The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump Arrives for Criminal Trial and LOSES BIG Right Away

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump’s arrival to the Manhattan DA criminal trial where he lost a number of motions right away. Head to https://TryFum.com/meidas and use code MEIDAS to save 10% off when you get the journey pack today! Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The criminal trial against Donald Trump for his falsification of business records to interfere with the 2016 election is now officially underway. Donald Trump arrived at court earlier this morning as Donald Trump arrived in the Manhattan courtroom in a case being prosecuted by the Manhattan District Attorney. Donald Trump's new company, Trump Media's stock was absolutely tanking. It was down 15% as Donald Trump arrived in the Manhattan courtroom. Donald Trump arrived looking very unwell, looking panicked. He did his usual routine where he talked about how he's being persecuted and how it's unfair and how upset he is, but that he's happy to be there. Kind of the usual shtick that he does. Let me just share with you a brief portion of Donald Trump arriving. I'm

not going to show too much of it because I have no interest in kind of furthering his lies and disinformation. But then after showing you this, I want to talk about the motions that were heard. Donald Trump lost some big motions this morning. He lost the motion to recuse Justice Breshan. He lost a motion to try to prevent information about his catch and kill deal with the National Inquirer from coming in. And we also learned that Donald Trump's subpoena to the Department of Justice that Trump was trying to use to delay the trial and to kind of create a way to blow up the trial has actually backfired big time on Donald Trump

since rather than getting exculpatory information that would help Donald Trump and actually turned up information that is very harmful to Donald Trump, including emails from Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, Steve Bannon, and others trying to deal with the Access Hollywood tapes coming out in 2016 where Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, and they were talking in these text messages about ways to try to stop more bad news from coming out. Ultimately, that's one of the things that led to the catch and kill scheme that Donald Trump had with the National Enquirer, whereby they would try to purchase stories from individuals who Donald Trump had sex with or who Donald Trump wronged or people who were thinking about going public with stories about Donald

Trump. They'd pay for those stories. Then they would kill the stories by not publishing the stories, but owning the rights to the stories and then threatening to sue the people if they came out publicly with the stories as part of a deal with Donald Trump. And so more details about that deal were actually turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office that they didn't have before, based on Donald Trump's attempt at trying to delay the case by doing an 11th hour subpoena to the Department of Justice. Go figure. Let me just show you Donald Trump arriving right right now and then let's talk a little bit more here let's play this clip

this is an assault on america nothing like this has ever happened before there's never been anything like it every legal scholar said this case is nonsense. It should never have been brought up. It doesn't deserve anything like this. There is no case. And they've said it. People that don't necessarily follow or like Donald Trump said this is an outrage that this case was brought up. This is political persecution.

This is a persecution like never before nobody's ever seen anything like it and again it's a case that should have never been brought so so the usual routine of donald trump i'm proud to be here this is a perth this is a persecution against the united states of america no it is the fact that you paid off an adult film actress while your wife, Melania, was pregnant in order to avoid that story going public. And then you made fraudulent business record entries to cover up what you did.

That's what this is about. This is all of your own making. This is a crime. You've been charged with 34 separate felony counts for the crimes. You can serve multiple years in prison for these crimes and you're just not above the law. That's what this is about.

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You can spin your Fume around and around and around it. Start the year off right with the good habit by going to tryfume.com slash Midas, T-R-Y-F-U-M dot com slash Midas, and getting the journey pack today. Fume is giving listeners of the show 10% off when you use our code Midas to help make starting the good habit that much easier. Go to tryfume.com slash Midas and use our code Midas. All right, let's go to the motions that were heard. The first motion that was heard early on was Donald Trump's attempt to try to recuse Justice

Mershon, again, arguing that Justice Mershon's daughter doesn't like him and saying that it's unfair that Justice Mershon has a daughter who was involved in politics and that somehow that makes Justice Merchant, that Justice Merchant can't be fair and can't be impartial. Folks, almost a year ago at this point, Donald Trump tried to recuse Justice Merchant on the same grounds. In fact, Justice Merchant got an ethics opinion from the New York State Bar and from the Judicial Council about the issue just because, while he didn't see that there was a conflict at all here, he wanted to make sure that everything was transparent and done the right way. There's no conflict here. It was rejected over a year ago.

