have a former, I said of a former sitting US president of a former US president. Um, and so that in and of itself makes it extraordinary. I think it's horrible too. I think it helps Trump politically. I really do. We'll get into all this. I really think it helps him politically, but it's horrible

for the country and it's going to be horrible for him to go through. And it's going to be horrible for us to go through. It's horrible for the system. if you ask my opinion. I mean, I was an intern in that office. My dad worked in that office for many years under Frank Hogan. I was obviously a prosecutor in New York City. I've been a criminal defense attorney. I've been in that world for 50 years. My whole life I've been in and out of that building between my dad and myself. And it's just, this is not, this is not the case. Mr. Trump may have some big issues in Georgia. He may have some big issues in Mar-a-Lago about the documents. I read today that they subpoenaed the Secret Service agents about the Mar-a-Lago case and the document case. But this case, there's no victim here. Let's just say it's 100% accurate. There is no victim. And in your introduction, you talked about prosecutorial discretion. And that's why Cy Vance, the previous prosecutor, who I believe was on some one of the shows yesterday, Meet the Press, said, you know, he wouldn't really get into why he didn't prosecute Trump, even though it's the same evidence that he had 16 months ago,

as Alan Bragg has today, because he used his prosecutorial discretion, that this was not the case that needed to be brought. There's not going to be a family sitting behind the prosecutor tomorrow saying, thank you for bringing justice to my family, whether it's for violent crime, financial crime. There's not going to be someone there from the IRS saying, thank you for bringing the millions of dollars that Mr. Trump cheated us back into the fold. There's it's a victimless crime, even under the worst case scenario. So why bring it? Why abuse, in my opinion, your prosecutorial discretion? I don't know the answer to that

question. Alvin Bragg said that he bragged when he was running, pardon the pun, Alvin bragged, that he had gone after Trump, I think sued him over 100 times in the past, and that he would prosecute him if they put him in the DA's office. And then he won a very tight race. And he was put in the DA's office. At first, he didn't prosecute. Then somebody from his office resigned in protest saying, you should go after him on all these alleged business crimes. Why didn't you do it? You know, you're you're weak. And so then he brings this case. And even that guy who wrote the book saying you're weak, you should have gone after the business crimes is calling this a zombie case, saying this wasn't it. This wasn't the one. There's so many other good things you could have done against him. But he's it's very clearly a political move.

And, you know, it's being cheered in some circles. It's being, you know, a lot of Democrats even are very worried about this, Dave. But I will say, just to bring the audience up to speed, he's right. There's no victim. This stems from a payment of $130,000. We think, just to be very transparent, we don't know. We haven't seen the indictment. It gets unveiled tomorrow at the arraignment.

So the speculation is based on pre indictment reporting. We think it stems from a one hundred and thirty thousand dollar payment that was made by Michael Cohen, Trump's fixer slash lawyer back in 1516 to stop her from going public with the an interlude she had with Donald Trump, a sexual interlude. He denies it ever happened. She allegedly was saying, I'm going to come out with it. I may file a lawsuit based on it. She was represented by Michael Avenatti, who's also weighing in on this. And the allegation is that Trump, through his fixer Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 to make it go away. Now, if that's all that had happened, Alvin Bragg would admit he has no claim against Donald Trump. Alvin Bragg, the New York DA, gets involved because he says, you know what Trump then did?

Trump then wrote down that $130,000 payment on his books in a way that hid it from tax authorities and New York state authorities and said it was just legal payments to Cohen. And that was dishonest. Well, that's normally a misdemeanor, but Alvin Bragg says I can elevate it to a felony because it was done to cover up another crime. What was the other crime? The alleged violation of federal election law. That was that hundred and thirty thousand dollar payment right before an election. Well, that's only a felony. That's only a violation of federal election law. If you do it for the sole purpose, your sole purpose has to be to make your electoral chances be better. It can't be to make Melania happier, to make myself not be as embarrassed when Barron Trump sees a porn star saying we had sex in the newspaper.

Very high bar. It's why the federal prosecutors didn't bring it. In my view, they declined. They knew all this. They were going after Cohen on a bunch of other things. He was like, I got this one, too. They had him plead guilty to it, but they knew all about this in In time to charge him at the federal level, decided not to do it. So now here's Alvin Bragg having promised to get Trump and under all this pressure. And what does

he do? He files the charge. It's like a camel, you know, like the hump put on top of the hump, but you know, it's got, it's spun out of control now where he's got like several ledges to his whole legal theory and he's filed the case. The grand jury has chosen to indict. So that, Dave, is what brings us to tomorrow where Alvin Bragg is going to have to put up or shut up. And it could be it could be he's got more than we know. What do you think of that? Well, thanks for having me back on the show, Megan, and far from me to disagree with two brilliant legal minds. No, please do.

But I'm going to disagree in part. First off, I would say this. I have said from the beginning this looks like the fourth out of four cases against Donald Trump. That's swirling around him as far as the strength of the case. I think the Mar-a-Lago documents, that's the greatest threat to Trump's future freedom. But it doesn't mean that this is a weak case. At least we don't know. I think it's premature to say that it's all based

on the Stormy Daniels payments, because after all, Jennifer Weisselberg did testify before the grand jury, and she wouldn't seem to acknowledge. Stop there. No one, literally nobody knows who that is. Explain her connection to Trump's former CFO. Good point.

Jennifer Weisselberg is the estranged ex-daughter-in-law of Allen Weisselberg, the longtime Trump Organization CFO. He knows where all the bodies are buried. He's sitting in a Rikers Island jail right now. And he is the one that the prosecutors have been trying to get to verdict against the Trump organization, but not against Trump himself. So Jennifer Weisselberg went before the grand jury. She had a lot to say. She wouldn't seem to have. Let me just jump in quickly. Let me just jump in quickly. This is so weird.

So it's like you you're an old guy. You're like 75. Alan Weisselberg is former CFO of the Trump organization. Your son marries this woman named Jennifer. Jennifer shows up at the family meals, the family holidays. Jennifer's got keen ears, allegedly. Jennifer listens to all the family convos, then divorces your son. Then Jennifer inserts herself into this proceeding and says, I know where all the bodies are buried. My former father-in-law won't flip on Trump, but I have dirt and I am ready to spill it. Right. Is that where we are so far? Yeah. Hell hath no fury like an ex-daughter-in-law

scorn. So she specified. And that's what makes me think maybe there's more to it because she wouldn't seem to know much about Stormy Daniels, but she would know some of the financial stuff that Allen Weisselberg knows. So perhaps this is more than just the hush money payment. But if we're going to go under the pretense that it's that is the hush money payment, I would agree with you that we don't know if prosecutors could even piggyback on federal law. Can a prosecutor at a state level piggyback on federal campaign law to make this a felony? We don't know. But one thing, a couple of things to know when we say this is all political. First, Alvin Bragg, as you correctly noted, Megan, he turned down the prosecution of Donald Trump a year ago when there was immense pressure to do so. He didn't think the evidence was enough. And so he said, no, here he thinks the evidence is enough.

So he's doing his job as a prosecutor to follow the evidence and the law and not politics. But here's the other thing. When Michael Cohen was prosecuted by the feds, it was for, among other things, the hush money payments. He was prosecuted and convicted. Well, also, Donald Trump was not prosecuted at the time, even though he was referred to as individual number one, an unindicted co-conspirator. And that's because he was the president at the time and you can't indict a current president. But you know who called him individual one and said he was an unindicted co-conspirator? It was the Trump DOJ. It wasn't some Soros-backed prosecutor. It was Trump's own DOJ who did it. So that's why I don't think this is purely political. And also we just still, as I said, don't know what's in there yet. But if I, Megan, while we're speaking and I have a video monitor on every, every network right now

is covering the mayor of the city of New York and the police commissioner of the city of New York. And it's all about Trump and what they're going to do to Trump and every police officer on alert for tomorrow. This is what's called, I mean, David, and you know this, this is what's called prosecutorial discretion. You know that there are these other cases out there and you just rank them as, you know, so he's the lowest guy on the totem pole and we're in, he's elected by the citizens of the Manhattan, of the borough of Manhattan, the borough of the County of New York. Look what he's doing to the city right now. Look at the expense that we're going through. And this is not why people elected him. People elected him so that when they go on the subway, on the number four train, which I just did to come to this studio, that they're

safe. And that's what you're being elected as a prosecutor, the way you were, to use your good judgment. And here you have to question, even if you're right, let's say David's right, this isn't a political thing, that they discovered that Donald Trump broke this little law that Cy Vance, a guy who was the prosecutor for 12 years, the chief prosecutor, who was a prosecutor for years before that in that office, said, I don't know of a case that they've ever elevated a misdemeanor to a felony based on election law. Never, ever. Never. So you have a guy who really knows about being the chief prosecutor of the County of New York saying they we've never done it before. And

I don't really, he didn't say this, but what's the obvious conclusion. And I don't really think we should have because he thought he should have. He could have done it. He had all this evidence. So that's my point. Alvin Bragg has misused his office and the very least and the most favorable to Alvin Bragg. He just has horrible judgment. In the meanwhile, listen to this from via The New York Post on Sunday in an op-ed from Victim Rights New York founder Jennifer Harrison. In his first year, Bragg downgraded 52 percent of felonies to misdemeanors. He downgrades felonies to misdemeanors. He doesn't upgrade misdemeanors to felonies unless your name is Donald Trump, compared with 39 percent that were downgraded the year in 2019. He had a dismal 51 percent conviction rate for felonies he did charge. So he downgraded more than half of felonies to misdemeanors. And those he did go after as

felonies, the majority he failed to convict. He's a bad prosecutor and he is a political guy and he ran as a political guy. And now Donald Trump, of course, is his number one, number one target. I mean, she raised another point, which I thought was actually quite valid, which was if he's going to target politicians attempting to make a comeback, how about Andrew Cuomo, who actually might have committed crimes in Manhattan within the statute of limitations when it comes to how he committed COVID or conducted himself during COVID in the nursing homes and the cover up of the nursing homes or his aide, Melissa DeRosa, who openly admitted to obstructing justice while they were in that.

