The NPR Politics Podcast - Latest In Trump's N.Y. Civil Fraud Case

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Former President Trump got a brief reprieve in his New York civil case, as the amount he owes to secure a $454 million bond has been temporarily reduced on appeal. But Trump still faces both legal and financial headwinds ahead of the case going to trial next month. We explore what's at stake. This podcast: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced by Jeongyoon Han & Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi, this is Josh in Madison, Wisconsin. I just defended my PhD on Monday, and I am spending the rest of the week relaxing. Oh, congratulations. This podcast was recorded at...

1.04 p.m. on Tuesday, March 26, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, here's the show. Oh, fond memories of Madison. I hope he's going to the dairy and getting some ice cream to celebrate. I was going to say, yes, Madison, swing state, Wisconsin, Ph.D., relaxation, a lot going on for Josh. Salute you. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.

And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And today on the show, Donald Trump's legal woes continue. But he got an unlikely reprieve. Trump has a judgment against him in his New York civil fraud case of more than $450 million. But before we dive into this, remind us, Carrie, which case is this? There's a lot of Trump legal troubles going on in the universe. But what are we talking about with this one? So many cases. This is the case that the attorney general of New York, Letitia James, brought against Trump for allegedly defrauding lenders and insurers by overvaluing a lot of his properties. For example, you know, he said his apartment in Trump Tower was worth tens of millions of dollars because it was like 30,000 square feet when in actuality it was only like 10 or 11,000 square feet. So Judge Arthur N. Gorin ruled against Trump

and imposed a very significant financial penalty against him, almost $500 million, as you said. And Trump's been fighting that. Okay. So that's where we stand. But this judgment specifically, New York law says that if Trump wanted to appeal in this case, he has to put up the total cost of the judgment as a bond. But that sort of twisted around this week, right? It absolutely did. Trump went to the higher appeals court, and the appeals court reduced the amount he would have to put up on bond to $175 million. That's still a ton of dough. Right. But Trump told us this week he has that much cash and he will be able to put up that money

within nine or 10 days. So that's a pretty significant thing. The other thing the appeals court did was reduce some of the conditions the judge and Gorin had put on Trump and his sons, restricting them from conducting certain kinds of business in the state of New York. So that's another at least short-lived victory for Trump and his kids. I mean, I was going to say $175 million, a big reduction from $450 million, of course, but that's still, I mean, that's a big difference in money. You've covered the justice system for so long. This kind of treatment and specifically this level of reduction in the amount of money do, I mean, is that typical? Does that happen to regular people? this kind of treatment and specifically this level of reduction in the amount of money do? I mean, is that typical? Does that happen to regular people?

You know, in civil cases, there are reductions in damage awards all the time against makers of defective products and things like that. And these numbers, Deepa, were so high. I mean, we're talking about almost half a billion dollars. Right, right. It would have been, you know, catastrophic for Donald Trump, as his own lawyers said in court papers seeking to get this amount reduced. So I don't think we can say on its face that the appeals court treated Trump differently because he's Donald Trump. But there are many, many other ways that Trump has potentially gotten away with things that other defendants would not. You know, he spoke back repeatedly to Judge N'Goran in the course of this case. Judge N'Goran slapped a gag order on him at one point. And Trump still was saying terrible things about the judge and the system. And regular defendants would not be able to get away with that kind of conduct. What would happen to a regular defendant who did that?

Potentially they'd be incarcerated. It's not unusual for people who speak with that level of vitriol against judges in the court system and potentially against prosecutors to face some consequences. And Trump, you know, he's had to pay a few fines here and there, but really he's gotten away with a lot. And, you know, it's funny. He hasn't just gotten away with bad behavior in the courtroom. This is his strategy.

I mean, his tactic might be to delay as much as possible, but his strategy is to undermine faith in the justice system and to get voters to think that this is a sham, it's a witch hunt, he's being persecuted, and it's at a huge cost to democracy. But that is the strategy, because he has to figure out if he does get convicted, how is he going to not have that be a political liability? You know, all of the talking back to the judge and the kind of ranting and complaining about the case is all about trying to convince people that they shouldn't have faith in the justice system. And, you know, when you talk about delay, wealthy defendants, people with resources,

have always been able to hire better lawyers and engage in more delay and get more benefits from the system. Most other people who face these kinds of charges do not have the money to fight for that long. They don't have the kind of lawyers who know how to play that game and get away with it in court. And so Trump is maybe the highest profile example we have, but he's certainly not the only one. It's interesting, Mara, you pointed this out that, you know, Trump is often saying that the justice system is out to get him. This is unfair. But in reality, you know, as we've been saying, it's working in his favor. And not only that, but he has said as an explicit part of his platform that he plans to use the Justice

Department if he becomes president again to go after his enemies. Because remember, he said, I am your retribution. And revenge and retribution are what he says he's going to use the Justice Department for. And we just had a development on that, too. You know, James Comer, who's the head of a key House committee that's been investigating the current president, Joe Biden, talking about wanting to impeach Biden, seems to have abandoned the impeachment effort and now says he wants to send a criminal referral to the Justice Department, a criminal referral that could be sitting at the Justice Department if Donald Trump wins and retakes the White House. Right. OK, we're going to leave it there for right now. We're taking a quick break. And when we come back, some news about the trial date for the former president.

