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Jan. 10, 2025 07:00-10:03 - CSPAN

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Washington Journal 01/10/2025

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unidentified		Up on Washington Journal this morning, your calls and comments live.
		And then Bloomberg Supreme Court reporter Greg Storr discusses the Supreme Court decision to allow President-elect Trump's sentencing to proceed in the New York Hush Money case.
		And John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation discusses President-elect Trump's criminal cases and previews confirmation hearings for Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi and FBI Director nominee Kash Patel.
		Also, Elizabeth Wydra from the Constitutional Accountability Center talks about legal and constitutional issues the center is monitoring with the incoming Trump administration.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
		Join the conversation.
		Good morning on this Friday, January 10th.
		We'll begin this morning with your reaction to the sentencing of President-elect Donald Trump later today in New York on those 34 counts of falsifying business records.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Court proceedings follow a last-ditch effort by Mr. Trump to have the Supreme Court stop the hearing.
unidentified		On a 5-4 ruling, the justices denied the ask.
		This morning, your reaction.
		And here's how you can join the conversation.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
		You can also text us, include your first name, city, and state, at 202-748-8003.
		Or join us on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
		And you can also go to X with the handle at C-SPANWJ.
		We will get to your calls in a minute.
		Let's begin with what the Supreme Court said.
		It was the three liberal justices, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, who was nominated by Mr. Trump during his first administration.
		This is what they wrote.
		First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-elect Trump's state court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal.
		Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the president-elect's responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court's stated intent to impose a sentence of unconditional discharge after a brief virtual hearing.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Here is how President-elect Donald Trump reacted to the Supreme Court.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		They called for an appeal, and as you know, they acknowledge what the judge said about no penalty, and there is really no penalty.
		But we're going to appeal anyway, just psychologically, because frankly, it's a disgrace.
		It's a judge that shouldn't have been on the case.
		He's a highly conflicted judge, and frank, and they called for an appeal.
		So I read it, and I thought it was a fair decision, actually.
		So I'll do my little thing tomorrow.
		They can have fun with their political opponent.
		As you know, I'm under a gag order from a judge.
		This is the first.
		This was an attack of a political opponent.
		And if you take a look at it, I'm not supposed to be talking about it, so I won't.
		I'm the first president and probably one of the first candidates in history that's under attack with a gag order where I'm not allowed to speak about something.
		And they ought to find out what that's all about.
		And this is a long way from finished.
		And I respect the court's opinion.
		I think it was actually a very good opinion for us because you saw what they said.
		But they invited the appeal, and the appeal is on the bigger issue.
		So we'll see how it all works out.
		I think it's going to work out well.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		President-elect Donald Trump yesterday reacting to the Supreme Court.
unidentified		Joining us this morning is Greg Stories, a Supreme Court reporter with Bloomberg News, to talk more about this.
		You just heard the President-elect say it's a fair decision.
		He respects the decision by the Supreme Court.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What did they say?
unidentified		Yeah, certainly an interesting reaction from him.
		One thing they didn't say that the president-elects said they did, they didn't call for an appeal.
		There's an assumption, of course, the defendant, Donald Trump, has a right to an appeal, and there was an assumption that he would appeal and will have a full chance to raise these immunity arguments.
		The court essentially said two things: one, the sentencing is not going to impose much burden on him, and two, he can raise all those issues on appeal.
		What did they mean by it won't impose a burden on him?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What were his lawyers arguing that they made that decision?
unidentified		So, they were arguing they used words like stigma, they talked about the distraction of having this criminal proceeding hanging over him.
		The judge in the case, Judge Murshand, has said he's not going to impose jail time.
		He's going to impose something called an unconditional release, which basically means that there'll be no further actions that Donald Trump or his lawyers have to do in that court.
		It's not like you have to check in with a parole officer or something like that.
		It's essentially not going to put any burden on him going forward.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So, no fine, no financial fine, no jail time, no punishment.
unidentified		That is correct.
unidentified		Obviously, there will be the case will go on appeal and there will be arguments, and that may take a certain amount of the president's time going forward, but that is something that the courts have been willing to swallow.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Why appeal no sentencing?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, no time in jail, no fine, no punishment.
unidentified		Why appeal that?
		Well, because of the, to use that word again, stigma.
		You know, this notion he is now a convicted felon.
		He will be sworn in as president as a convicted felon, the first one.
		He obviously disputes the charges, thinks that the verdict was wrong and various legal errors were made, and he wants to get those corrected and in his mind clear the record.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		How did this get to the Supreme Court?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And explain the process when the justices deal with an appeal like this.
unidentified		So, Judge Murshon considered these immunity arguments, and this stems from that decision, that big decision last year where the court said presidents have very broad criminal immunity and effectively killed that case here in Washington involving efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
		And Donald Trump said that decision means this state law case needs to be thrown out as well, even though it is all about things that happened before he was president.
		Essentially, what he's arguing is because prosecutors used some evidence of, say, you know, tweets I put out while I was president, they tainted the whole process, and therefore the verdict is invalid.
		Judge Murshon rejected that.
		Those issues haven't been fully resolved in the New York courts, as they will be, but because the sentencing is coming up tomorrow, or excuse me, today, not today, Donald Trump turned to the Supreme Court to try to get them to stop the sentencing while those issues get aired out.
		Talk about how it's received by the court.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Justice Sotomayor's name was mentioned in the decision.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Why her name?
unidentified		So, each of the justices is assigned part of the country, a circuit when it's in federal court or states when it's in state court.
		And they handle the emergency matters.
		It's kind of sort of the point of entry.
		In some cases, a justice will decide it on his or her own.
		On bigger matters, they always refer to the full court.
		But basically, it was submitted to her.
		She referred it to the full court.
		They voted five to four to reject the request.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Talk about the five to four decision and the Chief Justice and Amy Coney Barrett joining with the three liberal justices.
unidentified		Yeah, those are the two most interesting ones because they were part of that majority back in July when the court said presidents have very broad immunity.
		And John Roberts wrote that decision.
		Amy Coney Barrett, perhaps a little less of a surprise here because she didn't fully join the majority.
		And in particular, she was concerned about this notion that prosecutors couldn't use official acts as evidence to prove something that they were doing privately.
		So there's a certain amount of consistency in her position.
		John Roberts apparently just decided that the context of this, an emergency application to try to interrupt a state court proceeding in between a jury verdict and the sentencing was an appropriate use of the court stepping in to say, hey, we're so concerned about immunity that we're going to stop this from going forward.
		Discuss reports about Justice Alito receiving a phone call from President-elect Donald Trump before this emergency appeal.
		Yeah, this had to do with a job candidate in the administration, somebody who clerked for Justice Alito.
		It's not by no means unheard of, and it's somewhat common for justices to recommend former law clerks for positions.
		Somewhat unusual to have a direct conversation with the president.
		Justice Alito put out a statement.
		He said that he took the call from the president.
		They talked about the job candidate.
		They didn't talk about this case.
		And in fact, this case hadn't actually been filed at the time of the conversation.
		We don't know what other things they might have talked about on that.
		But he did say, Justice Alito said, we didn't talk about any pending matters at the court.
		Will there be any ethical or ethics investigation, maybe that's too strong of a word, into the phone call?
		Yeah, not likely, in large part because the Supreme Court's code of conduct doesn't really have an enforcement mechanism.
		So there's not really a way if somebody wanted to file a complaint for there to be a place where we can go file that complaint and where there might be some sanctions if there was a violation.
		This will be talked about.
		There may be, obviously Congress can always step in and try to do something, but it probably just adds to the mix of those many ethical controversies the court has had.
		Before we move on to another case, what will happen today in New York?
		This morning, 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time?
		9.30 a.m. The president-elect is going to be connected by video.
		It will be a, as the court said, a relatively short proceeding.
		It is a 34-count conviction, so it may take a little while to work through some of that, but it will just be a relatively pro forma sort of thing.
		Back to Washington.
		The Supreme Court today takes up the TikTok case, remind our viewers what it is that these justices are deciding.
		This is a law that was enacted by bipartisan Congress signed by President Biden that says TikTok, this wildly popular social media app, if it's not sold by its Chinese parent company by January 19th, it's banned in the U.S.
		And TikTok and a group of users of content creators on TikTok have challenged it on free speech grounds.
		And the court is taking this up on a very fast-track basis with an eye seemingly towards giving us a decision about whether that's a free speech violation before the 19th.
		And when will we know?
		Because the ban is January 19th.
		Yeah, as I said, the court put this on a very fast track.
		I would anticipate something from the court by January 19th.
		It's possible we would just get an interim thing.
		There's also a request.
		In fact, this started with a request just to put the law on hold while the case goes forward.
		It's possible the court will just do that before the 19th.
		But given the way they time this, I have to imagine they're intending to give us at least something so everybody knows what the rules are before the 19th.
		President-elect Donald Trump told the court what he would like to happen.
		What did he say?
		Yeah, an unusual, very unusual brief by Donald Trump.
		He's not a party to this case.
		He's not arguing today.
		It's being defended by the Biden administration.
		He does matter in this because his administration would be in charge of enforcing it.
		So he filed a brief that essentially said, put the law on hold to give me time to try to broker a deal.
		It was unusual in part because usually when somebody says, put a law on hold, they say, because it's unconstitutional or, you know, for some other reason, unlawful.
		He didn't make that argument.
		He just basically said, look, I've got the mandate, I've got the ability.
		Kind of a very over-the-top brief praising his ability to do that sorts of things.
		And he said, just put it on hold and I'll take care of it.
		Greg Storr is the Supreme Court reporter for Bloomberg News.
		Follow his reporting at bloomberg.com or on X at business.
		Greg Storr, thank you very much for joining us early this morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We do appreciate it.
unidentified		Happy to do it.
		By the way, you can listen to that TikTok oral argument today on C-SPAN 2.
		That's at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We will have live coverage of the oral argument.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		You'll be able to hear from both sides as they argue before the justices about what they would like to see happen with TikTok.
unidentified		Our question this morning for all of you, our conversation, is your reaction to President-elect Donald Trump sentencing later this morning in New York on that hush money case.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Here are the lines.
unidentified		You can join the conversation this morning.
unidentified		Let's go back to what Mr. Trump had to say to the press after the guilty verdict in that hush money case last May.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This was a disgrace.
		This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.