Well, how about that? Is that is the nonpartisan, nonpolitical prosecutor going to go after Andrew Cuomo? Hell no. It's just Donald Trump because the Democrats have decided to get him any way they can. They want to stop him. Here's let's just do some let's do some protocol for tomorrow because I think viewers are interested in how this is going to go down. The arraignment, the actual arraignment happens at 215. So just briefly, Arthur, what is an arraignment like?

What happens at an arraignment? It's a if it wasn't Donald Trump, it would literally be a less than 60 seconds, maybe 120 second event. The client stands next to the defense attorney at a table before a judge. At the other table right next to them is one or two prosecutors. The clerk stands up and says this is the case of the people, the state of New York versus Donald J. Trump. Dad, Mr.

defense attorney, have you received a copy of the indictment? Yes. Do you waive. Defense attorney? Have you received a copy of the indictment? Yes. Do you waive its public reading? Because you're entitled to have it read out loud to the public. But you'll Mr. Takapino or Mr. Nicholas will say, yes, we waived. We don't need we don't need you to read in 30 or 45 days for a conference to see if the prosecutors have complied with their discovery, which under these new bail laws also encompass discovery laws, which means evidence has to be turned over much more quickly than in the past. And that's it. They'll pick a date and the date will have already been picked beforehand. They won't do it right at the bench. Takapina says they're going to plead loudly and proudly not guilty at this proceeding. It's two words. It's not that hard. But the interesting part also- Not guilty.

Even when we talk about like 215, you know, my law firm represents the New York State court officers. The Secret Service is running the whole show, right? They have to protect the president, the former president of the United States. So in that it may be in the exact courtroom where I tried the Harvey Weinstein case. When I tried that case, when we would walk outside the courtroom, the media was like within a foot of us. Right. I mean, they were behind the metal barricades, but they were very, very close. I cannot imagine that Secret Service is going to allow that to happen. I'm sure everyone is going to be pushed back. I'm sure everyone is going to be far away. I'm sure if I don't have a case on in that building that day, as many people as I know, it would be difficult for me to get into the courthouse. I'm sure that they're going to restrict access to that building severely. That's why the mayor and the police commissioner are having a press conference as we speak about all the security protocols

that are going to be going on. So I wouldn't be surprised, Megan, if there's a bait and switch. You don't need, Donald Trump is supposed to surrender very early tomorrow morning. We have about 8 million people in the city, but over 20 million people

when all the workers come in. This is obviously happening on a workday. You got 20 plus million people. They got a lot to manage. Between 6 and 7 a.m., he'll be brought into the, he's supposed to be brought in through the side door, one Hogan place.

Once he goes in the building. Between 6 and 7 a.m.? Well, I thought it was just a couple of hours before the 2.15 arraignment. This is going to happen as early as 6 and 7 a.m. tomorrow? That's when they're saying, that's my sources are saying they want him in there very early.

And the other people are saying, well, if he comes in there at 7 a.m., we don't need to do the arraignment at 2. We can do the arraignment at 11. But so I think there's a lot of that's why I'm just. What happens in the pregame there at 6 or 7 a.m.? OK, so he'll go in with the Secret Service. He'll be met downstairs by detective investigators from the Manhattan D.A DA's office and brought up into the Manhattan District Attorney's office into the detective investigators room. And that's where the famous mugshot will take place. And he'll be fingerprinted. Weird question.

Weird question. Very weird. But if you don't like your mugshot, do you get a second go? Is it like a DMV where they show it to you once? You can be like, no, I don't. I do not think that's going to happen. It'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to see.

Does Donald Trump smile? Does he keep a serious face? Like, how is he going to handle that? He'll then be fingerprinted. And typically in precincts now, there is no ink. You get you put your hand on just a piece of glass. It's all virtual. That those two

things the picture and the fingerprints get sent to albany i think you know about albany is there a moment but but wait is there a moment at which they say donald j trump you are under arrest for the following crimes and then his rights get read to him no okay that doesn't happen his rights would only be read to him if they were going to try to question him. And there's an agreement we read that they have, that they will not handcuff him. Is that normal? Not typically. It's not, but it's not normal to come in with secret service guys. So I just had one of these, it's called an X indictment. It's when you get indicted before you actually get arrested. So that's what happened here. And in the case that I had in that office with these prosecutors, they did handcuff my guy going from point A to point B. And he was a man in his 40s who never had any problems in his life with the law. And it was a

paper crime, just like this one is, no violence associated with it. But I, you know, they're not going to, the Secret Service is not going to allow Donald Trump to be handcuffed. There's a lot of protocols, a lot of coordination, because you have Secret Service, you have the DIs from the Manhattan DA's office, and then you have the New York State court officers who take over once he heads to the courtroom. And he does not need to leave the building to go from the district attorney's office into the courtroom. There's an elevator that joins them. So there'll be no outside perp walk kind of situation. He'll then go into that courtroom. And as I said, you know, just, it'll be a two minute situation. And then how he leaves the courthouse will be very interesting. Will there be any cameras inside the court?

That's totally 100% in the judge's discretion. You know, I don't know what he's going to do. I would doubt it. If I'm betting 20 bucks, I'm going to doubt it. He's going to let those courtroom artists make their money and they'll make a lot of money, you know, sketching Donald Trump standing there with his lawyers, you know, on either side of him with the judge and you know how those things work. And those courtroom artists will make a lot of money. I could see this judge not even in any way, shape, or form trying to make any kind of spectacle out of this. People know what Donald Trump looks like.

It's not like they need a photograph of him to see what he looks like there. It's really just for the purpose of prejudice. All right, I'm going to ask you about this judge in one second because I want to know what you think of this judge. But Dave, let me ask you first. There's been speculation about whether this judge might issue a gag order, a gag order, which I understand. I mean, you think about a gag order, you think, well, that's there probably mostly to defend, to protect the defendant and his

right to a fair trial. So if Donald Trump doesn't want one, will he issue one? But it's really there to protect both sides' right to a fair trial. The people also have a right to a fair trial. And you know, without a gag order, I mean, Trump's already planning tomorrow night at 815 at Mar-a-Lago. It's 815 or 8. A massive, you know, speech. He's inviting various people saying, you know, would you like to come? It's almost a loyalty test at this point. Would you like to come to Mar-a-Lago and be there for the president's remarks? So what do you think the odds are that this judge will enter a gag order? I think a condition of his pretrial release, the judge may instruct Trump not to criticize prosecutors and the judge himself. Now maybe that's just wishful thinking.

I think the greatest threat to Trump is that a gag order will be imposed and then he will be unable to live by it. And then he could get sentenced to 30 days in jail before the trial. So he's got to worry about that. I think his lawyers and Arthur knows his lawyers better than I do, but I think his lawyers probably want some sort of restriction because they know every time that Donald Trump speaks about the case, he hurts himself. He makes admissions. He contradicts his other stories. On the other hand, they may not want a full gag order that would set a trap for Trump

to be sentenced to jail because I don't know if he could abide by it. So I think the court will instruct Trump. I don't know if he's going to issue the gag order right away. I think at some point he may have to because he can't go around and call the prosecutor a criminal, a communist, corrupt. And the same thing for the judge. Judges don't like that either. They wear the black robes and, you know, you stand up when they walk in the room. They don't like being criticized like that either. I agree. What do you think? I agree with David.

I think Judge Merchant will do something, will say something. You know, in New York, and I'm sure it's the same in Florida, there are ethical issues regarding lawyers making out-of-court statements about the case that they're involved in. And, you know, I had to tread lightly when I was representing both Lawrence Taylor and Harvey Weinstein, because, you know, you want to defend your client in the court of public opinion because these are public people and and that matters to them. And it matters to Donald Trump much more than the other two people I just spoke about, because he still wants to be the

president of the United States. He's running right now. Excuse me. He's running right now. I mean, that's one of the things that lends the absurdity to this. There's an ethical rule for Mr. Takapina and Ms. Susan Necklace about saying anything outside of the court about their case that could be considered any kind of jury intimidation, any kind of witness intimidation. Does that apply to Trump? No, no, it doesn't apply to Trump. But then the judge, the judge can warn Mr. Trump. My guess, this is my guess. It's a total guess. He's going to say, Mr. Trump, I'm not putting a gag order on you now.

However, I am going to monitor very closely all of your statements on the social media, or live or elsewhere. And if I think you come to the point where I'm going to issue a gag order, I will do so. And the consequences are you can be charged with a crime, the a misdemeanor in New York state of contempt of court. And you could get, I could give you up to 30 days in jail on that alone and a fine. I think it's 500 or a thousand dollars. How can we have that? How it's making my head hurt. How can you have the, by far the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president right now in this country?