Trump's brought that again. Remember, he brought that last week before the appellate division and they rejected it. Well, that was heard again before Justice Merchan, who said that, you know, this is frivolous. The accusations here are attenuated and then very swiftly denied Donald Trump's attempt at recusing him. And Justice Merchan said, look, it's every bit as much a responsibility of a judge to deny recusal as it is to accept a recusal when a recusal is merited. Otherwise, criminal defendants would try to game the system and try to always be recusing judges that they don't like. So that was rejected right away. The next issue that was addressed this morning was whether or not the prosecution and to what extent the

prosecution can talk about the deal between the company AMI, which was the parent company for the National Enquirer that was led by an individual by the name of David Pecker, the extent to which the prosecution could talk about the deal between AMI, National Enquirer, and David Pecker and Donald Trump to engage in this catch and kill scheme whereby, as I said earlier in the video, they would go and find bad stories about Donald Trump, people who wanted to go public under the pretext of being, oh, we're journalists, we're going to write about that, but we want to buy your story. So they'd buy the bad stories, they'd kill the bad stories by not publishing the stories,

and then they wouldn't get out in the 2016 election. And that formed the kind of background, ultimately, when the catch and kill scheme, for tax reasons, AMI felt that they couldn't do the Stormy Daniels payoff. So ultimately, Donald Trump had to make a falsified business record and act like a payment was being made to Michael Cohen for legal fees. But in fact, what the money was going for was a payment to Stormy Daniels to catch and kill her story right before the 2016 election was to take place so that that story would not get out. That's ultimately why, and we may be saying, well, explain the deal in AMI and why that's relevant, when AMI wasn't able to catch and kill for Stormy Daniels and do the thing where they buy it out because in many ways that could be

viewed as imputed income to Donald Trump and they felt uncomfortable committing tax fraud. Then Donald Trump had to come up with another way around it and the way he came up with was this payoff to Michael Cohen as legal bills which he would then pay Stormy Daniels and that's how he would try to hide it, basically. And that's a felony in New York. You can't make fraudulent business records and entries. The one thing that Justice Mershon did say, though, is that he's not going to allow for the Access Hollywood tape itself to be played. He didn't talk about the Access Hollywood tape. But the playing of the tape, Justice Mershon found the prejudicial aspect of

it would outweigh its probative value here, since this is not a case about sexual assault or abuse, that it's such an inflammatory tape that playing the actual audio could confuse the jury about the issues that this case is about fraudulent business records. But the prosecution can still talk about it. The other thing that Justice Mershon was kind of wary of allowing at this stage, although he may reconsider later, was the prosecution talking about Melania being pregnant when the hush money payment was made. Because again, the prejudicial value Justice Mershon found could potentially outweigh its probative value its utility in a case involving fraudulent business records whether or not

melania was pregnant or not is not necessarily central to the issue of was that business record fraudulent which is why this case is a very document-driven case to begin with and why the prosecution just needs to really go through, was this a check? Was it sent at this date? Did you classify this as legal fees? It's a fairly narrowly confined case to those issues right there. And then finally, as I mentioned earlier in the video, one of the things that we learned as well is that far from getting information and evidence that would be helpful to Donald Trump, Trump's attempt at trying to get the Department of Justice to turn over things that the Department of Justice would not have otherwise turned over at the 11th hour actually turns out it's very bad

for Donald Trump. It seems to be documents, emails, text messages from Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's inner circle about covering up things like the Access Hollywood tape and covering up for Donald Trump's misconduct and that then forming the basis for the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. So it really backfired for Donald Trump that he tried to create this kind of controversy from the Department of Justice at the 11th hour. So that's where we stand right now with the jury coming in. They also talked about jury instructions and this discussion about a hybrid approach to the jury instructions. And this hybrid approach, first before getting into whether the

jurors could be fair or impartial, first seeing if the jurors are available for the trial and understanding their personal circumstances. And then if they are available, then moving to whether they're fair and impartial, then there is that questionnaire that the jurors will get with 40 plus very specific questions. Then they'll analyze that. And then if jurors say that they can't be fair and impartial, they'll get removed. The remaining jurors will stay in the room and then they'll be questioned about whether they could be fair or impartial. And then each side can still, even if a juror claims they could be fair and impartial, each side still has the ability to exercise a certain amount of challenges to remove jurors who they think who the prosecution or that the defense thinks

still wouldn't be good jurors on the case, as long as the reasons are non-discriminatory in nature. That's where we stand. Keep you posted every step of the way. Don't you worry. We'll have updates throughout the day. I'm Ben Micellis. This is the Midas Touch Network.

Hit subscribe. Let's get to 3 million together. Follow our coverage here for continuing updates of the trial. Enough! Send it to the big house, not the White House. Get the new exclusive tees, mugs, and stickers right now at store.midastouch.com. That's store.midastouch.com.