		It's a rigged trial, a disgrace.
		They wouldn't give us a venue change.
unidentified		We were at 5% or 6% in this district, in this area.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This was a rigged, disgraceful trial.
		The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people.
		And they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here.
		You have a sore respect, DA, and the whole thing.
		We didn't do a thing wrong.
		I'm a very innocent man.
		And it's okay.
		I'm fighting for our country.
		I'm fighting for our Constitution.
		Our whole country is being rigged right now.
		This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent, a political opponent.
		And I think it's just a disgrace.
		And we'll keep fighting.
unidentified		We'll fight till the end and we'll win.
unidentified		President-elects Trump back in May.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		He was candidate Trump then for president back in May, and that's what he had to say in reaction to that guilty verdict.
unidentified		34 counts on falsifying business records.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Today is the sentencing in New York.
unidentified		The judge has said, though, that there will be no punishment.
		Your reaction, Steve, in San Jose, California, Republican Steve, the president-elect is arguing that going forth with this stigma, the sentencing, puts a stigma on him and his administration as he is about to start his next four years in the White House.
		I totally agree with President Trump.
		This is outrageous.
		There can be no finer, I repeat, no finer example of lawfare than this court proceedings with Mershot.
		I followed the trial.
		I listened to the experts.
		Democrat Alan Dershowitz, he's a Democrat, mind you.
		Jonathan Turley, he testified before Congress.
		He is such an authority on law.
		Andy McCarthy, John Wu, Mark Levin, Jim Trustee.
		I listened to all of them, and there are at least eight to ten outrageous things that Mershant did that are points of reversal.
		And I listened to CNN for many, many years, and I was outraged that you did not have on one of these experts, especially Jonathan Turley or Alan Dershowitz.
		I could find no record of you having on either of these two gentlemen to put a stop to this and bring to the attention of the American public what was going on.
		I've listened over and over again people referring to the felony convictions on your show.
		And you could have put a stop to it by these experts, Dershowitz and Turley.
		Steve, why you take issue with people using the word convicted felon that he, I mean, he was convicted on 34 counts, and those were felonies.
		Do you take issue with describing it that way?
		You could have put a stop to it.
		Stop to what?
		You could have had on the experts that would shoot down what was going on and how unfair that Mershant was treating Trump.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Steve, first of all, we're C-SPAN.
unidentified		You said CNN.
unidentified		And later on on the program, John Melcombe from the Heritage Foundation will be arguing that side of this.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So hope you stay with us this morning.
unidentified		Al in Watertown, Tennessee, Independent.
		Hi, Al.
		Good morning to you.
		Yeah, thanks.
		Sometimes we dwell on the minutiae, just like the Bloomberg person did.
		But let me review this: that the election was a contest between voters who believed hoaxes and those who don't believe hoaxes.
		Now we have the Trump is a felon hoax to go along with the Russian collusion hoke.
		Trump called neo-Nazis fine people.
		Kavanaugh raped someone.
		COVID was a lab leak conspiracy.
		Border agents whipped migrants.
		Trump stored nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago.
		Steele dossier is true.
		Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation.
		Trump built cages for migrants.
		Trump tax cuts benefit only the rich.
		Cloth masks prevent COVID.
		If you get vaccinated, you won't catch COVID.
		See, my point: the point is that most of the people, even a lot of Democrats, know that this was lawfare and it was not, you know, it's just more of the same.
		So it's over with for the mainstream media.
		People like your Bloomberg guests, all those headlines.
		C-SPAN is famous.
		We're just reading the headlines from the Washington Post and the New York Times.
		Nobody believes them anymore.
		And nobody cares that some judge in New York convicted Donald Trump of a bunch of nonsense.
		That was a sham show trial.
		Tens of millions of people know it.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So Al's thoughts there, who's an independent in Tennessee.
		Let's hear from a Democrat, Luis in North Carolina.
		Hi, Louise.
unidentified		Good morning and happy new year.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		All this nonsense people are speaking this morning is ridiculous.
		The president-elect had been convicted and it should stand.
		And when he got on television the other day, he said, see, I won all my cases.
		I did nothing wrong.
		I did nothing wrong.
		Some of this stuff he hadn't even been to trial for.
		So he needs to stop the lies.
		I don't know why people, I guess he says things over and over and over again to brainwash these people.
		I mean, I could see them supporting him, but just saying that he did not do nothing wrong, it's ridiculous.
		And he knows he's not going to go to jail.
		So I don't know what his problem is.
		And to put it on appeal is ridiculous.
		And also with the Jack Smith and stuff, those Supreme Justices, two of them should be recused, and they won't do it.
		All right, Louise and North Carolina, Democratic caller, a couple people have brought up Jack Smith.
		Just want to show you a headline this morning.
		Appeals court allows release of Smith's report on Trump's election reversal efforts.
		The ruling can be appealed.
		President-elect Donald Trump says releasing the special counsel report would interfere with his White House transition from the Washington Post.
		A federal appellate court Thursday ruled that the Justice Department may publicly release special counsel Jack Smith's report on Donald Trump's efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election, although the timing of that release remains unclear.
		The ruling did not distinguish between the two volumes of Smith's report, one dealing with his election interference probe and the other focused on Smith's investigation into Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents.
		Back to this hush money case, here is Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg back in May delivering a statement to the press after that guilty verdict in the Hush Money case.
		The 12 everyday jurors vowed to make a decision based on the evidence and the law and the evidence and the law alone.
		Their deliberations led them to a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Donald J. Trump, is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree to conceal a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.
		And while this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors by following the facts and the law and doing so without fear or favor.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The Manhattan DA back in May.
unidentified		Michael, Smithfield, North Carolina, Republican.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning to you, Michael.
unidentified		Your reaction.
		Good morning, Grenda.
		How are you doing?
		Doing well, sir.
		Well, my reaction is we've got to get it all behind us because we now have a newly elected president and we've got to move on from this.
		We need all these trials to be handled as soon as possible so we can know where we're at with the funding of the presidency.
		Michael then, do you think that the president-elect should just after today let this go, not appeal?
		Not appeal.
		Okay.
		Pat, Jackson, Tennessee, Democratic caller.
		Hi, Pat.
		Hey.
		Morning to you.
		Good morning to you.
		I'm an old woman.
		I've lived through a whole bunch of presidents.
		I don't understand what is going on in this country.
		I mean, this is absolutely ridiculous.
		Why don't they quit fussing and fighting?
		And let's just wait and see what he does.
		I mean, it's proven to me and the country that no matter what he does, he's going to get away with it.
		So it doesn't really matter.
		What do you mean?
		Wait to see what he does.
		You're talking about the president-elect.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And what do you mean?
unidentified		Does in his administration?
		Wait and see what he does in his administration.
		See if he does the things that he says he's going to do.
		I mean, if he starts with the hollering and screaming and trying to put opponents in jail and stuff like that, then the country needs to stop it.
		But until that happens, let's just get on with it.
		I'm just going to.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So, Pat, tie that back to this hush money case and the sentencing that's going to happen later today, or at least the sentencing hearing is going to happen later today.
unidentified		Stupid.
		I've watched the news.
		I've watched, he never denied that he did all that stuff.
		But you know what?
		I don't, I can't even, I don't even know why that is a problem.
		I mean, that's in the past.
		He did it.
		Get over it.
		Okay.
		Pat there is a Democrat in Jackson, Tennessee.
		She says, let's move on from that 34 felony count verdict for falsifying business records in what prosecutors called an attempt to cover up $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels.
		Of course, the president has denied wrongdoing.
		He did deny wrongdoing throughout.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Ivy in Minnesota, an independent Ivy.
unidentified		Okay.
		Hi.
		I hope you can hear me good.
		I just want to say that people forget that the reason that this is a problem for him is because he has not only paid the person to hush them up, but that wasn't good enough.
		And that probably wouldn't have come out except for that he wanted to deduct those amounts from his taxes.
		And that is where the problem is.
		So he's cheated on his taxes also, as well as committing fraud, you know, the business side of it.
		Ivy in Minnesota.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Alicia, Alicia in Oregon, Independent.
		Good morning to you.
		It's your turn.
unidentified		Thank you.
		Thank you for having me.
		By the way, for anybody's information out there, if you're cited to be wrong by any way, any means, you're going to be found guilty from a trial of 12 people, including three alternatives.
		Now, now that that's out of the way, you can't go around blaming everybody on everything when they cannot even do their jobs when they want to do it according to free speech, the evidence which they have that won't be presented to a judge, especially when one says, you're going to put a gag over here.
		Excuse me.
		We're going to go on your property and look through everything you have without a subpoena and without a warrant.
		Because I know this.
		Police came on my property, could not find a thing.
		And I'm an average working person.
		FBI came stoning on my property.
		Could not find a thing.
		But I think this way.
		Don't come with your problems without a solution.
		So why they left?
		I gave them some information on how to take care of themselves through all these disasters.
		I said to them, here, and don't say it comes from me.
		I'm an anonymous, and I prefer to be that way because I've been persecuted for when I did give my name for a solution that would not cost you any money once it's up and rounded.
		All right, caller.
		I will leave it at that.
		As we deliver today with Greg Storr of Bloomberg News, who covers the Supreme Court, the justices will hear oral argument this morning, 10 a.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN 2 in that TikTok case.
		Mike Gallagher, former member of the House of Representatives from Wisconsin, who is chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, writes in today's Wall Street Journal, Congress didn't ban TikTok.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The Supreme Court should uphold the law I wrote, which requires only finding a new owner.
unidentified		And he writes in the Wall Street Journal: if TikTok vanishes from the app stores this month, ByteDance will only have, will have no one to blame but itself.
		Rather than pursuing divestiture, it will have devoted the 270 days since the law went in effect to lobbying.
		The actions, its actions suggest that Byte Dance and the Communist Party believe it is easier to manipulate our system than comply with our laws.
		The justices must join bipartisan majorities in Congress in sending the message that Byte Dance and the Chinese Communist Party are mistaken.
		That's Mike Gallagher writing in opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal on that TikTok case.
		Again, you can listen live this morning to the oral argument, 10 a.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN 2.
		Back to our conversation with all of you about the sentencing in New York, 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time in that hush money case against President-elect Donald Trump.
		I want to show you what the president had to say in reaction to the Supreme Court's decision not to stop the sentence hearing today.