The latest poll had him 30 points, I think, ahead of Ron DeSantis post indictment, by the way, post. How can you have the leading candidate for the GOP nomination told we're we're prosecuting prosecuting you on a brand new novel crime theory that even the former Democratic DA wouldn't bring, that you yourself failed to bring until you got pressured, Mr. Bragg. First time in U.S. history, we've gone after a former president. We're going to prosecute you on this novel crime theory for which the statute of limitations may already run all these weaknesses in the case, according to both sides. And you can't say anything about it. You have to keep your mouth shut. Well, that's why you can't criticize the D.A. You can't criticize the charge. How that can't how is that even constitutional? How can that be

constitutional? That's why I get Dave and then I'll go back to you. Yeah. Yeah. On this, Arthur, and I totally agree. I think the judge is going to admonish Trump, say, look, we're going to be watching you. Be careful what you say. You can't criticize prosecutors and this court. But I don't think they're going to impose a gag order yet. It may down the line happen, but not yet. And also, even if the gag order is imposed, I think it'll be a partial gag order. It will not prohibit Trump from talking about the case, but it'll prohibit him from bashing the prosecutors and the process. And the witnesses. He could do it yesterday. He could do it this morning. He could do it this

morning. He could do it yesterday, but he can't do it after the arraignment because some magical cloak of protection comes down over Alvin Bragg. Yes, that's the truth, Megan. Yes. Yes, that's correct. Once you are invited, once you're then that magical cloak comes out and a judge now has control and power over you. But you see the position Trump is in? Because unlike any other defendant, literally every media company in America will be devoting full-time coverage to this, and 99% of them will be anti-Trump. So he is up against the universe saying, look at this terrible indictment. It's got new juicy stuff. Let's latch on to the new Jennifer Weisselberg stuff. By the way,

there's a long piece in the New York Post about whether she's credible or not. It's actually very interesting. It was saying she's a PR lover that intentionally inserted herself into this. And Michael Cohen is a, I mean, it's just just what are you saying? Michael Cohen has obviously got massive problems and so on. So how can it be that every newspaper, every every cable show, every broadcast network is going to slam, slam, slam? And Trump has to be like, I'm a good little boy. I can't say anything about the mean Alvin Bragg. I mean, just it's so unprecedented, Arthur. I don't know that they'll be able to enforce this to keep him silent.

I mean, they can enforce it. Whether Trump abides by it or not is a different story. They will charge him. Look, I don't think it's going to happen tomorrow. I think the judge will say, I understand, you know, you need to defend yourself and I'm allowing you to do so, but I'm going to monitor how fiery basically your language is and whether it's intimidating to people who would be witnesses in this case, or if it's so incendiary, whatever the big word is, fiery, that you're going to intimidate jurors or influence jurors inappropriately. But if he does, the law in New York is the judge has to have a very clear ruling as to what the parameters are. I don't think that's going to happen tomorrow, but the judge could call him back at any time. So, so tomorrow night at 815, when he has that rally,

if he says some crazy stuff, the judge could call Mr. Takapina and Ms. Nichols and say, I want your client back here tomorrow at 3 p.m. Oh my God. Mr. Takapina and Ms. Nichols and say, I want your client back here tomorrow at 3 p.m. Oh, my God. Because I'm issuing a gag order. And if he violates it, they're going to sit Trump's ass in jail for 30 days per violation. My God. Megan, also, it's already a crime if you try to intimidate witnesses, if you try to obstruct. And so he is getting closer to line when he says some of the inflammatory incendiary stuff, Arthur. Thank you. I appreciate it that he's been saying. So it's already a separate crime. And I don't think Alvin Bragg's charging him with those crimes,

but I think he's going to leave it up to the judge to step in if he does cross the line. That wasn't Cy Vance saying that as well. Yesterday, I meet the press that if I were Trump, I'd be very worried. Like, I'd be very careful about what I say publicly, because there are other crimes once you've been charged that can be slapped on you really quickly that may be even stronger than this crime. So like you said, jury intimidation or intimidation of the judge, which he does not want to add to his list of legal woes. Just want to correct, I said in the New York Post had a piece about Jennifer Weisselberg. It was the Daily Beast, which is a much more friendly publication to the anti-Trump side. And I will say this about her just to follow up on what you were saying, Dave.

This woman, they're reporting she did not actually testify before this grand jury, but that she was there testifying before a different grand jury in a case unrelated to Trump. So we're not 100% sure whether she actually wound up in front of the Trump grand jury or not. But they said she had walked into the DA's office midday Monday, claimed a reporter staking out the grand jury that she was about to help prosecutors nail Trump on something that's, quote, bigger than any taxes, paper, insurance, banks, insurance. It's bigger than money, she claimed. Quoting from the Daily Beast in the hours after making her claims, two sources with direct knowledge of the investigation told the Daily Beast that Weisselberg had merely used the intense media focus on the case to bring attention to herself. Her attorney, who has guided her through previous interviews with investigators about the Trump org, did not accompany her on Monday. And they say her media stunt casts doubt on her reliability as a witness could prevent investigators from using her to testify in the future about anything about Team Trump. Very interesting. I mean, you never know. These these things bring out such a weird cast of characters who are like, look at me. My left side's my best. If you wouldn't mind just shooting me with a Klieg lights.

And as I said, now Avenatti's weighing in from prison about he thinks this case stinks. Avenatti, the one who shoved us, who shoved this down our throats with Stormy Daniels in the beginning, who now is sitting in prison. Presidential candidate Avenatti. He was running for president. Remember, Megan? Yeah, he was. Now he's in the pokey for 11 years and he's still commenting and the news is reporting it.

And this one's actually kind of interesting. So I'll tell you what he's saying. And then I want to talk about what's going to happen. How long is this case? Could this case get resolved before the presidential election? What if it doesn't? What if it does? And he gets convicted. I got so many more questions. Arthur and Dave stick around after this quick break. They'll be back with much more great info. We're told that Trump has left Mar-a-Lago. He is about to go wheels up down in West Palm Beach. They are awaiting the media a shot of him walking up the stairs onto his airplane.

And you can bet the same will be true when it's wheels down here in New York on what truly is history in the making. You know, whether you think it's disgraceful or a cause for celebration, as some in the media do, it's history. That's for sure. I mean, I do think I said this at the National Review Institute event that I attended on Thursday before he'd been indicted. I said, if I were Trump, I'd be on my knees praying for an indictment, especially in this case, because it's the weakest one. It's not because anybody wants to be indicted. And I understand the reporting is by Maggie Haberman and the New York Times and others that Trump is genuinely rattled by this. Of course, he could go to prison. I mean, it's a New York jury. He's not going to be charged or tried in Texas. He's going to be charged in Manhattan. It went 87 percent for Joe Biden. This is not

it's complicated because Trump has a long history in the city. So he's not exactly loathed by everybody. Before he ran for exactly loathed by everybody. Before he ran for president, he was kind of beloved. But things have changed. So you don't want this, you know, as a human. But as a political matter, like I said, he's up almost 30 points over Ron DeSantis now. And he took in four plus million just in the first 24 hours after the indictment was alleged. And he could get this whole case kicked on the papers.

Could he not, Dave? Joe Takapina, his lawyer, has said he's not going to make a motion to dismiss tomorrow. He said that would be theater. That's not going to happen. But he's going to file on the papers a motion to dismiss based on legal arguments, saying all the things we kicked off the show with. It's a federal crime. It's never been used before. You can't have a state prosecutor. The statute of limitations has run. It's really just a misdemeanor. So the statute is definitely run all the stuff that we were saying. Megan, I don't think they're going to get this case kicked on any of those grounds with the possibility of one additional argument, which is intent to defraud. Now, under the falsification statute, falsification of business records, which is just a misdemeanor, you have to have an intent to defraud. And there is a legitimate question whether there would be an intention to fraud here because some courts have said that you need money or property.

And as Arthur said and you said at the beginning of the show, is there as a state out any money or property? Michael Cohen paid taxes on this. That's why he got reimbursed excessively. He paid taxes. The state's not out. No one else seems to be out money or property. So if that's the narrow interpretation that the courts will have, then yes, they could get this whole thing thrown out if the case involves the falsification of business records. Again, we don't totally know. I think the other arguments are weak. I think the statute of limitations argument will be rejected because Trump left the state. He moved right here in my backyard, Palm Beach. And when he did so, it pauses the statute of limitations.

David, let me just address that. So how were they able to indict him now? In other words, the whole time from the moment he left Washington, D.C. until whatever, Thursday, they could have indicted him anytime. So I think that that argument just doesn't hold water because they just showed that they could indict him when he's outside of the jurisdiction. I think Megan loves to talk about Andrew Cuomo. I think Andrew Cuomo suspending the or tolling the statute of limitations during the corona period or in the covid period, be what they're hanging their hat on. I will tell you, Megan, I did my own homework behind the scenes. The Manhattan

DA's office is very confident that they have a strong argument regarding the statute of limitations. Okay. And if I could add, I was about to mention the Andrew Cuomo COVID pausing the statute of limitations too. So there are two reasons why, and that's why I agree. This case would not have been filed if they thought there was a statute of limitations bar to it. They're going ahead because they think it'll at least get to a jury. Okay. And if it gets to a jury. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. About what you said about Maggie Haberman, because I read what was in the Times yesterday. I know she hates Trump. She's such a Trump hater. It's like everything she writes. So Joe told me about his first conversation with the president. And all he said was that,

you know, the president was very quiet when he got the news. He was a little bit like taken back because don't forget, they said it was going to happen in a month. Not right. They lied to all of them. They lied to the, oh yeah, this isn't going to happen for a while. The grand jury is not coming back probably till the end of April. And then all of a sudden, kaboom, this happened. I believe the prosecutor said, you know, that things are going to be quiet for a while. You know, you won't hear from us for a while. And then all of a sudden, you know, that this, this, I mean, it was widely reported here, David, that the grand jury was in recess on the Trump matter until middle to the end of April. And now all of a sudden on March 30th,

he gets indicted. So when the president found out, he was surprised on two fronts, that he actually got indicted. And number two, the timing of it. But shortly thereafter, President Trump made sure his legal team knew that he was fired up and he was ready to go. And he was out at dinner and he was ready to do battle. He was playing golf yesterday. Yeah. I mean, as you said, Megan, nobody wants to be indicted, but in my opinion, he's proving so many people right. Well, I should say Alvin Bragg is proving them right, that this is a witch hunt, that this is a very low level crime. Cy Vance said they've never done anything like this before. And so Donald Trump gets to say, see, I told you they just I'm the guy and they're looking for any crime whatsoever to come after me.

