The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Pleads Not Guilty To 34 Felony Charges

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Prosecutors in New York allege Donald Trump falsified business records to conceal hush money payments made by allies, which prosecutors say was an effort to keep scandalous allegations against him from coming to light during the final months of his 2016 presidential campaign run. Trump is expected to speak to the allegations tonight at a Florida campaign event.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and correspondent Andrea Bernstein.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Giveaway: npr.org/politicsplusgiveaway Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenica Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Keri Johnson, national justice correspondent. And it is 5.11 p.m. on Tuesday, the 4th of April. And we are also joined by NPR's Andrea Bernstein, who is with us from New York. Hello. Hello. Hello. So you are here because today, former President Donald Trump turned himself into authorities at a courthouse in Manhattan to hear the 34 felony charges that he is facing. And Andrea, you were

there. Talk through what it was like in the courtroom. It was security like I've never seen before. There were two rows of court officers lined up in the middle, court officers on the side, Secret Service, court officers in the front. About 2.30, the former president walks in, surrounded by his Secret Service agents. He walks in a manner which I think is probably quite familiar to most listeners, sort of striding, looking serious to grim, sat down at the defense table. And shortly thereafter, the proceedings began. And right at the top, the judge, Judge Juan Marchand, asked the former president how he pleaded. Donald Trump said quite clearly, not guilty. And then we began to learn a lot more about the case. Carrie, we also got the indictment unsealed today,

giving us our first look at what the former president is being charged with. Can you get into the specifics here? So the indictment specifies 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. DA Alvin Bragg said this is basically a bread-and bread and butter kind of charge that his office uses all the time. And he said that this came to pass because of an illegal scheme, an alleged illegal scheme, to try to cover up Trump's relationships with women in advance of the 2016 election to boost his electoral prospects. And Carrie, what we know well at this point is that these were so-called hush money payments that were made by the future president's personal

attorney, Michael Cohen, and other allies to try to quash negative stories ahead of the election involving people like Stormy Daniels. Absolutely. Remember, this is all happening after the Access Hollywood videotape was made public, but before the election itself. Andrea, in the courtroom, there was also a discussion of the former president's very active social media habits and sort of how this is to proceed. How did that conversation go? He's put out messages on his social media platform that are sort of menacing over the last few weeks. Most of the court proceeding, or much of it, as you say, was really discussing what kinds of posts the former president has put on social media and how that was going to be handled. And the prosecution said, well, we have significant concerns

about the potential danger of these kinds of rhetoric. The defense attorneys sort of, you know, began to push back, kind of, you know, they said, well, we've only seen this indictment for 40 minutes. Another point they said, 30 minutes. They talked about how the defendant, that is the former president, bat next to a picture of the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is black, who Trump has called an animal, who he's referred to as racist, who had a very large security detail in the courtroom today. Alvin Bragg did. Alvin Bragg did, yes, which I have, you know,

I've never said I've seen him enter the Manhattan courtroom many times. I've never seen him with that kind of security detail. So it's obviously heightened and they referred to that. And the judge turned to the defense attorneys and he said, well, you know, essentially, I don't share your view that this is about frustration. And then he said that everyone in the courtroom, but I think it was really sort of clear who he meant. I mean, he does want the prosecution to get its witnesses like Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels to stop talking. But he said something that I think was, you know, quite clearly directed at the former president, which is no one should be engaging in language that is likely to

incite violence or civil unrest, and that people should refrain from actions that are likely to incite violence or civil unrest. And then he added to underscore it, do not engage in words or conduct that is likely to jeopardize the rule of law. And then there was a pretty long discussion about whether the former president should be able to discuss grand jury evidence, notes that they will get as part of the pretrial process, the discovery process. And their prosecution is not asking for a gag order per se,

but they are asking for the former president not to be able to discuss these things, grand jury minutes, for him not to even be able to take any documents with him and to only be able to view them with his attorney's presence, which, of course, you know, suggests a whole bunch of other things

that the former president is also under investigation for right now. Boy, oh boy, Andrea, that really echoes here, given the fact that the grand jury investigating Trump's retention of classified documents, highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has been very active. Trump's lawyer, Evan Corcoran, has appeared before the grand jury after the special counsel apparently successfully penetrated the attorney-client privilege. Which is no small thing. Which is no small thing, exactly. And so the idea that the Manhattan DA is now concerned that Trump might potentially take discovery materials in that case and do things with them, of course, they may not be classified, but very

sensitive. That has a strong echo down here in Washington. Well, and Trump and his allies have a lengthy record of going after people online, people associated with cases or lawyers or judges or any number of sort of bystanders. I mean, that's sort of how he's been able to, you know, prop up his own politics, you know, to keep his base angry, to keep them engaged. And, you know, prop up his own politics, you know, to keep his base angry, to keep them engaged. And, you know, limiting that may limit Trump's ability to actually continue to do that. Now, good luck keeping Trump quiet. He's already supposed to make a speech tonight, you know, so that he can essentially, you know, knock down any of these potential charges, has been calling them politically motivated.