		He was meeting with Republican governors in Mar-a-Lago.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Here's what he had to say.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Called for an appeal, and as you know, they acknowledge what the judge said about no penalty, and there is really no penalty.
		But we're going to appeal anyway, just psychologically, because frankly, it's a disgrace.
		It's a judge that shouldn't have been on the case.
		He's a highly conflicted judge.
donald j trump [ai] ▲ ● ▼		And they called for an appeal.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		So I read it, and I thought it was a fair decision, actually.
		So I'll do my little thing tomorrow.
		They can have fun with their political opponent.
		As you know, I'm under a gag order from a judge.
		This is the first.
		This was an attack of a political opponent.
		And if you take a look at it, I'm not supposed to be talking about it, so I won't.
		I'm the first president and probably one of the first candidates in history that's under attack with a gag order where I'm not allowed to speak about something.
		And they ought to find out what that's all about.
		And this is a long way from finished.
		And I respect the court's opinion.
		I think it was actually a very good opinion for us because you saw what they said.
		But they invited the appeal, and the appeal is on the bigger issue.
		So we'll see how it all works out.
		I think it's going to work out well.
		We beat Jack Smith.
		He's back, I hope, at The Hague, but I don't think he should be there either.
		He puts people in very bad positions, like giving people death penalties.
		I will tell you, he is a disgrace.
		We won all of those cases.
		We won most of the other cases, or they're limping along.
		We've had a lot of lawfare.
		These are all people that understand what's going on here very badly.
		This was an attack on the Republican Party.
		This was an attack on the Republican candidate who just won an election by record numbers, the highest number of Republican votes by far ever gotten.
		And we won all swing states, seven swing states.
		We won the popular vote by millions of people.
		And this is that was the real vote.
		And I said it a long time ago.
		The real vote is that.
		And they tried to stop that from happening.
		They tried to stop this election from happening or to bloody somebody up so badly they couldn't win.
		And the people got it.
		And again, we won by the largest number.
		Nobody's ever seen anything like that.
		It was conclusive.
		It was a massive, they say, the most consequential election in 129 years.
		And this is, and these people, the people know everything, everything that you're asking.
		They've been studying this for two years as it went along.
		And hopefully it'll never happen again, an attack on a political opponent.
		So Peter will be appealing the decision.
donald j trump [ai] ▲ ● ▼		They're asking for an appeal.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		And that's on the fact on what's going to happen, much more importantly than tomorrow.
unidentified		President-elect Donald Trump, they're calling the hush money case a political lawfare against a presidential candidate.
unidentified		Your reaction to the sentence hearing taking place later today in Manhattan.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Donna in Verona, Pennsylvania, Democratic caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning to you.
unidentified		Hey, Gretchen, how you doing?
		I'm calling because, you know, these people that's calling are delusional.
		Like, we don't watch ourselves, like we don't have any eyes of common sense, which we do.
		When Donald Trump, when they heard the reporters, first asked Donald Trump on that airplane about the hush money case, his mouth dropped.
		His eyes dropped down.
		You're going to have to ask my lawyer, Michael Cohen.
		Come on, how stupid do you think we are?
		William Bohr protected him the whole way through until the end.
		Then he turned on William Bohr.
		Eileen Cannon, he set her up and he set the Supreme Court up with the right people to protect him.
		And that's what they do.
		Eileen Cannon kept pushing it back, pushing it back, she couldn't push it back no more.
		And I'm glad they stopped her this time.
		Donna, Donna, explain, pushing what back, Eileen Cannon, the judge, Judge Cannon.
		Pushing back the cases where they could, where Jack Smith couldn't do nothing to her.
		That's what she did.
		And then also, I want to say this, January, like 9-11, they should show each year what happened on January 6th because it was a disgrace.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Donna, we'll stick to the topic this morning for the Washington Journal.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Perry in Dallas, Texas, Republican.
unidentified		Yes, I think everybody knows this is selective prosecution.
		I mean, Hillary Clinton did a similar thing with her brush a hoax, paying a law firm, saying that was a business expense to a firm.
		And really, that was payment to Perkins Cooey for that steel dossier and all that work.
		This was a conspiracy by the government to go after him with all these prosecutions.
		And so the lights in that 34 felony counts.
		If the judge really thought there was that, but you have a crime, why would the penalty be what it is?
		He realizes there's nothing there.
		There's not even a crime because it was misdemeanor trying to bolster it into a felony, which you can't do.
		And it was a federal crime.
		Your earlier caller said something about the taxes being deducted.
		This was not a tax case.
		This is a state court case.
		Anybody wonder why this is brought in state court?
		Anyway, this was election interference.
		Everything the prison says is true.
		This case can be reversed.
		There was no crime here.
		And they certainly would have not brought this crime, I mean, this case against a Democrat.
		Something has to be done to stop these Democratic prosecutors going after Republican opponents.
		They don't like, and this is going after him because they didn't want him to be president after January 6th.
		I think they will investigate and look at all the cases they brought against him because it was an effort to run him out of the election.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Perry's thoughts there in Dallas, Texas, a Republican, and Eddie's a Republican in Millbury, Massachusetts.
		Good morning to you, Eddie.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yeah, they said the Democrats are saying that the Republicans are killing democracy.
		No, I'm afraid they're killing it themselves.
		Going back to Hillary Clinton, using the FBI, you could say George Floyd.
		He sent the policeman to jail.
		They say that a thousand signed affidavits of fraud in voting places were never adjudicated.
		These are the words that bother me, non-adjudicated and jury notification.
		How can they charge him 34 times for taking his money to buy the memoirs of a lady of the night?
		That's a federal case they brought up in a state court because the federal did not want to use it.
		They know it's wrong.
		Thank you.
		Okay.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Robin in Tennessee is a Democratic caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Robin.
unidentified		Hi.
		I'm a little confused these days because I'm under the impression that no one is above the law and that if you're convicted of a crime, there is a set penalty for that crime.
		And why would that not apply to everyone equally?
		I'm a little disturbed when people are standing up going, we're the party of law and order when that's the very thing they're throwing out with the bathwater, so to speak.
		Robin, let me bounce this off of you.
		This is the attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump and their argument on why this sentencing hearing should not take place today.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Their argument to the Supreme Court.
unidentified		The doctrine of sitting president immunity shields him from criminal process during the brief but crucial period of presidential transition while he engages in the extraordinarily demanding task of preparing to assume the executive power of the United States.
		The prospect of imposing sentence on President Trump just before he assumes office as the 47th president raises the specter of other possible restrictions on liberty such as travel, reporting requirements, registration, probationary requirements, and others, all of which would be constitutionally intolerable under the doctrine of presidential immunity.
		Robin, your reaction to the president-elect's lawyers.
		If we're going to follow one part of the Constitution, shouldn't we follow all of it?
		And I believe what was happening after the 2020 election when all this misinformation was put out into the universe about an election that had 60 cases that none of them won.
		And then here's this state case where they actually proved in a jury trial that he was guilty of 34 felonies, and they just want to throw that out too.
		I don't understand when you're doing the right thing versus the wrong thing and how you get away with it.
		If you break the law, you should be penalized according to what everybody else gets, right?
		Robin's thoughts there in Tennessee, a Democratic caller from the Supreme Court orders last night.
		First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-elects Trump's state court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal.
		Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the president-elect's responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court's stated intent to impose a sentence of, quote, unconditional discharge after a brief virtual hearing.
		Virtual, because the president-elect is going to, according to news reports, attend the sentence hearing virtually today.
		He was in Mar-a-Lago last evening meeting with Republican governors.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Noah in Cedarhurst, New York, a Republican.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning to you, Noah.
unidentified		Noah in Cedarhurst, New York, Republican caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		It's your turn.
unidentified		Oh, yes.
		Hello.
		I would just like to say many legal analysts who have assessed the case finding it disturbing in how criminal law ought to be used in criminal trials conducted.
		And it's been nominated their favorite most compelling argument for Trump's success on appeal, or hopefully it gets appealed.
		Mine goes to Merchant's astonishing decision to preside in the first place.
		So New York's Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchant, who presided over the Hush Money trial of Trump, has donated money on file to both the Biden, to both the Biden administration and a different Democratic party.
		That's not really judicial ethics, is it?
		It doesn't set up a good precedent for the federal court system.
		Noah's thoughts, there's in New York.
		Speaking of the judge in this case, this is what he had to say on January 3rd, 2025.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		A jury heard evidence for nearly seven weeks and pronounced its verdict.
unidentified		Defendant and the people were given every opportunity to address intervening decisions, to exhaust every possible motion in support of and in opposition to their respective positions in what is an unprecedented and likely never-to-be-repeated legal scenario.
		This court must sentence defendant within a reasonable time following verdict.
		And defendant must be permitted to avail himself of every available appeal, a path he has made clear he intends to pursue, but which only becomes fully available upon sentencing.
		The judge, with his rationale of why the sentencing will take place this morning, 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And the president-elect, after the Supreme Court denied his emergency appeal to stop the hearing, said he will go forward with the appeal process.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Tom in Chester, Massachusetts, independent.
unidentified		Hi, Tom.
		Yeah, hi.
		I don't agree that the Trumpster keeps on being exempted from guilty crimes.
		He seems to be free of any wrongdoing, him and his family.
		And I don't think that's right because every civilian, it seems like, you know, and every other politician, anytime they're guilty of a crime, they serve, you know, whatever the justified sentence may be.
		But the Trumpster and his family seem to be exempted, and it's just not fair to the rest of the people of the country.
		Tom, Massachusetts Independent caller.
		Let's take a brief break from this conversation about this hush money case to give you some numbers on those wildfires in the Los Angeles area.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Here's the Wall Street Journal front page.
unidentified		The wildfires in Los Angeles rage on.
		More than 10,000 structures have burned.
		Officials fear the death toll will rise.
		Economic losses from the blazes have been estimated at tens of billions of dollars.
		Roughly 33,000 acres were aflame and more than 200,000 without power across Los Angeles.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Next to that story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal is this headline.
unidentified		California insurance crisis deepens as Infernos wreak record damage.
		Inferno's wreck, oh, I need more coffee.
		We'll just skip over that.
		California is the biggest home insurance market in the U.S., but also one of the toughest for companies to navigate.
		The state accounted for eight of the 10 costliest U.S. wildfires on record.