Just to respond to Arthur on that, I saw the Cy Vance interviews and Cy Vance said the reason why his office didn't pursue this particular matter was because he was asked by the Southern District of New York, Bill Barr's Justice Department, to stand down. So whether you want to believe him or not, that's why he said he didn't do it. Now, the one thing that I will agree with Arthur and you, Megan, is, yes, Saivan said that he is not aware of any case where the campaign finance law has been piggybacked upon to create a felony. Normally, when you create a felony from the falsification of business records, it's for some other crime, not campaign finance. But again, we don't know what it's going to be. I will say to you that if the case involves solely the falsification of business records and the campaign finance, then it's weaker than a lot of us would have thought it would be. No, it's an important asterisk. We got there. All we know is 32 counts and the media is like,

oh, 32 counts. Now that could just be repetitive. It could have been like, and on January 1st, you entered the falsification. And on February 1st, you entered a falsification. Like it could be the same crime spaced out. Right. It could very much in a conspiracy case. So, or it could be new stuff that we don't know about yet. And we need to keep an open mind to see, well, what do you have there? Whether it would ever get to the level of, you it, whether it's in the interest of justice in the country or your state to prosecute it. And that politics are not supposed to be at play. So we'll keep an open mind to it. But here's first I want to tell you this. We we've got two updates for you before we show this video.

Mayor Eric Adams telling the Trump supporters today, control yourselves, control yourselves. Lovely. Says New York City is our home, not a playground for your misplaced anger. Oh, well, who are you to tell me my anger is misplaced? Maybe my anger is righteous, sir. Although we have no specific threats, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is known to spread misinformation and hate speech, stated she's coming to town. Wrongly handled, Mr. Mayor. Could you try to rise above the politics in your message to tell everybody to rise above the politics? Just be a classy, calm leader. Go take a look back at how Bloomberg did it. Even Giuliani during times of trouble for the city was spectacular back then. Now Trump has gone up the steps. He's walked up the steps. We have video of it. Let's check it

out and see how he looked. Here he is. He's getting out of the SUV for the listening audience. Can't really see him very well. I see nothing. Okay, here he goes. He's going up the stairs. You can see no facial expressions. Was he talking to Melania?

No, okay. No, he wasn't talking to Melania. She's not coming. None family's coming there he is he stops he waves before he gets in the plane all right no big news there we'll see if there's anything more on the New York end so here's the thing I really want to talk about Arthur which is what's the strategy for Takapina now does he want a trial right away Trump's typical legal approach has been delay delay delay obfuscate he knows his way around a courthouse. It's all civil. But what's the strategy? Get a trial ASAP or delay it until after 2024, November? like 90, I don't know if it's 91, 92, 93. They wind up in some sort of police settlement. I am confident in Mr. Takapina and Susan Necklace that they will have some sort of a disposition that they could present to Donald Trump.

And then President Trump will make the decision, okay, do I take this misdemeanor? No way. He's not going to plead to a fine. Do I take this misdemeanor and pay a $500 fine and the case is over with and now I can just not be distracted with this? Or do I want my day in court and go through all of that? Would Bragg take that? Would Bragg ever take misdemeanor, a $500 fine? I can see why Trump could eventually be talked into that, but why would Bragg take that?

The thing is this, Megan, you never know. When I represented Lawrence Taylor, the first offer was like five years in prison and all kinds of stuff. He wound up with a misdemeanor and probation. So you never know what happens and what changes. A case is like a child. You start off as an infant and then you grow into an adult. So I don't know if Bragg would take it. If he wouldn't take it, well, let's see how much pressure he gets on it. And one thing we want to talk about with Bragg, before this Trump thing, he was not exactly Mr. Popular district attorney here in New York, talking about 52% of those cases being reduced. The people in New York, every shape and color want to be safe. They want to be safe. And Bragg, it was not exactly winning any awards. But then you say correctly that Biden got 87 percent of the vote. And so

I don't think there's any going to be tears shed for most of New Yorkers, most of Manhattanites that Trump gets indicted. I also don't think Donald Trump can get a fair trial. Having just done the Harvey Weinstein trial in there and seeing what the jury pool looks like, I do not think that Donald Trump could get a fair trial. Trump's already saying he wants to change a venue. He wants to change a judge. He wants to change a prosecutor. Is he going to get any of that? Do you think Arthur? No, no, I don't. I mean, not even change a venue. When I handed in the motion to the appellate division for change of venue for Harvey Weinstein, the clerk with them, he had smile and said, Arthur, where would you like to change the

venue to Mars? Everyone knows about this case. Everyone's got an opinion on it. No one's granting you a change of venue. And Trump's knows about this case. Everyone's got an opinion on it. No one's granting you a change of venue. And Trump's going to say, how about Mississippi, Alabama? It's got to be in the state of New York. So it's got to be in Albany, Binghamton, Rochester, Buffalo, Staten Island, Staten Island. I don't think so. Yeah. I mean, I can just say one more thing before we have to go, I know, about the media coverage. And this is where I'm going to throw my objectivity out of the window or subjectivity out of the window regarding Mr. Takapina. What the late night hosts have done to Joe Takapina, they would never dream of saying the things against Mr. Takapina about Ben Crump, who is another fine lawyer. They said that Joe Takapina's office is the back of the Bada Bing strip club, that he was conceived in Rudy Giuliani's ashtray

in his Lincoln town car. You know, the duplicity and just nastiness and actual prejudice and racism is just crazy. And yet, you know, it's okay. It's just because, you know, and, and Joe, look, he's a brawler. He's a tough guy, but he's won some real cases. And I'm not saying this is my buddy. I'm saying it because it's the facts. I've seen it as a lawyer. Fantastic. She's fantastic. He's fantastic. And they're, they compliment each other. And Maggie Haberman saying there's trouble on the legal team. That's all BS. It really is all BS.

If you look at Rolling Stone magazine came out with an article trying to say that there was dissension in the troops. And Susan Nicholas said, absolutely not. I think Joe's a great lawyer. Trump said, I'm very pleased with my legal team. But the media has got to create, oh, there's trouble in Trump. They're going to do to him what they did to Dershowitz and try to make his his name a dirty word. It's absolutely despicable. He's entitled to a great lawyer. And he and the people who hate him most should want him to have a great lawyer.

That's how the system works best. But wait, let's try to get to what when this case gets tried. Like, I see your point. But, Dave, what do you think? Like, is there any way this case, if nobody settles, if nobody offers a plea or nobody takes a plea, like what happens? Because if he gets convicted, do you think Trump could actually go to jail? And if he gets convicted, does he, is he disqualified? It's not like the, like the impeachment where you get, if you get found guilty on an impeachment trial, you can no longer run. What happens? If he is convicted, he is not disqualified from running for president or serving as president.

The Constitution sets forth the requirements to be president and doesn't say anything about a conviction in there. And Eugene Debs, the famous socialist leader, ran for president from prison. Thankfully, he didn't win. So we'll see what happens. But I think this, a lot of the outrage that we're expressing, you know, at least you guys are expressing that. So me, but a lot of the outrage I think is going to be washed away once Trump gets indicted by the feds. I think that's coming on the Mar-a-Lago documents, possibly on January 6th. And then the Georgia case, I think this stuff, I think, will fade into the background and he will really have to worry about those cases because those cases are the ones that pose real possibility of prison time. This one, I'm not so sure. All right. Now, listen, I actually want to talk to you about that. I know Arthur's got to go,

but Dave, can you stick around for 10 more minutes so we can talk about the breaking news on the on the Mar-a-Lago documents? Sure, let's do it. I'm actually going to that. I'm actually going to that courthouse right now, Meg. And the average time of a trial is one year. Till trial. OK, so quick, quick, quick before we go, quick, quick, quick, Arthur, what do you make of the judge? He's, Trump could have had a lot worse picks than him. He's a serious guy, but he's, he's fair. And he did the, he did the Trump corporation case. And

I spoke to the lawyers there and, you know, he leans prosecutorial, but he's, I mean, there are some judges in there, Megan, that are absolute prosecutor judges. One last thing. If Trump got convicted of what we're speaking of, I spoke to my two judges who are in my law firm. Both of them said there's no judge who is sending him to prison. Well, the nation can't handle that. We can't. That's too much. Arthur, great to see you, Dave. Stick around. We'll do 10 minutes on this breaking news out of the Washington Post on what's happening in that Mar-a-Lago case. Here with me still is Dave Ehrenberg. He's the state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida,

where Mar-a-Lago is located. So Dave, many Democrats are upset at Alvin Bragg and this prosecution being brought because they say, yes, we want to get Trump, but this is the weakest one that's of the potential cases that are lurking out there. You got the Georgia alleged interference with the election based on Trump saying, find me the vote. I need you to find me X votes. Very defensible, I got to say. very defensible if you're a lawyer. Okay. There's that one. Um, there's New York and then there's this special counsel probe, um, run by Jack Smith. Who's looking into whether Donald Trump improperly responded to a subpoena that was served on him and his lawyers with respect to those documents being kept at Mar-a-Lago and the bigger

obstruction probe that that happened in the context of to see whether Donald Trump behaved inappropriately in connection with January 6th to begin with. Did he somehow obstruct justice on that day? There's the bigger umbrella layer of what'd you do on Jan 6th and was a criminal. And then that brought them to getting documents from Mar-a-Lago. Oh, you've got classified docs. Oh, here's a subpoena because you're not cooperating. Oh, did you misbehave once you got the subpoena? So lots of potential places in that probe for possible criminal charges. And there's news on that. And I'll start with what Brett Baer just reported because it's the most recent and it's concerning. Brett Baer reporting today, Fox News is told multiple U.S. Secret Service agents connected to former President Donald Trump have been subpoenaed and are expected to testify before that D.C. grand jury, likely on Friday.