How much is Trump going to stay quiet on his social media platform? That's not at all clear. But is there anything enforceable where a judge could come in and say, you know what, that's enough? One thing that I want to point out is that some establishment Republicans today, people like Senator Mitt Romney, who's no real fan of Donald Trump and his personal conduct, have continued to raise questions about the legal strength of the Manhattan district attorney's case. And basically, a lot of Republican voices are saying that this case may be underwhelming. So what I want to say is that Donald Trump and his lawyers may have an effective message to deliver in court, but they could pollute their argument by talking too much outside. All right, we're going to take a quick break there,

and we will have more in a second. And we're back. And Andrea, where does this go from here? Where did the judge leave things? So the issue of Donald Trump being a presidential candidate was directly addressed by the judge, who said, I am not seeking a gag order. The former president has a right to run for president.

I think he called him Mr. Trump has a right to run for president. He has a First Amendment right. But it was quite clear that sort of how he treats this case is going to be somewhat constrained in terms of what he says. There are court date sets. There are motions that are set to be filed in August and September. The next court date is December. The prosecution asked for a January 2024 trial date, which, as everyone in this podcast knows, is usually just right about the height of the beginning of Republican

primary season. Yeah, I mean, Domenico, he should be in Iowa then. Well, he's going to be making that trip, I suppose, back and forth. But it's going to be right not only in the middle of that primary process, but Iowa, if his lawyers have it, he wants to have a trial sometime in the spring. So we're looking at, you know, the time where you already essentially have a candidate who could be picked by then and make it a really difficult place. And this is not even to say anything about the other three criminal investigations that are that Trump is facing that could potentially have more serious charges. And I believe as we speak right now, the former president is either in the air or he is back to Florida where he is set to deliver a speech tonight, a political speech.

Domenico, this campaign and this case and other potential future cases, it's all linked. It is all just this stew. Well, and what that stew has served to do is to unify the Republican Party behind Donald Trump. And Trump wants to continue to promote this over and over again. He would have loved to have had a mugshot taken today, which he didn't. So he could put it on some T-shirts. But they're selling T-shirts anyway. They're selling T-shirts anyway.

Point is, that's in there. And it's made it really difficult for Republicans who are opposing him to figure out a way to actually use this as an opportunity. Now, if you had a good, quote unquote, athlete as a candidate, if you were a good candidate, you could figure out how to do that. But when I talked to Republican strategists, they said none of them want to be the first one out on that limb. They don't want to take the first shots and then wind up being out of the race. So here we go again. So the Trump team is definitely portraying this as good for him politically, or they're going to make the most of this. He certainly seemed somber in the courtroom. And I also wonder, like, isn't it a little bit early to say this is good for him? I mean,

there's a scenario under which he's on trial. Like there there are voters, certainly in a general election, who are going to say, like, is this really what we want to sign up for? I mean, maybe even in a Republican primary. Well, it's good for him in a Republican primary at this point. Yes. But there's a divergence that's been happening that's pretty rare and unique, which is to see that independents and, of course, Democrats are pretty firmly against Trump. I mean, our latest NPR PBS NewsHour Marist poll found that six in 10 people don't want Trump to be president, yet three quarters of Republicans say they do. That kind of divergence is really unique. And it's going to take a sustained effort from Republican rivals to be able to say, hey, you know, do you want this chaos? Carrie, we're talking about all of this politics, and you've mentioned this a little bit before,

but there's additional peril out there for the former president, additional legal exposure. Yeah. Shortly before he appeared for processing, including fingerprinting in Manhattan today, the federal appeals court here in Washington, D.C., sided with the special counsel Jack Smith, who's been trying to get people like Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, and other top aides into the grand jury to testify about January 6th and about the Mar-a-Lago documents potentially. This federal appeals court panel sided with Jack Smith. I guess Trump could try to appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, but it was another legal defeat today and another sign that the special counsel investigation is very aggressive. I want to ask a big picture question, which is that in recent years, certainly in the Trump era, any number of American institutions have taken an absolute beating.

Trust in institutions is at historic lows, including law enforcement, the press, you name it. So given all that, and just the highly unusual nature of what's happening in this moment, are American institutions up for this stress test? To sit in a courtroom in the same day where Donald Trump had attacked the presiding judge and his family is like nothing that has happened in the United States of America. I think we really are in for a very big stress test. And when you have lots of, you know, Republican leaders, leaders in Congress, also attacking the district attorney, also attacking this prosecution, it is a really, really, really big question where this all ends up. I remember sitting in court and watching Paul Manafort, former President Trump's

former campaign chairman, be convicted of federal crimes and the former president raining down abuse on the judge and the prosecution team in that matter, among others. The system worked then. Manafort was convicted. He served some time, and ultimately he was pardoned by former President Trump. The difference this time is that Trump doesn't hold the pardon power and that a president can't pardon for state crimes. And so it's no surprise that some followers of a man who campaigned for years on the idea of the system is rigged don't believe in the system. But people like the leaders at the Justice Department currently and Alvin Bragg, it seems to me, think that the way to manage that problem is to do their jobs.

And that's what they're doing. We're going to leave it there for now. Obviously, there will be much more as the story continues to develop. Andrea Bernstein, thank you. Thank you so much. Great talking to all of you. And before we go, just a huge thank you to everyone who listens and who supports us, either by supporting NPR Politics Plus or your local NPR news station. We simply would not be able to cover news like this without you. And if you are in a place to support us directly, you can do it at plus.npr.org slash politics. It'll get you a little behind the scenes content a few times a month and episodes without sponsor messages. We are so grateful for your support. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Carrie Johnson, national justice correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.