		And more from the Wall Street Journal this morning, numbers for you.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		When you take a look at the California wildfires and the history of it, the 2018 campfire cost $12.5 billion.
		They are expecting that this wildfires in Los Angeles, that the total will come out higher than the record we've seen so far.
		That is in the Wall Street Journal this morning.
unidentified		And then there is also this from the Washington Post this morning.
		The insurance losses of the Los Angeles fires could exceed $20 billion.
		JP Morgan analyst Jim Buehler wrote Thursday in a research note, he estimated total economic losses of $50 billion, while AccuWeather set a range of $135 billion to $150 billion.
		So that is where the cost could come in for this.
		And just another headline to share with you from the Washington Times related to this, that President Biden has vowed the federal government will pay for state fire damage.
		The governor, Governor Gavin Newsom, asked for only 90% reimbursement.
		Mr. Biden on Wednesday approved the disaster declaration, which unlocks federal taxpayer funds to local officials dealing with the disaster.
		Under the declaration, the federal government typically covers roughly 70% of the costs.
		However, Mr. Biden upped that amount to 100% of the costs.
		That was more than what was requested by the governor, who asked to pay for 90%.
		The funds will reimburse local government for the cost of debris and hazardous material removal, temporary shelters, first responder salaries, and quote, all necessary measures to protect life and property and folks.
		That according to the president.
		Back to our conversation about this hush money sentence hearing later today in New York.
		Diane, St. Paul, Minnesota, Democratic caller, let's hear from you.
		Hi, thank you for taking my call.
		I'm calling today because I've been one of those people that have the internal revenue.
		I took in well with my taxes and found out they said that I owe $13,000 for the channel for the statement and about $20,000 for the federal government.
		And guess what?
		I didn't get what Donald Trump is getting.
		All I say is if we're going to do this, let's give everybody the same thing.
		We make special deals for the audio, the ones that run this place.
		And I'm just appalled at it because I'm still paying off these taxes.
		And that's what other people are doing who are in the middle class.
		We don't get a break.
		Where's our break?
		All right, Diane.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		David in Virginia, Republican caller.
unidentified		Hi, David.
		Hi.
		I remember when the Stormy Daniels case first hit and reporters asked Trump when he was getting on Air Force One about it, and he said he didn't know anything about it.
		Ask Michael Cohen.
		And I thought right then, God, he lied, didn't he?
		But his attorney, Michael Cohen, see, Michael Cohen waived attorney client privilege, allowing his attorney, Bob Costello, to testify.
		He testified before Congress.
		And according to Michael Cohen, according to Bob Costello, Michael Cohen was pacing up and down in his office, pounding the desk, swearing, saying, I'll do anything to stay out of jail.
		I'll do anything to stay out of jail.
		And Cohen's attorney, Costello, says he told him, well, you got anything on Donald Trump?
		I could end this in a couple of weeks because they're really not after you.
		They're after Donald Trump.
		So what do you got on Trump?
		And he said, Cohen kept saying, I don't have anything on Trump.
		I don't have anything on Trump.
		Then Costello then says he asked him, what about Stormy Daniels?
		And he says that Michael Cohen told him that Stormy Daniels, he said, I handled it on his own.
		He never told Trump about it.
		So it looks like Trump was telling the truth.
		He never told Trump about it, and he didn't believe that Trump had anything to do with Stormy Daniels.
		He was just protecting Melania.
		And then this guy, Bob Costello, got to testify.
		He was called to testify in the court under Judge Mershon.
		The prosecutors kept interrupting all his testimony saying, objection, objection.
		And Mershon kept saying, sustain, sustain, sustain.
		And when Costello looked out of the corner of his eye at the judge, you know, because Costello was a very experienced attorney.
		He was a prosecutor himself, knew what was going on wasn't right.
		And Mershon cleared the entire courtroom because when he started staring at the judge, you know, looking at him, what are you doing?
		And you can see in his eyes, the judge, you know, went off and cleared the entire courtroom, reporters and everything, so he could chew this guy up.
		So this whole thing looks ridiculous.
		Looks like to me, Stormy Daniels is guilty of extortion.
		And I think Cohen might be guilty of embezzlement because during that court, he admitted to taking money from Trump up to about $20,000.
		All right, David's thoughts there.
		Renee, we'll hear from you next.
		Who's in Florida?
		Democratic caller.
		Renee.
		Wow, that was a good one.
		Michael Cohen went to prison.
		I believe he was defendant two, not defendant number one, if that's the same case, because Trump's caught up with so much.
		And then Weiselberg, he was in prison.
		They didn't bring him out of prison to testify because they knew he wouldn't testify against Trump because he's waiting on his pardon, although he might be done serving his time.
		But what is wrong with our with people?
		What is wrong with them is we have a propaganda channel in this country that feeds these people and social media.
		And now they're allowed to lie.
		I mean, it's just crazy.
		All right, Renee.
		Renee in Florida.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		A lighthearted moment yesterday at the funeral service at the National Cathedral for the late President Jimmy Carter.
unidentified		All five current and living presidents met together to mourn the loss of our 39th president.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And you can see there former President Obama talking with President-elect Donald Trump.
unidentified		A lot of commentary on social media about their interaction between the two.
unidentified		Yesterday, President-elect Trump was asked about it at Mar-a-Lago last night.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Here's what he had to say.
unidentified		What were you talking to Barack Obama about?
unidentified		It did look very friendly, I must say.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		I didn't realize it.
		I didn't realize it, how friendly it looked.
		I saw it on your wonderful network just a little while ago before I came in, and I said, boy, they look like two people that like each other.
		And we probably do.
		We have little different philosophies, right?
		But we probably do.
		I don't know.
		We just got along.
		But I got along with just about everybody on that.
		You know, we met backstage, as you know, before we went on.
		And I thought it was a beautiful service, but we all got along very well, which is good.
unidentified		President-elect Donald Trump talking about how they all met backstage before they came out to sit in the chairs there at the National Cathedral.
		If you missed any moments of the interaction between the current former presidents, their wives, the former first ladies, the vice presidents who attended, who sat behind the president's club there, you can see it all on our website at c-span.org.
		John in Pennsylvania, an independent.
		John, let's hear from you on this hush money case and the sentence hearing that's going to happen in New York at 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time.
		For the sentencing of President Donald Trump, he is not above the law, okay, and he's not special.
		And the jury sentenced him.
		And, you know, Judge Murshan is only doing his job.
		And he is not above the law.
		And the thing is, just because he got elected president, he does not have the right to be discharged or whatever.
		And the Supreme Court, then he tried to go to the Supreme Court route.
		The Supreme Court already said that they gave their opinion, which I support that too.
		And they did the right thing.
		And also, and it's really not going to impact on him anyway.
		I also support Special Counsel Jack Smith's report to be released.
		And people need to know what the truth is in our country.
		We are a democracy.
		We are not a dictatorship.
		And that's the message we need to send across President-elect Donald J. Trump.
		Thank you.
		All right, Mark in Hamilton, New Jersey, Democratic caller.
		What do you say?
		Yes, good morning, Greta.
		How are you?
		Doing well.
		First of all, this man, I don't know what is wrong with people.
		It's like they're blindsided.
		They don't see what is going on here.
		He just was speaking to that elito the day prior to this.
		Can't they see what's going on here?
		So, Mark's money.
		Mark, you don't believe money, money.
		Hold up, Mark.
		You don't believe Justice Lito when he says they did not discuss this emergency appeal because at the time it had not even been made.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		They were discussing a job applicant, someone who had clerked for Samuel Lito, who served in the Trump administration's first four years.
unidentified		He says that's what they were discussing.
		I don't believe a word of that.
		Absolutely not.
		And you had the other justice there whose wife was in with that insurrection thing.
		She's going along with it.
		This is terrible, how he's gotten from what he's done before he was ever running for president, like with that university thing in New York, where he took money from people and it was a whole fraud thing.
		People don't see what is going on here.
		It's so upsetting.
		A wannabe dictator that is going to get away with everything he's got.
		Hopefully, our government will stop anything that goes on here.
		But as far as going back to this thing today, I am so glad that they rejected this.
		The Supreme Court, the two justices came forward and did this because he is actually getting away with murder here.
		He's not going to get fined.
		He is not going to be any kind of jail time.
		And as far as that other thing coming out with Jack Smith, where it's going to be made to the public, I am so glad that that's going to happen.
		Okay.
		All right, Mark, Mark's thoughts there.
		Capitol Hill update for you.
		This is from the Cincinnati Inquirer out of Ohio, Vice President-elect JD Vance to resign his seat at midnight.
		The President-elect JD Vance will resign his Ohio Senate seat at midnight as he prepares for his new role, a heartbeat away from the presidency.
		Vance will take the oath alongside President-elect Donald Trump on January 20th, two years, just two years after he joined the U.S. Senate.
		His resignation, first reported by NBC News, clears the way for Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to appoint another Republican to join newly minted Ohio Senator Bernie Marino.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Vance alerted DeWine to his decision in a letter Thursday, calling it a tremendous honor and privilege to serve the people of Ohio.
unidentified		DeWine will attend an event at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Resort Thursday with governors.
unidentified		That was yesterday.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		It's unclear when the governor will reveal Vance's successor.
unidentified		DeWine said Wednesday that an announcement will be coming soon, but they declined to give an update.
unidentified		Several Republicans expressed interest in the Ohio Senate seat, but Lieutenant Governor John Husted emerged as a frontrunner and joined DeWine at Mar-a-Lago last month.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So that is an update on the Senate.
		Also, this from the Senate, the Lincoln Riley Act passed the House, and now it is on to the Senate.
		USA Today reporting the Lincoln-Riley Act was passed on a 264-159 vote with 48 House Democrats joining the Republican Party.
unidentified		The bill will now move to the Republican-controlled Senate, which will take the measure up today.
unidentified		All 52 Senate Republicans and Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania are co-sponsors of the bill.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Goes on to say that freshman Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona expressed his support for the act on Wednesday.
		Other Democrats have expressed their support for the bill.
		Spokesman for Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona, Gary Peters of Michigan, and Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania confirming their support.
unidentified		Georgia Senator John Ossoff told CNN he would vote to advance debate of the bill in the Senate.
		And a spokesperson for Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said the senator was still reviewing the legislation.
		So that is what is happening in the House and the Senate.