This is a Today tweet. The grand jury appearances are related to the special counsel Jack Smith probe into the handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. So they're going to drag U.S. Secret Service agents connected to Trump before that grand jury. This, as the Washington Post is reporting that the obstruction case against Trump in general appears to be getting much more intense. They don't report the Secret Service piece of it. They report that, for example, investigators now suspect based on witness statements security camera footage and other documentary evidence that boxes including classified material were moved from a mar-a-lago storage area after the subpoena was served and that trump personally examined

at least some of those boxes washington post reported back in oct October that someone who works for Trump, his valet, Walt Nauta, had told investigators he moved boxes at Mar-a-Lago at the former president's instruction after the subpoena was issued after matters. Smith's team, the prosecutor's team, special prosecutor team, has video surveillance footage apparently corroborating the account that documents were moved after the subpoena was issued. Okay, well, moved, what does that tell us? Does it mean they weren't produced? That's certainly the implication. And finally, they say evidence has been amassed, indicating Trump told others to mislead government officials in early 2022, before the subpoena when the National Archives

was working with DOJ to try to recover these papers and that he ignored requests from multiple advisors to return the documents to the archives. And even after he'd been advised by many people telling him you cannot keep the documents doing so could be legally perilous. So that one's definitely heating up. What are your thoughts on it? Megan, this is the greatest threat to Donald Trump. It's not New York or even Atlanta. It's not even regarding January 6th. It's the documents because there's a direct tie between Donald Trump and the alleged criminality there at Mar-a-Lago. And for people who said, well, Biden did it and Pence did it. It's not about the possession of the documents. It's about the refusal to give them back. Anymore. Well, it was always-

They weren't letting go of that in the beginning. And agreed, because there were three potential statutes involved. And the most serious, though, has always been the obstruction. And that's 18 U.S.C. 1519, which would get you up to 20 years in prison. And that's what separates Trump from the others. And if they can show that he got the subpoena and he personally directed his staff to hide the documents, to move it around because there was a camera outside the storage facility. And he was told to put a lock on that storage facility.

And yet if he told him to move it around to keep it away from the feds, that's really bad. And now they're subpoenaing the Secret Service because they're there the whole time. And there's no special privilege between a Secret Service agent and his or her charge in Donald Trump, as opposed to attorney-client privilege. And even that privilege can be broken through. As we've seen in this case, Evan Corcoran has been compelled to testify because- Who's that? Tell us who.

That's a lawyer, but explain. I gotta learn. When I go on your show, I gotta make sure, yeah, right. I don't talk like a lawyer and try not to use acronyms and, right, I got it. My goal, Dave, is always for the viewers who've been paying a lot of attention to this, they don't mind a repetition of a fact or two,

but for the viewers who are living their lives not paying that much attention to this, they always appreciate just a quick, who is this? Yeah, and you do it the right way. It's a good lesson for all of us lawyers not to speak in legalese. So Evan Corcoran is Donald Trump's lawyer who drafted the letter that told the feds that all the documents had been returned. Now, noticeably, he did not sign the letter. That was a different lawyer, Christina Bob. It's never a good idea to sign a letter that the drafter won't sign himself. But Evan Corkin was called in and he said, attorney client privilege. I can't tell you who told me what and when. And then the courts

said, no, no, you've got to give up that information because even under attorney client privilege, there was somebody called the crime fraud exception, which means a lawyer can't be used to facilitate a crime. So that's really Trump's problem. I don't even think it's Secret Service is as big of a problem as his own lawyer giving up the ghost. I can't help but feel. Why didn't why wasn't this done to Hillary Clinton, the use of her lawyer to do all of her dirty work. We've allowed her to do that for how many years now? She gets a total pass. I can't get past. It's Trump. That's why. I'm not defending. If he got a subpoena and he hid documents, that's not okay. As a lawyer, you don't have to persuade me. I mean, that's like you're supposed to treat subpoenas very respectfully. That's an issue from the court saying, hand these documents over. You can't start hiding them.

But it's just so aggravating because she's gotten away with so much. We just went through this whole thing where she used her lawyer to go into the FBI to try to sick them on Donald Trump and say that he was using some Russian bank to hide his nefarious dealings. You know, she's been using lawyers to do her dirty work forever. And we just generally haven't had a practice of criminalizing the behavior of somebody in her position. Yes, we've sniffed around the lawyers from time to time, but this is everything with him is different. Well, Megan, that guy Sussman, I think you're referring to is the person who went before the feds and said, here's the stuff about Donald Trump. And he was prosecuted

for lying to the feds. The lawyers we sniff around, the lawyers we sniff around, but we never go after the actual principle for making it happen. Right. She just smarter about not putting her fingerprints on it because you want to go after the lawyer who signed the thing saying we returned all the documents. That's one thing we can get into that. But they're not doing that here. They're talking about going after Trump and Trump's. I'm sure going to claim I didn't issue the lawyer any orders. He's the lawyer. He knows what to do. Well, either Trump or Corcoran, the lawyer, to me, is going to go down for obstruction. One of those two or both. But I think Corcoran is going to save himself by saying, the guy who gave me the information that said that all the documents had been returned is my client. Because Corcoran could face the same 20 years in prison. gave me the information that said that all the documents had been returned is my client because

Corcoran could face the same 20 years in prison. Why can't Donald Trump say that, you know, there, I don't know, it was the subpoena for all documents or was it for classified documents? The subpoena were for all the documents that would be, that he was not allowed to keep. So I guess it would be for the classified documents because Trump would be able to. So why can't, why is that case such a slam dunk? Why can't he say I'm the former president and I declassified them and there was nothing that was responsive. You're lucky you got the ones I did send you. That is his defense. In fact, Kash Patel has said, I heard him declassify all the documents. And so they brought Kash Patel, which is an aid to former president Trump before the grand jury. And they said, okay,

tell us what you know. And so he had to say, when did you when did he say that? And under the law, a president cannot just declare, hey, I declassify. It's not like like Michael Scott, an episode of The Office did that. I declare bankruptcy. It doesn't work like that. You got to file certain paperwork and you can't declassify everything. There are nuclear secrets that have to be declassified only by the Department of Energy. So I don't think that's declassified only by the Department of Energy. So I don't think that's a good defense. But the Department of Justice is actually interviewing a bunch of people to make sure that Trump didn't do that anyways, that this isn't just some post facto explanation, because they don't want to go to trial against Trump and have Trump say, this is my defense and have one juror have reasonable doubt.

And that's a Hungary. I will say, because I've been thirsty for answers to these questions about can a president declassify in this way? Like what are the requirements? And my takeaway from reading very smart people on both sides of the aisle is it's not as clear as you just laid out. I wish it were more clear. It's it's really not that clear. I'm sure everyone involved is wishing it were more clear. And I think he's got some wiggle room I'm sure everyone involved is wishing it were more clear. And I think he's got some wiggle room there. We've had some smart lawyers on the show to sort of outline that for us. But we'll see. But at this point, I mean, Dave, just as a as somebody who's who's in the business of seeking justice for the people. You can't have this can't have Trump charged criminally in new york potentially charged

criminally in georgia that's where we had the crazy grand juror for a person running around saying you won't be surprised that lunatic and now we have this right you make it charged by jack smith in this dc special i mean this this will tear our country apart you know megan i know there are a lot of people who say that, but as a prosecutor, I just I have to disagree because we live under the principle that no one is above the law. And if the evidence is there and the law is there, you go. And Donald Trump benefited from politics because he would have been indicted with Michael Cohen on this whole hush money scheme if he was not the president.