And we're back. Mara, I want to zoom out here for a second because part of why Trump wanted a reduction in that bond, right, was his argument that he didn't have $450 million in liquid cash to pay up. But part of Trump's whole pitch and part of what this case was about in the first place was that he's really rich and he's good at business and he tries to, you know, show that. So there's some competing narratives here. Not only that, but he said that it would be easy for him to get $450 million in cash, that he had that amount. He actually testified to that number approximately. I mean, we talk all the time about

how the rules do not apply to Trump, that, you know, he tries to play it both ways. In your sense of this case specifically, like how are we seeing that play out? Well, I think that the political repercussions of this would only be if all of a sudden the emperor had no clothes and it turned out that Trump didn't have much money at all, which doesn't seem to be true. So, you know, one of the things that he's been very successful at is keeping up the persona that people first encountered on The Apprentice, that he is this super rich guy. And so far that hasn't been destroyed. But depending on the outcomes of these cases, that could change. Yeah, and it feels really personal, right?

Trump just posted on his social media site that his real estate platforms were like his babies. He actually called them his babies. And so in addition to fending off suits against himself and his sons, his babies are at stake, his assets. Babies. Oh, my goodness. But let's get into this a little bit further because he has this money he needs to pay off. He says he didn't have the $450 million. But his social media company, which is called Truth Social, just became publicly traded. And as a result, Trump's net worth on paper has increased significantly.

But it's not like this is going to tie a big bow at the end of it and it's all cleared up. Is that right? Yeah, worth billions more on paper, according to the business reporters I've talked to. But under the terms of this deal, typically it would be six months before you could take any money out of that, any actual cash money, green money in your pocket, as opposed to pie-in- in the sky theoretical money. Unless Trump somehow gets special permission or renegotiates, that money wouldn't be available to him right away to pay for some of these bonds or other bills or even for his campaign. It is also like I think just as someone who does not cover the ins and outs of Trump's legal cases on a regular basis,

there's a lot of whiplash here. Trump has the money. He doesn't have the money. He is really good at business. He actually, nope, turns out he's really bad at handling his finances. For voters and for people who are not maybe clued into all of this going on, you know, how do you think it translates on the political front in the stage that we are right now in this election? So far, I don't think that it has hurt him. One of the big questions hanging over all these Trump trials would be, we know that they actually helped him in a Republican primary because they made his base more devoted to him.

A big majority of Republicans felt he was being persecuted. In other words, they bought his version of events here. What we were waiting to see is if the cumulative effect of all of these cases would take a toll on his political standing. It hasn't yet, and it may not before the election because so many of them have been delayed. That was the interesting thing about yesterday. He did get a discount, but he didn't get a delay. Yeah. Meanwhile, in another courtroom, Trump got a trial date. That's right. Judge Juan Marchand in New York said on April 15th, Trump's trial will begin. That's the case involving hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has brought against Trump. Trump has pleaded not guilty, but these are 34 charges related to hush money payments that flowed through his former fixer and now a star witness against him, potentially Michael Cohen.

We're going to turn here now, just looking ahead, Carrie, timeline. What are we looking out for next? Give us an idea of what what's coming up. Sure. Jury selection will start in mid-April in the Alvin Bragg case, and that case is supposed to last as long as 12 weeks. So Trump is probably going to be in the courtroom in New York and making comments in the hallway that we'll all hear as part of his campaign. If Trump is convicted in that case, I went back and looked this morning. These are felony charges, but it's a nonviolent crime and Trump has no criminal history. So typically the sentence would be one of probation.

Yeah. And Mara, I mean, it's increasingly likely that the other cases against Trump, right? There are a lot of them. The Mar-a-Lago documents case, the January 6th insurrection case, the Georgia election interference case. These are all, like we said, not going to be resolved before this year's presidential election. How important then does this case become? Well, this case becomes the only show in town. It was considered to be the least important case involving Donald Trump's political fate. But now it's the only thing. I think it was the easiest case for him to dismiss, the easiest case for him to say Alvin Bragg is a partisan going after me. And I think that the cases that were really significant, clearly, January 6th was the first. And I'm wondering, Carrie, do you think that, I know that he can appeal in all these cases, and that will certainly go beyond the election, but do you think that

there will be a judgment rendered in any of these before the election? We know they won't be resolved because he can appeal. The New York case is the one that has the best shot. But not January 6th. Depending on what the Supreme Court does. About immunity. About immunity and how quickly they do it. It is possible that in that case a trial could begin before the election. But my money right now, if you made me take a position, my money would be that the

majority of the conservative Supreme Court would send the immunity question back to the trial judge in D.C. to answer some questions about certain behaviors by Donald Trump before and after January 6th, whether those were official acts by a president or acts of a candidate, if Donald Trump disagrees with the judge's determinations on that, he could appeal that all over again before any trial in D.C. begins. So it sounds like the Supreme Court will help Donald own actions and personal conduct, that case is very, very far away from trial. All right. We're going to leave it there for today. I'm so glad we have both of you to talk through all of this with us. And before we go, a huge thanks to everyone who supports the show by donating to your local NPR station or by signing up for NPR Politics Plus. Especially in a big election year, your support really matters. And if you haven't signed up for NPR Politics Plus, now is

your chance. You get things like sponsor-free listening and bonus episodes. Our latest bonus episode features a story on young conservatives and how they're feeling about the election. To sign up for Plus, just go to plus.npr.org slash politics. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Keri Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.