		The first bill passed in this 119th Congress.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		It looks like it's headed for passage in the Senate as well.
unidentified		House took action yesterday to punish the court over its case against Gaza and Benjamin Netanyahu.
unidentified		The bill instructs the president to freeze property assets and deny visas to any foreigners who materially or financially contributed to the court's efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute a protected person.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Protected persons are defined as all current and former military and government officials of the United States and allies that have not consented to the court's jurisdiction, such as Israel.
		This is the International Criminal Court.
		So that action taking place in the House yesterday.
		Let's hear from Armando in Hawaii, Republican, on this hush money case, the sentencing hearing in New York, 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time today.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
		And, you know, I just want to say one thing that this is where divisiveness in this country begins because of these kinds of attacks, you know, against Trump.
		And first of all, I'd like to say that, you know, this started out as a misdemeanor.
		I hope the people always say he's guilty.
		He's guilty.
		It was a misdemeanor.
		And the only reason Alvin Berg was out to get him from day one when he first ran for district attorney, he was out to, that was what he ran on.
		And the thing about it is, you know, he elevated it to a felony because it's supposedly, you know, hit another crime, which was election, you know, regarding the election.
		And that should have gone to the federal court.
		You know, it should have stayed at the state level.
		All right, Armando.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		No, we'll leave it there.
unidentified		I'm going to get in William, who's in Jackson, Mississippi, Independent.
		Hi, William.
		Thank you, Griller.
		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		If he gets off with this, you know, if he can get off with no fine, no penalties, no jail time, then you should let every criminal in America go with similar crime, regardless of their rap sheet and their track record, the crime they got committed for, that they got put in jail for, they should get away with it.
		Now, this is what I want to say.
		You keep poking the bear.
		You keep poking the bear.
		You allowed a guy to come on and tell his version of the story like he was there in the conversation with all these people.
		This is what is dividing the country.
		When you allow this, we've been hearing this for the last eight years.
		People are allowed to shape the conversation how they want to shape it.
		Ignoring facts.
		They want to shape the conversation like they want to shape it.
		And then we're supposed to believe this.
		It's not, but what's going to happen is, so you have people that have loved ones in jail, white and black, polka dotting green, that have people in jail, in prison, with lesser crimes, and that spent time away from their loved ones.
		Do you allow this person to come in and allow him to get away with all this stuff?
		All the stuff he's allowed to get away.
		You're doing different things in the court to get people kicked out the courts.
		You're on the verge of a civil war.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		William in Jackson, Mississippi.
		We'll leave it there for now, but we're going to take a short break.
		When we come back, we'll pick up the conversation.
unidentified		John Melcolm of the Heritage Foundation will discuss the President-elects Trump's criminal cases in previous confirmation hearings for Attorney General nominee Pat Pamboni and FBI Director nominee Kash Patel.
		And then later, Elizabeth Wider of the Constitutional Accountability Center discusses legal and constitutional issues the center is monitoring with the incoming Trump administration.
		We'll be right back.
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		Washington Journal continues.
		We want to welcome to the Washington Journal John Malcolm.
		He's the vice president for Institute for Constitutional Government at the Heritage Foundation.
		He's also a former deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division during the Bush administration.
		Mr. Malcolm, walk us through what will happen at 9.30 this morning in New York in that hush money case.
		Well, the president-elect will not be there in person.
		He will appear via virtual link.
		And Judge Murchon, Juan Murchon, is going to sentence him for the 34 counts for which he was convicted in the so-called hush money trial.
		He's already indicated that he's going to give him what's referred to as an unconditional discharge.
		So he is not going to impose any kind of a sentence.
		He's not going to get fine or jail time or a period of probation.
		But he will, I'm sure, give him something of a tongue-lashing about the gravity of the offense, at least as Juan Murchan sees it, and also for the fact that he held Donald Trump in contempt of court several times during the trial.
		So I assume he will be saying that the president-elect doesn't respect the courts or the law.
		One of the reasons why this is significant is because there's a peculiarity of New York law that even after the jury comes back with a guilty verdict, you are not deemed to have been convicted until the judge enters the judgment.
		So once he announces the judgment and signs the paper, then Donald Trump will officially be a convicted felon, and he will now have the opportunity to appeal that through the state court system and possibly the federal court system as well.
		Will we hear from the lawyers from both sides today at 9.30?
		Oh, we certainly will hear from the lawyers for both sides.
		It will be interesting to see whether we will hear from the defendant.
		He, you know, as a defendant, Donald Trump will have an opportunity to engage in allocution, meaning to basically say what it is he wants to say.
		His lawyers will probably say, don't say much, but this is Donald Trump that we're talking about, so it wouldn't surprise me if he let his feelings be known.
		He's already done it on social media.
		We'll no doubt do it afterwards on social media, but this will be his opportunity to say it directly to Judge Murchan.
		The president-elect's lawyers made an emergency appeal, as you know, to the Supreme Court, saying that this is a burden on his responsibilities as he prepares to take over as the 47th president of the United States.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What do you make of the Supreme Court's decision?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Five to four, three liberal justices plus the chief and Amy Coney Barrett saying they disagreed.
unidentified		Well, it's not a ruling on the merits.
		What they basically said was, you know, look, this will take an hour of his time and that they don't think it's too burdensome on his abilities to serve as president, that he'll be filing his appeal during that time, and that Juan Murchan has already said what his sentence is going to be, and that will involve no impingement on the president's time.
		And they said, basically, okay, that's good enough to go ahead at this stage, and then the president can appeal.
		I mean, the others, the other four, Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch, who dissented and said that they would have granted the stay, it's unclear what their reasoning was,
		whether just this sentencing proceeding would be too much of a burden on the president, or whether the appeal process would be too much of a burden on the president, or whether it was even fair to go ahead with this sentencing in light of the fact that one of the major appeal issues is whether the judge admitted evidence that never should have been admitted in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in the Trump versus United States case.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		In the immunity case.
unidentified		Yes, that's correct.
		So evidence that was presented, the president-elect lawyers believe that that evidence is protected by immunity.
		There's no question, actually, and even Judge Murchau, I think, would admit that there was evidence admitted during the trial, which in light of what the Supreme Court has now said in the immunity case, should not have been admitted.
		There were White House telephone records.
		I believe there were some financial disclosures.
		There was certainly testimony from a senior White House advisor, Hope Hicks.
		None of that should have come in during the trial, but Judge Murchahn has essentially said this was harmless error, that the evidence was sufficiently strong, that even if we hadn't admitted, even if that stuff had never come in during the trial, he would have been convicted anyway.
		And therefore, I'm going to not grant Trump's motion to dismiss the charges.
		Do you agree with President-elect Trump's decision to pursue the appeal process as the Supreme Court said he can?
		And he said in reaction to the court that he will?
		Oh, well, there's no question that he's going to appeal this conviction.
		I mean, he can't appeal the stay order that the Supreme Court, or the lack of a denial of a stay order that the Supreme Court has done, but he was always going to appeal this conviction.
		I think that there were a lot of problems with this trial, not just admitting evidence that he clearly should not have been admitted in light of the presidential immunity case.
		There were six, seven, eight other serious errors.
		And I think there's a very decent chance, no guarantee, but there's a very decent chance that this conviction will ultimately be overturned.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What were those six, seven errors?
unidentified		Oh, there were several.
		One is whether or not Judge Murchond should have recused himself in the first instance.
		This is somebody who sat in judgment of the Trump organization's CFO, Alan Wesselberg, which was an unrelated proceeding.
		He had donated personally to an organization called Stop Republicans.
		He had donated personally to the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020.
		His daughter Lauren is a major strategist and fundraiser for Democratic candidates and fundraised off of this very trial.
		He also denied a motion to change the venue.
		Donald Trump was not very popular in New York City.
		He certainly faced a very hostile jury.
		He admitted lots of extraneous evidence.
		This was a documents. case, a business fraud case.
		It's actually a misdemeanor, but it is ramped up to a felony if it is done for the purpose of concealing another crime.
		So a documents case, he allowed in very salacious testimony from this porn actress, Stormy Daniels, about this alleged one-night stand that took place in 2006, including testimony about how she felt intimidated by Donald Trump when she was in his hotel room.
		There was all kinds of extraneous testimony from Michael Cohen.
		The prosecution got to enter into evidence stuff about his criminal convictions.
		It's usually the defense attorneys that want to highlight a witness's criminal record.
		But here, it was the prosecution that wanted to highlight that because one of the many crimes that Michael Cohen pled guilty to was a federal election campaign finance violation.
		And the entire theory of the prosecution was that this business fraud records case was designed to cover up a campaign finance violation.
		The judge issued a very strange jury instruction that I think was also reversible error.
		He said that this had to be done for the purpose of concealing another crime.
		The other crime that was charged was to conspire with someone to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.
		The judge then suggested, well, it could be federal campaign finance violation.
		That might be the unlawful means.
		It might have been an additional tax charge or other false business records.
		He told the jurors, you pick whichever one of these theories you like, and you don't have to be unanimous with respect to that theory.
		I think that is reversible error.
		Not to mention the fact that this really was a documents case was tried as a federal campaign finance law violation.
		And it's the Department of Justice that has exclusive jurisdiction to prosecute criminal cases involving federal campaign finance violations.
		The Federal Election Commission has exclusive jurisdiction over civil violations of federal campaign finance violations.
		Both of them looked into this matter and declined to proceed against Donald Trump.
		We are talking this morning with our guest, John Melcombe of the Heritage Foundation, also former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division during the Bush administration.
		We want you to join the conversation with us this morning.
		Here's how you can do so.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		You can text as well, include your first name, city and state, to 202-748-8003.
unidentified		Mr. Melcom, let's also talk about Jack Smith and these reports that are set to be made public.
		An appeals court yesterday said that they can go forth.
		Your reaction and first outline these reports.
		Well, so Jack Smith was a special counsel, not an independent counsel, a special counsel.
		And he's charged with not only prosecuting whatever cases fell within his jurisdiction.
		A judge in Florida ruled that he was never properly appointed as a special counsel, that his appointment violated the appointments clause of the Constitution.
		That was on appeal, and now he has dropped the case altogether.
		But that he was going to prepare a final report, just as Bob Mueller did over the Russiagate investigation.
		And he presents it to the Attorney General, and it's a report for the Attorney General.