He was the president, so he benefited from an internal DOJ policy that you don't indict a sitting president. And then you had Bill Barr protect him by calling off the dogs at the Southern District of New York and in Manhattan in the state prosecutor's office. So he's benefited from certain political- Bill Barr doesn't control the state prosecutor. The state prosecutor doesn't answer Bill Barr. If he wanted to go after Trump, he could have done it easily. Well, that's that's true. But I got to say, from a state prosecutor

perspective, when the feds tell you to stand down, you generally do it. You defer to the feds. Now you do it because you think the feds are going to pursue it. You don't do it because the feds say because the feds and the feds don't believe that he thought that that's just an excuse now after the fact. I mean, I'll give you some of the other points, but that one he could have done it if he wanted he can't blame bill barr for this no whoever thought bill barr was going to go after donald trump really okay um i'm very concerned about it before i let you go i gotta ask you one thing because i promised the people michael avenatti tweets and i am a woman of my word so avenatti somehow is sitting in prison tweeting i mean did they have social media does he have an ip iPhone in prison? I don't get it. Maybe he's like sending letters and having somebody else tweet for him,

but here's what he tweeted. Rule. If you have to meet with a witness over 20 times, he's speaking of Michael Cohen, to get to the alleged facts and truth, run in all caps, because you've got yourself a terrible witness who cannot be trusted and might just crater your career and your reputation. Michael Cohen does have severe credibility problems. He goes on. There are many critical facts and pieces of evidence, texts, emails, et cetera, relating to this hush money scandal that I've yet to see the light of day. And he knows because he represented Stormy. And they will unfortunately be very damaging to the prosecution if Trump stands trial. At this point,

you simply cannot build a case on the testimony of Cohen and Daniels. Now, I will say between Michael Avenatti and Michael Cohen, you couldn't find somebody less credible. Neither one of these people understands the truth if it's staring them in the face. So I don't put really much credit in what he says either. But it is extraordinary to have her lawyer out there saying, oh, wait until you get a load of the text. It's not going to work for the prosecution. Yeah, those guys hate each other. They've hated each other for years. And I can't explain what I don't know what he's referring to about all this other evidence. We haven't seen it. And, you know, judge it by the guy, Michael Abinadi, who's a convicted felon.

And how do you get a phone? Oh, well, that's why, Megan, I think the feds never charged this case after Biden took over the Department of Justice. I thought maybe it was because January 6th distracted them. They had bigger fish to fry. But from what I'm hearing is they just never trusted Michael Cohen as a witness. But the state prosecutors do. And as far as Avenatti, I wonder, too, how is he getting a phone in prison? You know, is it like a phone inside of a cake like they used to do with files inside of a cake? I don't know how they do that. That's a crime. You can't smuggle in contraband.

So I don't know how he does it. I don't know how he does it either. But, you know, God love him. He sees an opportunity to put his name back in the news. And true to form, he does it. Dave, such an interesting conversation. Thank you for your honest analysis. Sure. Thanks for having me. I guess my Avenatti can run for president from prison. We've seen it done before. Oh, my God. We deserve better, please. The way things are going now, it's going to be Cohen versus Avenatti. All the best, sir. We're going to be right back with the man I've been dying to talk to about this, and that is Victor Davis Hanson. Don't miss him.

In the days since Donald Trump's indictment, which we have yet to see, again, we expect it to be made public at the arraignment on Tuesday, the GOP field has grown. Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson becoming the latest to throw his hat in the ring. He says Trump needs to drop out. But as of now, it would appear that the American public does not agree. Not only is Trump leading in the latest polls, one poll shows his lead has increased substantially since news of his indictment broke. And just look at the show of support for the former president as he left Florida for New York. Here are folks on the street waving 2024 Trump flags lining up. And we have other videos show you in a moment. Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the book, The Dying Citizen.

Victor, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Can I start with this? Some of the people defending against the fact that this is the first time the republic has survived about 250 years. This is the first time this has ever been done it's not the first time a crime has ever allegedly been committed by a former president some of the defenders of this prosecution say trump's extraordinary trump's different trump is extra legal in the way he approaches life behavior all laws therefore this is not precedent setting. The ringmaster

stands in a unique position. Therefore, don't worry. It won't be an opening of the floodgates. And I didn't believe it. And I thought Buck Sexton had a great tweet that kind of summed up my feelings in response. He tweeted out, the lesson of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation was that the Democrats will make up anything about anyone to destroy them. Now the lesson of Trump's indictment is that they will charge anyone about anything to destroy them. Does anyone really believe crossing this Rubicon will stop with Trump? Yeah. Well, you know, I was listening to your prior guest and I must confess, I was very disappointed. He is in a complete legal and political bubble. He has no idea what the public is thinking. When he says as a prosecutor, he has

a duty. Does he really believe that we're going to, we're going to be convinced that if Donald Trump, New York developer, pretty prominent person in New York would have been indicted for this. No, he wouldn't know. And when you mentioned Hillary Clinton, I thought to myself, felony number one, she transmitted top secret documents, at least 16 classified messages on a private server. James Comey said it was an indictable offense, but he didn't think most prosecutors would do it. And then she destroyed felony two subpoena documents. Felony three, she hired a foreign national, Christopher Steele, paid him and hit it through three paywall. You're not supposed to hire foreigners to work on your campaign. That's what he was doing. Then she was fined number four for, she called it legal expenses, but that was hiding the million dollar payment

through three paywalls. James Comer was the director of national intelligence. He lied on her oath to Congress and admitted he did. John Brennan admitted on two occasions he lied before Congress. James Comer went before the Congressional Intelligence Committee and admitted that on 245 occasions he couldn't remember. So what I'm getting at is not a what about him or what about him, but the public will not believe that there's an equal application of justice. This isn't a writ for Donald Trump at all. But they're never going to convince anybody that in this particular case, they just happened to go after Trump because this is a statute which they apply equally to every other prominent political figure. They don't. And to try to suggest that they do is an insult to a person's intelligence. And then the other thing is this argument that

he's been serial. Yes, he's reckless. Yes, he's on the edge. He's always on the razor's edge. Yes, he's different than most candidates. But we were told that Robert Mueller, the same vocabulary has been using. I hear it all the time on the media. Walls are closing in on Donald Trump. Walls are closing in. It's everywhere. Bombshell disclosure. And even your guest was telling us in detail what he's been told about the Mar- Joe Biden, which has a very different protocol, how they're courting him deference. And we hear all of these leaks coming from lawyers about this other investigation. And when you look back at it, Russian disinformation, we heard the same thing, and it was a complete hoax. Same thing about the Hunter laptop disinformation and it was a complete hoax. Same thing about the Hunter laptop disinformation. It was a complete hoax. And I don't know about the first impeachment, but my God, if the charge was that he was

suspending or holding up offensive weapons that the Obama administration did not approve, but he did, and which were ultimately delivered because he had some crazy idea that the Obama administration did not approve, but he did, and which were ultimately delivered because he had some crazy idea that the Biden family had leveraged Ukrainians using their positions in government, i.e. Biden's, for largesse. That seemed to me a pretty legitimate concern. So what I'm getting at is it's a political matter. And when he says, well, he's really, your guest said, well, he's really got a lot of exposure with a Mar-a-Lago. And I don't, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know about the prerogatives of how you declassify a document, the actual legal legalities of saying that you can or cannot. Joe Biden had no such, there's no such questions

about him as vice president. He can't do it. And yet, I don't think a good- Well, as I said, I don't think the law, I don't think the procedure is anywhere near as clear as Dave says it is. Again, I've looked as a lawyer. I'm open-minded to show me what it is, and then we'll figure out whether he followed it. I am too. But I think each of those potential, he's right that this is the weakest one, but each of the others has potential liabilities because once you go after a former president for papers, which could have been handled administratively, and you in a garage. It's not as secure as Mar-a-Lago. Youena. It was one thing to have the documents,

could have returned them at any time. They tried to work with him, but then he basically lied. He lied through his lawyer and saying, oh, we've returned them all. And that was a lie. And they claim, according to the Washington Post, they're going to have it on camera,

moving the documents. If he did that, that's wrong. But there's a lie of commission, Megan, and there's a lie of omission. And for the period of 2017 to the present, Joe Biden, in fact, lied to the U.S. government when de facto he didn't tell us that he had classified documents illegally in his possession in at least one, two, or maybe three unsecured locations. That's a lie. All he had to do was say, I have them. And he didn't reveal that until somebody, a third party found that out. And the third party didn't have a classification. Let me ask you another question.

Here's my problem on that one. Here's my own answer on that one. It's my question. Okay. It's bad. You shouldn't lie. You certainly shouldn't hide documents while under subpoena. Although you have the power to declassify them and they're declassified and they're only asking for classified. Now we're in a different territory, but why don't we know what Joe Biden did with Hunter Biden? Why don't we know how he's been compromised financially with respect to the doings of his son? Why isn't Hunter Biden under arrest? Why has it taken three plus years for us to figure out that Hunter Biden's committed crimes with respect to the doings of his son. Why isn't Hunter Biden under arrest? Why has it taken three plus years for us to figure out that Hunter Biden's committed crimes with respect to drugs and guns? And he lied explicitly on his gun application form and so on. In the case of

Joe Biden's because they won't investigate. They have refused, refused to look into him in this relationship. And in the case of Hunter Biden, we have no answers. We don't know why. And so it's hard to get worked up about the Donald Trump subpoena. That's what that's where I am on it. It's really hard to be an uproar because of Michael Pence and especially Joe Biden. And I think the more that you've, and remember, they're leaking about the prosecutors, as your guest seems to have knowledge about. I was kind of shocked that he was telling us that he hears, and this may happen. Why doesn't he have that same detail of information about the Biden matter? He doesn't because they're conducting it in a very different way. He's a state attorney in Florida. We're right in the Mar-a-Lago jurisdiction, so he does presumably have sources there.

Yeah. Well, he doesn't have sources about Joe Biden, apparently. Nobody does because it's ironclad, shut, closed, because they're conducting it, quote-unquote, in a professional manner, which they don't apply to other people. So I think what the American people are saying, Megan, is they're getting sick and tired of the legal profession coming on and trying to convince people that they have these standards and protocols, and they believe in the American jurisprudence that it's applied. It wasn't with January 6th, and the 120 days of rioting and mayhem, and it wasn't with any of these things. It wasn't with the Mueller investigation. It wasn't with the laptop disinformation. These same people, I can

remember almost chapter and verse they told us, and they were experts, the same level of expertise that Hunter's laptop was likely Russian disinformation. And they used their expertise. And people are getting sick of it. And that's the problem. And we have all of these precedents. Donald Trump is a very volatile person. Everybody understands that. But he has now been the first president since Andrew Johnson to be impeached in his first term. That's one of the things the founders said that was very dangerous to impeach a president in his first term when you have an election as a referendum coming up. He's the first president that was ever impeached twice. He's the first president who was tried in an impeachment trial as a private citizen. You could even say he's the first president that the FBI director had a private conversation recorded

on a government document and then leaked it to the media for the express purpose of getting a special counsel to try him. So these are all things that are unique. We have never had this. And now he's the first president to have his home raided in retirement, and he's the first president to be indicted by a local prosecutor. We know what's going to happen When this lawyer, I don't want to be derogatory, but when he said that all prosecutors have to follow the law, well, then what he's basically saying is that there's going to be hundreds of local, state, federal prosecutors. It may be conservative. And at various instances, the Hunter Bidens living in Malibu, they're going to, this is going to be a free game. They can all file

writs. Maybe they're not serious. Maybe they are serious. But the purpose will be what just what our founders were very worried about. It will be political damage and notoriety for themselves to injure a political candidate. Yeah. And that's what's going to become a celebrity prosecutor, which is what Alvin Bragg is becoming, and I'm sure wanted. And to your point about James Comey, James Comey, who you mentioned his testimonial, he tweeted out on Thursday, the day that it was revealed Trump had been indicted by the grand jury, quote, it's been a good day. It's been a good day.

I mean, is there anyone left in America who wants to hear him? Yeah. Well, I just filed my income taxes. And if the IRS calls me and I have to go in and see them, and on 245 occasions I say to the IRS under oath, I don't remember. I can't remember. It doesn't, never heard of it. I'm not going to get off like he did. And he did that in front of an intelligence committee under oath. And some of the questions they asked him about the Steele dossier, he knew chapter and verse. Robert Mueller did the same thing. They brought him under oath. They asked him the two central pillars of the entire Mueller investigation, the GPS opposition network under Glenn Simpson, and they asked him about the Steele dossiers. And he muttered that he had no idea what was going on and that was a

complete fabrication nobody could the other piece of it is you know dave and i were discussing and i appreciate dave i mean i'll defend dave because it's good to have the other side no it's good to have like yeah you don't want to just be like in the group think and not hear what the other side's going to argue um but but the other thing he was saying was, yes, Sussman, Hillary's lawyer, was the subject of that prosecution by the special counsel, and he was acquitted. Sussman was tried in Washington, D.C. Trump's going to be tried in New York. It never works the opposite way around. Like I was saying, you want to take Trump down to Mississippi or someplace in Alabama or, you know, deep red Florida and try him? Maybe people could get behind that. Maybe if a jury truly of his peers sat and listened to it, maybe they could trust.

I would like to say your guess, I'd pose this question to Dave, I'd say, Okay, Dave, every prosecutor must follow the law. So we're going to have a prosecutor in Utah or Wyoming, that Hunter Biden was driving through at that particular time, and he's going to have a prosecutor in Utah or Wyoming that Hunter Biden was driving through at that particular time, and he's going to file an indictment against him because he's going to follow the law. And believe me, a Wyoming or Utah jury will be very different to the Biden family than the Acela Corridor juries. And that's not what we want in this country. And, you know, this raises an existential question, Megan, because we hear from the left, they want to end the filibuster when it's convenient. They want to get rid of the

electoral college when the blue wall falls. They want a national voter law when they are mad about states having ID. They want to pack the court when it's no longer the Warren court. They want to bring in two extra states when they feel they can't get a Senate majority. And it's always about process, and it's always one-sided. When you don't want Republicans to be nominated on committees by the House minority leader, you do what Nancy Pelosi for the first time in history. You say, Kevin McCarthy, we don't want those people, and they cannot serve on a committee. When you don't like the presidential address, you tear it up on national TV. All of these extraordinary acts, as these writs are and these indictments are predicated on one thing, that the right won't do that because they are supposedly the adult in the room or they're morally inferior and that the

left has a prerogative because they're morally superior to do this in an asymmetrical fashion. But there are people on the right who say, we don't want to do what they're doing, but if we don't have any deterrence, we're going to lose the republic. But they know that if they do tit for tat reply, we're going to lose the republic. And that's what's so dangerous about this, because there's no way to stop it unless doing something what they do. And then you're into this kind of DEFCON 5 as far as this constitution is concerned. And so all of these, I'm very scared about it. What's the other solution? You know, it's like, I was just in DC this past weekend. I took my family. I had to do a thing for national

review and I made it into a family trip. And the kids got to see the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, the White House, the Supreme Court, all the fun stuff. And we went to the National Archives, which was a true treat. And we saw the original Constitution of the United States. It's spectacular. It gives you the chills when you see it. The actual signatures, the actual Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, all there. It's stunning, the history of this country, and we're so proud of it.

And now you flash forward to today when it matters. It matters that for the first time in 250 years, we've crossed this line we've never crossed before. And that it's being defended as like a nothing by so many in the media. And even Dave, you know, defending, well, let's have many. We've got to do it. No one's above the law. As if no one had ever arguably crossed criminal lines prior to Donald Trump. I mean, that's a joke.

Everyone understood that to put the country through that would tear us apart at the fabric of who we are. This country's evenly divided right down the middle. Look at the last electoral call, like the electoral election results, right? Half the country. If you look at the polls, even out today on, on this half, the vast majority of Republicans are strongly against this prosecution and the vast majority of Democrats want it. And the more they pile on, the angrier people are going to get. And for what? For what? Well, we know for what. I mean, I went back and looked at the first impeachment testimonies. And one of the themes, it was thematic among all the Democratic Congress people, was what made it especially egregious, they claimed with Trump's phone call,

was that Joe Biden was going to be the likely nominee, and therefore Trump, and they used this in that impeachment argument, was trying to take out a viable political candidate. Well, this is exactly what's going on. I don't know whether Trump is going to win or not. I'm just going by the polls. He seems to be ahead right now. So you have a Democratic prosecutor and people, special counsel appointed by a Democratic president that are going after a potential, the likely, I don't know whether he's going to be, but right now the front running nominee and challenger to Joe Biden's reelection campaign. And that doesn't look good. And that's why one of the reasons we don't do these things. And so I don't know what to say about the whole thing, but I think that the legal class has a lot of answering to do. And they will not. I mean, we saw that with Stephen Bannon and Peter Navarro and all of those performance art, James O'Keefe, Roger Stone. Okay, we got that. But I remember Eric Holder just flat out saying, I am not going to obey a congressional subpoena and appear over the fast and furious. I'm just

not going to do it. And Obama said, he's not going to do it. And that was it. There was no criminal referrals. There was no performance or arrest. There was nothing. And that's what people, it just just after a while, it just, I think people are worn out by all this. And I don't know how politically it's going to work. What is the answer? Because high road tactics, this is where they get us. And it's like similar to what you just said. Mark Levin was saying on Fox and Friends, this is a war on the Republican Party. They want to change the voting system. They want to pack the Supreme Court, pack the Senate. The borders are wide open to change the demographics of the country. The Democratic Party wants a one party country. It wants a one party system.

The Republicans better wake the hell up. He says we need to circle the wagons. Well, what? Even if you I'm not a Republican, I'm a registered independent. What do we do? Well, Kevin McCarthy was he did one thing right, and that was, and you saw the outrage when Adam Schiff couldn't be on his committee. And he did, that was retaliatory. I think one of the things they should do immediately is they should really hold impeachment hearings on Alejandro Mayorkas because he just simply did not follow the law, and neither did Joe Biden. That border is in violation of every federal law. They violated it systematically, and that would be a very easy thing to do. And I think just to show them that they have to carry their oath of office and force the laws on the books, they didn't do that. And I'm afraid that what's going

to happen, Megan, is it's not going to be a top down decision. Once you infuriate and you insult the intelligence of half the country, you're going to have freelancers everywhere. You're going to have local, federal, state prosecutors, and they're going to think of things that they can do to even the score. And then the Democrats are going to get completely outraged because they feel they always have the morally superior ground. And when I listened to Dave, I thought to myself, well, what do you do? I mean, we've heard so much about Donald Trump saying, march peacefully and patriotically over to the Capitol. And I was thinking, what do you do about

Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who in 2020 in March walked to the doors in front of a mob at the Supreme Court and said, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, you're going to reap the whirlwind. You, quote, don't know what's going to hit you. And then months later, we get these illegal mobs that are swarming the homes of Supreme Court justices to affect their opinions, which is a felony in which Merrick Garland ignored. And then not much longer, we get a would-be assassin who fortunately confessed in a text to a mystery. What is that? And so, for every one of these legalese that we're hearing this week, you can find 10 examples of where the legal profession, the same legal profession, suddenly had amnesia, or they were derelict, or they thought it didn't rise to the occasion.