		And the Attorney General has the discretion to release the report, not release the report, release parts of the report.
		Jack Smith has indicated that he has two reports, basically, that he's going to prepare one for the DC case, which involved the events of January the 6th, the riot at the Capitol.
		The other was for the classified documents case.
		There is still, he's dismissed the case in Washington, D.C.
		The case in Florida has been dismissed as to Donald Trump, and the case has been transferred to the local federal prosecutor.
		There are still two defendants in that case, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira.
		And the judge has said basically: one, Jack Smith, you probably didn't have the authority to write this report since you were improperly appointed in the first place.
		And two, there is still a pending case against people who are going to be mentioned in that report, and you could prejudice a jury and make it very, very difficult for them to get a fair trial.
		So, what happens next then?
		Well, we'll see.
		I think the 11th Circuit has said, yes, that's right, this report shouldn't come out.
		Time is running out.
		Merrick Garland has indicated that he is going to release the report, at least as to the D.C. case, and that he might withhold the report as to the classified documents case in Florida, although he also said that he might send portions of that report to the leaders in Congress so that they could review it with a confidentiality understanding.
		One of the things that's really interesting, of course, is that in 10 days, Donald Trump is going to be inaugurated as president.
		Pam Bondi is going to have a confirmation hearing next week.
		She was likely to be confirmed as the Attorney General.
		And this is a report prepared for the Attorney General.
		So if this issue extends past January the 20th, the report will be handed over to Pam Bondi, and Pam Bondi can decide, and it is completely in her discretion, what portions of this report to release or whether to release it at all.
		NBC News headline on this: a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the Justice Department can release a report on President-elect Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, but kept in place a judge's order requiring a three-day delay to allow for further appeals.
		The ruling means President-elect Trump can ask the Supreme Court to block the release of the report written by special counsel Jack Smith.
		A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not say whether the president-elect would appeal Thursday's ruling, but instead attacked Smith in his statement.
		Let's get to calls.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Kerry in New Berlin, Wisconsin, Republican, you're up first.
unidentified		Thank you.
		Actually, as I was listening, your guest, John, answered my biggest question.
		I told the screener I was going to ask you, John, if you could give a very concise explanation of what crimes Trump was really convicted of and accused of, and how they, I couldn't quite remember clearly how they turned the misdemeanors into a felony.
		I'm talking about the New York Hush Money case.
		You know, it's very important to get him convicted as a 34-felony thing.
		But let's try to look at the law.
		And correct me if I'm wrong, but you correct, I mean, you answered my question.
		The real thrust of it all is campaign finance.
		I was thinking it was election interference because I was going to say, what's the other law?
		Because as I understand it, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor, as you said earlier, but I think people don't get this.
		They finagled the law in a way that has seldom, if ever, been used, certainly never been used in a case like this, to combine, to make each check written and each record entered a separate misdemeanor or whatever, and they combine them to make them into a felony using the justification that If you can show it's in commission of another crime, then it can be a felony.
		And again, I was thinking that other crime was election interference because that is what they were talking about.
		Trump did it in order to affect the outcome, you know, so if people knew about Stormy Daniels, people wouldn't vote for him or, you know, and all that stuff, not just scary Milani or whatever.
		But and also, I think I heard at one point that some of the offenses were past the statute of limitations.
		But again, I want people to understand it was finagling misdemeanors into a, if I understand it correctly.
		All right, correct me if I'm wrong.
		All right, John Malcolm.
		Yeah, well, let me break this down a little bit.
		So these were 34, they were felony counts of false entries of business records.
		Essentially what they were were 17 invoices and then 17 payment records of payments, invoices from Michael Cohen and payments to Michael Cohen, and they were listed as being for legal services.
		And Michael Cohen basically sat there and said, oh, no, no, these weren't for legal services.
		These were to reimburse me for hush money payments that I had made to Stormy Daniels to prevent her in the run-up to the 2016 election from talking about her alleged one-night stand in 2006 with Donald Trump.
		And then the theory was that if Michael Cohen had made these payments to Stormy Daniels and it was somehow related to the campaign, that was an excessive campaign finance violation.
		Judge Murchond in his order denying Donald Trump's motion to dismiss said, here are 12 jurors unanimously found defendant guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records with the intent to defraud, which included an intent to commit or conceal a conspiracy to promote a presidential election by unlawful means.
		That was clearly the theory.
		Now, this was a federal presidential election.
		I personally don't think that Alvin Bragg and Judge Murchon had the jurisdiction or the authority to proceed with this case at all.
		Another reason why it was significant that these became felonies is that this all happened in 2017.
		This case was brought much, much later.
		A misdemeanor has a statute of limitations of two years.
		Felony has a statute of limitations of five years.
		Even then, the statute of limitations would have run, but New York passed a law that told the statute of limitations during the pandemic.
		As to whether this case would have been brought, it is very, very rare.
		I mean, this was a business fraud case.
		It's designed to basically say, people that want to do business with you are doing due diligence.
		They're checking out your business records.
		You want to make sure those business records are accurate so that they're not going to be defrauded.
		This had nothing to do with that at all.
		Donald Trump paid this money out of his personal funds.
		They weren't even paid out of his campaign.
		And another error that I think was very serious at the trial is that the president, Juan Murchan, would not let Brad Smith, who's a former federal election commissioner, testify that in his view, none of this was related to the campaign.
		These were all personal payments by Donald Trump to cover up what was, you know, would have been an embarrassing disclosure that would have probably harmed his family.
		And that if in fact these funds had been paid out of the campaign, that would have been a campaign finance violation.
		Alvin Bragg ran, saying that he had sued Donald Trump many times successfully when he was trying to be district attorney, that he was going to get Donald Trump, and he did.
		Brock, Newark, New Jersey, Independent.
		Brock?
		Yes, good morning, and Happy New Year, Malcolm.
		That 2025 Project 2025 in the hood, we call that nasty work.
		I don't like it.
		As far as Trump's hush money case, I'm trying to figure out why y'all are so mad.
		He's not going to jail.
		He got a justice system coming in.
		He got all his people coming in.
		Like I said, y'all about to slow walk this project 2025.
		Why are y'all mad?
		Why y'all should be focused on what needs to happen for America instead of just interested in this?
		Just let it go.
		I mean, he's a ginger who's now getting treated like a black man.
		So let it go.
		He'll just have it on his record.
		You know what I'm saying?
		But he'll still be president.
		I don't understand.
		Just let it go.
	Move on.
	All right, Brock.
	We'll get a response to that.
	Sure.
	Well, I don't really want to talk about Project 2025 or Donald Trump.
	Project 2025, as I assume everybody knows, was a project that involved about 100 organizations that was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation.
	It put together a series of recommendations.
	The book was actually published before Donald Trump was even the nominee for an incoming administration to consider.
	And it caught a lot of flack.
	Obviously, the Democrats ran on that and featured it in a lot of their advertisements.
	The Heritage Foundation has put together a similar book called Mandate for Leadership before every presidential election.
	But for some reason, this particular volume attracted a lot of attention.
	In terms of letting this go, look, when Joe Biden came into office, he said, well, we're not going to engage in retaliation.
	We're not going to go after our political enemies.
	We're going to have a return to normalcy.
	Anything but that happened.
	And by the way, there's not only, of course, a danger in terms of somebody being wrongfully convicted or singled out for prosecution because of who they are, not what they did.
	But I also think that there's a real danger.
	Presidents do things that are going to be very popular in the states that voted for them and very unpopular in states that didn't vote for them.
	And it's very, very easy if one combs through a state criminal code to find a violation of law that would arguably attach to something that a president did.
	There are well over a thousand locally elected district attorneys, and there's something very, very dangerous about having a locally elected district attorney going after a former president for conduct that took place while he was in office.
	Now, some of this conduct, the payment to Stormy Daniels, was before he was in office, but a lot of the evidence that was introduced and these payments were made to Michael Cohen while he was president of the United States.
	So let's pick an example.
	Suppose some red state, deep red jurisdiction, there was a fentanyl death of a resident there, and somebody decided to go after Joe Biden for negligent homicide for his immigration policies that allowed an illegal alien into the country who sold the fentanyl to the person who died.
	That would be a very easy charge to make.
	It would probably be very popular in that jurisdiction.
	It would probably ensure that that locally elected district attorney gets re-elected, just as Alvin Bragg was.
	But it would be very, very troublesome in terms of the potential chilling effect that that could have on a president while he's in office.
	And the Supreme Court in the presidential immunity case recognized exactly that.
	Tyler in Vienna, Democratic caller, Vienna, Virginia.
	All right.
	Hi, good morning.
	First of all, thanks for seat spam.
	And I have a two-part question.
	Question number one.
	Are you a lawyer to begin with?
	Yes or no?
	I am.
	You are.
	So based on facts and law, can you explain what the jurisdiction regarding Mr. Smith?
	Say someone shoot someone on broad daylight on Fifth Avenue, and by your example and by your analogy, New York would have no authority to arrest that person, but it had to be Freuda.
	So if you got justice under the law, then a criminal cannot be arrested, even though they commit a crime in broad daylight.
	Say they committed crime in New York, but they have to bring back to Freuda because they are the citizen of Florida.
	So explained on the scale of justice.
	Tyler, okay, hang on the line.
	John Malcolm, did you understand that?
	If not, feel free to ask Tyler a question.
	Well, I understood enough of it that I think that I can answer the question because Tyler raised the issue about Donald Trump's statement.
	I forget what he said, about oh, I could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and people would still elect me.
	The president in the presidential immunity case made it quite clear that there is no immunity whatsoever for unofficial private conduct.
	And somebody standing on the street and killing another individual would, unless there was some kind of a national security threat involving that individual, be private conduct for which he could certainly be prosecuted.
	He could not be prosecuted as a sitting president, but he could certainly be impeached, removed from office, and then prosecuted.
	Or when he was finished with his term of office, he could be prosecuted and nobody would say a thing about that.
	Presidents do, under certain circumstances, get to engage in conduct that private citizens don't get to do.
	For instance, the president is the commander-in-chief.
	He conducts war.
	He orders drone strikes that kill individuals.
	Barack Obama ordered a drone strike on Anwar al-Alaki, who was a United States citizen who was killed with no due process of law.
	He never had a trial.
	But presidents get to do that.
	Private individuals do not get to order drone strikes.