And your point about the Biden family, when you see in print, or I guess in electronic transmission, that Joe Biden is referred to by his own son as the big guy, and 10%, and we have Tony Bobulinski willing to testify if the FBI will ever interview him under oath, that he was getting payoffs. And yet, nobody like Dave comes forward and says, you know what, this is a mortal danger to the republic that we have a president who's dealing with China and Ukraine in various mysterious ways when we have evidence from his own son's electronic device that he was a recipient of money. And so isn't that at least worth some investigation?

And so it becomes a political question, not just a legal one. And that's what they don't, a historical one. And a moral question. Why don't we start there? Why don't we start with Hunter Biden? Honestly, what's to stop one of these prosecutors in one of the jurisdictions, many, in which he's committed a crime from not waiting for this special counsel investigation? Why not? Why doesn't a federal prosecutor tomorrow file a felony conviction that he lied on a permit to get a firearm when he said that he had no prior arrest or he had no prior problems with the law. And he wasn't candid on his firearm application. Why doesn't somebody said that there's evidence that he was using illegal drugs,

that he was soliciting prostitutes? It's much more flagrant than Stormy Daniel. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when you when it's a federal crime and you have to get Merrick Garland to sign off on it, it's problematic. But when it's a state crime, like you were clearly using drugs in this state at this time. Go for it. I mean, now that we've crossed over, let's cross over. Why wouldn't there be consequences that they can see and feel, especially inside the Biden White House? Mr. I have no comment. I have no comment as if he has absolutely no connection to any of this. You know, I didn't pressure any of it. It isn't supporting any of it.

Let's see what happens when the pressure ratchets up, because if we're crossed over, then let's be there. I think what you're what they want, I think what they I don't know if they understand what they're getting at is that you're going to have a red state justice and a blue state justice. And when a blue politician ventures into a red state or vice versa, it's going to be a lot of hazard. And they're creating this. And they're creating it on the expectation that no one would ever respond in like kind. And they're very naive because they've exhausted the patience of people that are tired of being lied to by all of these professionals that keep claiming the higher moral ground or the greater professional expertise.

We've seen the left. We've seen it at Stanford University's law school. We've seen it when they stormed the Tennessee legislature. We saw it for 120 days when Kamala Harris said this is not going to stop, nor it should stop, of the riot and looting and arson. So this whole pretense that they're law-abiding or that they're professional or that they're adults is just complete sham. And I think it's a political question. And I think it's really, besides all that, Megan, it's really affected American history because it's starting to warp the primary election between Trump, DeSantis and the other contenders. And it really altered that. And there's this there's a supposition, as you know, better than I do, because you have better knowledge sources. talked and they were in contact or that they wanted these indictments to build up sympathy

for Trump so that he would be the nominee and then presumably would be hemorrhaging once he was nominated because of all these indictments and therefore he'd be a weaker candidate. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's a supposition. That's a dangerous thing for people to enjoy that people are interfering with the normal primary process of one party. And that's what they're doing. It's scary because, I mean, I don't think it's going to work. I really do think that the backlash against this will be severe. I think the American public understands this is deeply wrong, what they're doing, that they really are in uncharted territory. Because, of course, independents are the ones who decide elections.

And the independents are split right now, according to the latest poll. I pulled it up, but there'll be more polling that'll tell us how everybody feels. But it's as I said, Republicans are against this, Democrats are in favor, and the independents are split. But if they just keep piling on Donald Trump, people are too smart. They're going to get it. In the same way jurors tend to get it in cases. Ultimately, they kind of see through all the razzle dazzle. I think the independents will get what's being done to him here, too, and will revolt. And I don't know if I were running the Republican Party. Is it the right strategy to to fight dirty and do what they're doing between now and the next election? Is the right strategy to try to go high road so that you can just use it against them and say, we didn't do

that? We could have done that. My instincts are to fight. When they go low, you go low too. Punch them right in the face, but I don't know. When he talked about the Georgia call, Dave, the incriminating line was, I need to find 15,000. It wasn't go get me. Is there 15,000 votes and anybody's overlooked? That was a stupid thing to say. But is it a criminal thing to say? I don't think so. But you have Molly Ball, the Time journalist who wrote, as you remember, in February of 2021, a lengthy essay. And she used the word conspiracy and cabal interchangeably as but as euphemisms.

She thought they were wonderful. And she outlined how the Democratic Party had raised over $400 million to absorb the work of particular registrars in key precincts and swing states. In other words, to make sure there were more drop boxes. And then she bragged about how these action teams had changed the laws in March and April of 2020. And it was and then she even said this was even more striking that these Democratic operatives have worked with people in the administration, the campaign, excuse me, to modulate the protests. That they were ready to protest should Biden lose and they were ready or they were ready to make sure that they did not protest if it looked like he was going to win. And it was her words, cabal and conspiracy, not ours.

And I thought to myself, what if you had a prosecutor that looked at that? California was a red state. And they went back and looked and asked exactly how that money was used and did it go into a particular precinct and absorb the work of government registrars in a asymmetrical fashion, which is against the law if it did. And so we can just spend all day thinking of all of these parallels and they don't seem to be aware of that. They're almost dense. They're completely I think once this starts to unfold, once you get a mugshot of Donald Trump, just all bets are off. It's going to inflame tempers. I mean, the GOP base, I think, is going to be very angry about that.

I don't think it's going to play the way the Democrats think they're salivating over. I think they may rue the day. Let me give you the number. The YouGov poll that Yahoo News slash YouGov. So 42% of adults approve of Donald Trump's indictment, 39% disapprove, 19% not sure, right? Right down the middle. Democrats, 69% approve. Republicans, only 12% approve. 66% disapprove. Right down the middle. Independents, 43% approve. 37% disapprove. 20% not sure. Right down the middle. It's completely falling along partisan lines. And that leads me to partisan politics when it comes to the GOP nomination,

because this is a very tense time for DeSantis, for Youngkin, for forget Asa Hutchinson. DeSantis comes out for the first time and says, you know, political prosecution, Alvin Bragg, thumbs down. This is my paraphrasing, obviously. And then says, I won't extradite him if it's up, you know, if it's up to me, I won't extradite him. It's not up to him. Trump, Trump's turning himself in. But it was obvious attempt to appease the MAGA crowd and sort of say, I'm with you. Since Trump was indicted, his lead over DeSantis has tripled. The last poll by, I get the same thing, Yahoo slash YouGov, Trump had an 8% lead. Now it's 26 percentage point lead over DeSantis, 57 to 31. It's a huge leap for him, not to mention the fundraising advantage. So how does this affect the primary nomination on the GOP side?

Yeah, very quickly, it puts DeSantis in a very tricky position because on the one hand, he has to be sympathetic, which I think he genuinely is, to the egregious treatment of Donald Trump and by extension to conservatives in general. But he's also been thematic throughout his campaign that he doesn't do the gratuitous or the unnecessary tweets or social media posts or slurs or smears that Trump does. And so he can't be in a position of giving him 100% endorsement because he's an opponent, A. And, of course, I don't think DeSantis would have got himself on much suggesting anything happened. But there's affidavits that said they didn't. But he wouldn't have been in the situation that Trump got himself in

with Stormy Daniels. So he's going to have to accentuate that, but in a weird way that nevertheless shows sympathy of the way Donald Trump is being treated. And I think just to sum up, what's going to happen is it depends a lot on Donald Trump, because if these indictments start happening and people feel that it's not just an attack on Donald Trump, but it's an attack, as Donald Trump makes the case himself, it's an attack on all conservatives and traditionals. But if Donald Trump starts to scream and yell

and compound his own problem and if this becomes serial, then I think what will happen if he doesn't stop that. In other words, there's a way to handle this that would be wiser to be more focused and to be laser-like and to address the charges and to point out the hypocrisies rather than to go off but if he were to continue to go off and I don't know whether you will or not then I think a lot of the empathy will start to wane but the fundamental question won't and so a candidate like Youngkin or DeSantis can say, you see what they did to Trump? This is what they're doing to us

and play on that. But they're going to say, but we're not going to give them any margin of error. And we're not going to have, we're never going to give them a margin. Our conduct has never given them a chance to do the things they want, but they're capable of it and they want to do it. Something like that. And then they could, I they're capable of it and they want to do it. Something like that. And then they could, I think that would eventually, it would be to their advantage. So a lot depends on Donald Trump, how he handles it. I just keep thinking about these pieces bubbling up, ridiculously accusing Ron DeSantis of being some sort of a pedophile. It's a picture from 20 plus years ago with his arms around high school. I'm very angry about that.

Absolutely. And it just goes to show you, they'll stop at nothing. If they get past Trump, they'll make Ron DeSantis into some perverted criminal too. And it's absurd. It's not true. And it's defamatory. It's unlawful. I mean, in a civil court, you could sue somebody over it, but this is what they're going to do. And so, you know, we just got a boxing target. His name is Bob from my kids. You can punch Bob in the face. You have to fill the base up with water so Bob doesn't topple. The Republicans could use some practice on Bob because they're going to have to learn how to take off the gloves and punch the media, punch these overreaching Democrats right in the face like Alvin Brad.

What he's doing is morally wrong, if you ask me. I think so. And not if you ask Dave, but that's fine. Difference of opinion, always welcome. Victor Davis Hanson, such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Big days.

We'll be back tomorrow as Trump is officially, the former president of the United States, is officially arrested, fingerprinted, and sits for his mugshot in the state of New York. We'll be here for you and cover all the angles. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.