	We'll go to Jim, who's in Springfield, Virginia, Independent.
	Hi, Jim.
	Hi, good morning.
	Good morning, Mr. Malcolm.
	A question that's been stuck in my head during this whole process, and I followed the case closely.
	It seems to be fraught with reversible error.
	If President Trump is successful in overturning this conviction in the next probably two and a half, three years, does he have recourse against Alvin Bragg?
	And also, does he have recourse against Judge Murchon for either prosecutorial misconduct or election interference?
	I'd love to hear your opinion.
	I'll take the answer off the phone.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I think that would be, I think the president has certainly done that.
	If he finds that there was evidence that was hidden or some other nefarious purpose, he might be able to go after Alvin Bragg or people in his office for prosecutorial abuse.
	But, you know, look, this case was tried.
	There were motions dismissed.
	The judge ruled.
	There have been some intermediate appeals that have been taken up that have considered some of the judgments that Juan Murchon entered during the trial.
	He's now going to have his appeal from the trial itself and from the sentence that's imposed.
	In this case, it'll be an unconditional discharge.
	And so I don't see off the top of my head what the merits would be to go after Alvin Bragg or Juan Murchon personally, but I don't like to anticipate arguments that haven't been made yet.
	Clay, Burke, Virginia, Republican.
	Good morning, everyone.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	Sir, I was wondering if you could give me an idea of if there's any kind of precedent for a prosecution simply assuming that an ongoing felony is taking place, not trying or convicting a felony, in order to upgrade a large number of misdemeanors into a package deal of felonies, where we get that large number of felony convictions Donald Trump is supposedly convicted of.
	Those are all misdemeanors.
	Pass the statute of limitations, as you mentioned earlier.
	How in the world did they get upgraded to felonies based on some ongoing conspiracy that nobody's ever proved?
	Thank you.
	Well, the allegation was that he conspired with individuals, including Michael Cohen, probably a guy named David Pecker, who was the CEO of the National Enquirer that involved other payments in order to engage in a federal campaign finance violation, and that that was ongoing from 2016 through whenever the last invoice was submitted by Michael Cohen and then paid.
	I suppose if you were looking at it, you could then argue that any intimidation, Michael Cohen said that he was intimidated to try to remain quiet about all of this, that that could be part of a conspiracy.
	That was the allegation.
	It was all nebulous.
	I don't think that there was jurisdiction to try that.
	As I said, I think there were all kinds of trial errors that occurred, but that was the theory.
	Whether it was proven or not, well, jurors certainly thought so, albeit under a flawed jury instruction, in my opinion.
	And now we'll see how Donald Trump fares on appeal.
	You know, one other thing that's going to be a little bit difficult for him, but it's not insuperable, is that his trial attorney during that trial, Todd Blanche, and the guy who argued the appeals before the Supreme Court, John Sauer, are going to be in the Justice Department.
	They're not going to be his personal attorneys anymore.
	Todd Blanch is highly likely to be confirmed as the Deputy Attorney General, and John Sauer is highly likely to be confirmed as the Solicitor General.
	So he'll have to get new counsel to work on these private matters, but there are plenty of good lawyers out there.
	All right.
	We'll go to Mary, who's a Democrat in Barr, Vermont.
	Hi, Mary.
	Hi, good morning.
	Thank you for taking my call.
	Thank you to C-SPAN and to Mr. Malcolm.
	My question concerns this, I think, troubling precedent of AGs deciding not to release special counsel reports.
	Why should any AG withhold those reports from the public?
	Those are paid for by taxpayers.
	They can be redacted if there are reasonable bases for redactions or for national security reasons or to protect someone's safety and privacy.
	There's ample opportunities to question witnesses who investigated the report, who reached conclusions based on the report and to air their recommendations.
	And we all benefit from hearing those arguments in public.
	And also, another branch of government is involved here.
	I believe Congress passed the special counsel statute.
	Why don't they have a say here?
	So just if you could address some of those issues, I would appreciate it.
	And thank you again for taking my call.
	Thanks, Mary.
	Sure.
	Thank you very much for the questions.
	Let me get to the last part of your question first, which is there was an independent counsel statute that was passed by Congress.
	And we had several independent counsels over the years, you know, Lawrence Walsh and Ken Starr.
	But that independent counsel statute was allowed to lapse.
	There are now special counsels.
	And I think the special counsels are appointed by the Attorney General, and it's pursuant to Department of Justice regulations about what authorities the Attorney General has.
	So I'm not sure that Congress has, they certainly don't have as much of a say here as they did when there was an independent counsel statute in place.
	Look, taxpayers pay for all kinds of things that never see the light of day for all sorts of reasons.
	You know, people are investigated, sometimes they're charged, sometimes they are not charged.
	Federal taxpayers paid for the salaries of all of those federal prosecutors and FBI agents who investigate those matters.
	There would be several reasons why an attorney general might decide not to issue a report.
	You mentioned a few of them having to do with classified information or cooperation from other agencies like, say, the CIA or the National Security Agency or the counterterrorism division of the FBI.
	They may also decide that it is unfair to the people mentioned in the report to release it.
	I mean, it's going to be out there.
	People's reputations will be tarnished.
	They're not going to have an opportunity to go into court to present their side of the story.
	An attorney general might just decide to read this and say, you know, this doesn't make sense to me.
	It's fundamentally unfair to the people who are mentioned.
	And that they're not going to have an adequate opportunity to refute the allegations in the report.
	I don't know what's in that report, but they're, you know, look, prosecutors, when they make decisions not to proceed, don't have to go public with the fact that they haven't proceeded and their reasons for not proceeding.
	We'll go to Folker, who is in Royalton, Minnesota, Independent.
	Hi, morning.
	Happy New Year if it's not too late for that.
	In that case, top of my head, there are three things with Donald Trump.
	First, the election interference.
	Second, the document.
	And third, the hush money thing.
	And the hush money business, to me, has the least national interest.
	I mean, documents in election, I mean, that is a major thing, but nothing happens there and gets swept under the carpet.
	And is there an explanation for that?
	John Malcolm, let's take his thoughts.
	Sure.
	Well, look, in terms of the New York case, certainly you are not alone in terms of thinking that that was a weak case.
	Even some very prominent Democrats, like Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, came out and said that that was a case that never should have been brought and that it never would have been brought against any other defendant other than Donald Trump.
	Look, the other cases are going away for a very simple reason that the people of the United States elected Donald Trump.
	And it is very clear that a president of the United States has constitutional authorities, a lot of which are his and his alone to exercise,
	and that under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the Department of Justice said it would violate separation of powers to subject a president of the United States who is an incredibly busy person with a lot of important tasks that affect the nation that he undertakes every day to be sitting in a courtroom defending himself against a criminal charge.
	If he is impeached and then removed, then you can do that.
	But that a president simply could not do his or her job while having to defend himself against a criminal, against a criminal charge.
	And that includes charges in state court.
	We have a supremacy clause that a state cannot take action, and that would include action by a prosecutor or action by a state court judge that would impinge on the abilities of a federal officer to perform his or her duties.
	And certainly there is no federal officer with more responsibility than a president.
	Laurel, Maryland, Damien is watching there, Republican.
	Welcome to the conversation.
	Thank you.
	Two questions.
	Was this a jury trial?
	And why couldn't Trump's lawyers, who were very high priced, defeat this little old Alvin Bragg, one of 1,000 DAs sitting up there in New York?
	I mean, why couldn't they win?
	He paid a lot of money for these lawyers.
	Thank you for your time.
	Well, sometimes injustices occur in courts.
	If you were Alvin Bragg, you would say the evidence was overwhelming and the jury reached the right verdict.
	If you were Donald Trump, you would say, yes, I paid my lawyers.
	They were very good lawyers, but the fix was in.
	I had a judge who issued several instructions, both in terms of what evidence he admitted and what evidence he would not admit, and in terms of the instructions that he gave to the jury that rigged or it tipped the scales against me dramatically, and that it was fundamentally unfair and never should have been brought before a jury.
	And if it was going to be brought before a jury, it should have been brought in a jurisdiction in which I could have gotten a fair trial involving a judge who was not prejudiced against me.
	Once again, 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time is when this sentencing hearing will take place in New York, in Manhattan.
	And John Malcolm, refresh our viewers' memories or let the folks who are just joining us know how brief of a hearing will this be?
	What will happen?
	Well, it all depends.
	I mean, some sentencing proceedings take a long time.
	There are witnesses that come in and character witnesses.
	I don't think there's going to be any of that.
	But I think you will hear argument from the prosecutor who will say how bad he thinks this crime was.
	The judge has already tipped his hand as to what kind of a sentence that he's going to give him, an unconditional discharge.
	And the Supreme Court in fact.
	Yeah, so he's not going to give him a fine or probation.
	He's going to say, you're a convicted felon.
	That's on your record.
	Now you can go appeal, but I'm not going to impose any additional penalty.
	He already had imposed several penalties by holding him in contempt several times during the trial.
	It all depends on how long the lawyers want to make their statements.
	It all depends on if Donald Trump wants to make a statement and how long he wishes to speak.
	And it all depends on how long Juan Murchond feels like lecturing Donald Trump before the proceeding ends.
	I would think that this will take maybe an hour, but it's impossible to tell you until you get in the courtroom.
	After today's sentencing hearing, what options does the president-elect have going forward?
	He will appeal this conviction.
	He can appeal either to state court or to federal court.
	If he appeals to state court, he can argue violations of New York state law and federal constitutional law.
	If he appeals to federal court, he can only argue alleged errors of federal constitutional law.
	So it's a little unclear which court he will go to first or whether he'll try to do, you know, appeal to both at the same time.
	Can the president-elect pardon himself?
	No, he cannot.
	The pardons clause is quite clear.
	A president has plenary authority to issue pardons, but it is limited to federal offenses.
	The pardons clause says that you can pardon somebody for a federal offense.
	And I personally believe that a president could pardon himself, although it's never been done before, could pardon himself for a federal offense, but he cannot pardon himself for either an impeachment allegation or a state-level offense.
	And this is a state-level offense.
	John Melcom, you talked earlier about Pam Bondi, her nomination by the president-elect.
	You suspect that she will get the confirmation vote from the Senate.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What about the president-elects Trump nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel?
unidentified		He's going to have a harder time.
		It's not that his record is bad.
		I mean, he was a very bright guy.
		He was a federal defender for a while.
		He was a prosecutor, including doing working on terrorism and violent crime cases.
		He served as a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee.
		He served as a staffer, a high-level staffer for the Secretary of Defense, and I believe also served on the National Security Council as a staffer.
		What is going to be problematic for him are various statements that he has made.
		He accused some Trump-level people who were fighting the president while he was in office as engaging in conduct that was borderline treasonous.
		He said that he wants to close the FBIA building, take all the agents and send them out into the field, keep a skeletal crew in D.C., close the FBI building, and open it the next day as a museum to the deep state.
		He's talked about possibly investigating media representatives, which is certainly not anything that will endear him to the media.
		But look, he would be heading an agency that at one point, without his knowledge, subpoenaed his telephone records and those of various congressmen.
		So he has a legitimate beef.
		I think President Trump does too, against the way the FBI has been conducting itself.
		In the interest of full disclosure, I know Chris Wray.
		I used to work for Chris Wray.
		And I personally liked Chris Wray, but I think that the FBI has its problems.
		It has not been very transparent.
		It has engaged in misconduct that has not been adequately disclosed and dealt with.
		And I don't know whether he's going to be confirmed or not.
		That will be a very interesting confirmation hearing to watch.
		John Melcombe at the Institute for Constitutional Government.
		He's the vice president at the Heritage Foundation for that institute.
		We thank you very much for the conversation this morning.
		Thanks for having me on.
		We'll take a short break when we come back.
		Elizabeth Widra of the Constitutional Accountability Center discusses President-elect Trump's sentencing today and the constitutional issues the center is monitoring with the incoming Trump administration.
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		Washington Journal continues.
		Welcome back to the Washington Journal.
		A reminder that 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time in New York in the Manhattan Court on your screen will be President-elect Donald Trump.
		He will be at the court virtually today.
		The court proceedings will take place in that hush money sentencing hearing.
		You'll remember that President-elect Trump was sentenced, or excuse me, was convicted by a jury back in May, 34 counts of falsifying business records.
		Today is the sentencing hearing.
		The judges said there will be no punishment, no fine, no jail time for the president-elect, but this sentencing hearing has to take place.
		There was an effort by President-elect Donald Trump yesterday to stop the proceedings to taking place.
		The Supreme Court justices said on a 5-4 decision that they believe the sentencing can take place today.
		We are monitoring that here on the Washington Journal.
		Here is what the president-elect had to say yesterday in Mar-a-Lago, last evening, meeting with Republican governors on his agenda in his reaction to the Supreme Court.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		They called for an appeal, and as you know, they acknowledge what the judge said about no penalty and there is really there's no penalty.
		But we're going to appeal anyway, just psychologically, because frankly, it's a disgrace.
		It's a judge that shouldn't have been on the case.
		He's a highly conflicted judge, and Frank and they called for an appeal.
		So I read it and I thought it was a fair decision, actually.
		So I'll do my little thing tomorrow.
		They can have fun with their political opponent.
		As you know, I'm under a gag order from a judge.
		This is the first.
		This was an attack of a political opponent.
		And if you take a look at it, I'm not supposed to be talking about it, so I won't.
		I'm the first president and probably one of the first candidates in history that's under attack with a gag order where I'm not allowed to speak about something.
		And they ought to find out what that's all about.
		And this is a long way from finished.
		And I respect the court's opinion.
		I think it was actually a very good opinion for us because you saw what they said.
		But they invited the appeal, and the appeal is on the bigger issue.
		So we'll see how it all works out.
		I think it's going to work out well.
		We beat Jack Smith.
		He's back, I hope, at The Hague, but I don't think he should be there either.
		He puts people in very bad positions, like giving people death penalties.
		I will tell you, he is a disgrace.
		We won all of those cases.
		We won most of the other cases, or they're limping along.
		We've had a lot of lawfare.
		These are all people that understand what's going on here very badly.
		This was an attack on the Republican Party.
		This was an attack on the Republican candidate who just won an election by record numbers, the highest number of Republican votes by far ever gotten.
		And we won all swing states, seven swing states.
		We won the popular vote by millions of people.
		And this is that was the real vote.
		And I said it a long time ago.
		The real vote is that.
		And they tried to stop that from happening.
		They tried to stop this election from happening or to bloody somebody up so badly they couldn't win.
		And the people got it.
		And again, we won by the largest number.
		Nobody's ever seen anything like that.
		It was conclusive.
		It was a massive, they say, the most consequential election in 129 years.
		And this is, and these people, the people know everything, everything that you're asking.
		They've been studying this for two years as it went along.
		And hopefully it'll never happen again, an attack on a political opponent.
		So Peter will be appealing the decision.
donald j trump [ai] ▲ ● ▼		They're asking for an appeal.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		And that's on the fact on what's going to happen, much more importantly than tomorrow.
unidentified		President-elect Donald Trump, yesterday, when asked to react to the Supreme Court's decision where they did not put a stay on that on his emergency appeal to stop the sentencing from going forward today, the judge said the sentencing has to go forward after the jury found him guilty on those 34 counts.
		And you heard the president-elect there say that he will be appealing after today's hearing.
		Joining us this morning to talk more about this and other issues is Elizabeth Wyder.
		She's the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center.
		So, Ms. Wyder, your reaction to these developments ahead of the 9:30 hearing this morning.
		Yes, good morning.
		Thank you so much for having me on and talking with you and your viewers.
		So, you know, the Supreme Court in a five-to-four order last night allowed the sentencing to go forward.
		And that was really, you know, frankly, the common order of things to allow the sentencing to go forward this morning.
		And especially because Judge Marshon telegraphed before the sentencing that he was not going to sentence President-elect Trump to any jail time.
		So, you know, any Potential burden or interruption of his presidential duties would not occur as a result of this sentencing because he's not going to sentence him to any jail time as a result of his conviction for these felonies.
		The Supreme Court, you know, obviously, because the normal course of things would be to allow the entire appeal to continue after sentencing, is not shutting off that avenue of legal challenge from the president-elect.
		But they did just affirm that even when you are a president-elect, the normal order of the rule of law applies to you.
		And so that's what we're seeing this morning.
		And frankly, the only surprising thing from the Supreme Court was that it wasn't a unanimous ruling and that there were four of the justices who would have allowed him to stop that normal order of the rule of law and postpone the sentencing.
		What it does mean, and I think why President-elect Trump fought so hard to stop the sentencing, is that even though there will be no jail time, he will be entering his second term as president as a convicted, sentenced felon.
		And that is something that is unprecedented in American history.
		The proceedings slated to take place at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
		There will not be cameras in the courtroom.
		What do you can you lay out what will happen, what you think might happen in this, in these proceedings?
		Well, obviously, this is a case of great public interest and a unique case because it involves a president-elect and a former president.
		But what will happen today is something that happens in courtrooms across the country to everyday people in America, which is they face accountability for crimes that they've been convicted of by a jury of their peers or a judge on a bench.
		And so that's what's going to happen to Donald Trump today.
		It's, I think, in some ways, a very real representation of the principle that no one is above the law.
		And he, like many other people who have been convicted of crimes, will face sentencing today.
		Of course, because he is going to be president, he is not going to receive the sentence that he might have otherwise received, although we don't know that because the judge did not give that alternative, which is appropriate.
		But, you know, it is just a normal criminal proceeding.
		It's something that happens in the due course of things.
		And that is what President-elect Trump will be subject to today.
		Elizabeth Wyger, I'd like you to respond to our last guest, John Malcolm, who talked about the merits of the case itself.
		I'll have you respond to what he had to say.
		Well, you know, accused himself in the first instance.
		This is somebody who sat in judgment of the Trump organization's CFO, Alan Wesselberg, which was an unrelated proceeding.
		He had donated personally to an organization called Stop Republicans.
		He had donated personally to the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020.
		His daughter Lauren is a major strategist and fundraiser for Democratic candidates and fundraised off of this very trial.
		He also denied a motion to change the venue.
		Donald Trump is not very popular in New York City.
		He certainly faced a very hostile jury.
		He admitted lots of extraneous evidence.
		This was a documents case, a business fraud case.
		It's actually a misdemeanor, but it is ramped up to a felony if it is done for the purpose of concealing another crime.
		So a documents case, he allowed in very salacious testimony from this porn actress, Stormy Daniels, about this alleged one-night stand that took place in 2006, including testimony about how she felt intimidated by Donald Trump when she was in his hotel room.
		There was all kinds of extraneous testimony from Michael Cohen.
		The prosecution got to enter into evidence stuff about his criminal convictions.
		It's usually the defense attorneys that want to highlight a witness's criminal record.
		But here, it was the prosecution that wanted to highlight that because one of the many crimes that Michael Cohen pled guilty to was a federal election campaign finance violation.
		And the entire theory of the prosecution was that this business fraud records case was designed to cover up a campaign finance violation.
		Elizabeth Wydra.
		You know, John's last few words are really getting to the heart of the matter here: is that we're talking about a hush money case, you know, these payments paid to silence Stormy Daniels for a much larger purpose, which is to try to influence the outcome of a federal presidential election.
		And, you know, the lying and the cover-up and the purpose of that, those hush money payments are what led to the felony charges.
		And there was a lot of hiding these payments to Stormy Daniels was to have an impact to make sure that voters did not have what could have been key information to them in making their choice at the ballot box.
		And that's something that's very serious, interfering with the sanctity of the people getting to make their voices heard at the ballot box when it comes to who will be serving as president.
		And look, a jury of his peers decided that, based on the evidence presented to them, he was guilty of those 34 felony counts.
		And that's the way that the criminal justice process works.
		And it works whether you're a former president and a president to be, or if you're just one of everyday New Yorkers who is also subject to the same rules and laws, and when they don't abide by them, are held accountable.
		Before we get to calls, your reaction as well to the reports by Jack Smith and his investigation, the special counsel, and whether or not they should be made public.
		Well, so I just, you know, I think it's important to note that Attorney General Garland made clear to publicly release the part of the report, the January 6th insurrection and President Trump's role in that.
		The classified documents case, which is ongoing with respect to President Trump's co-defendants in that case, will only be available for in-camera review by the most senior members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
		So, you know, any prejudice to those legal proceedings would not occur because that will not be publicly available.
		I think it makes sense in the public interest.
		This obviously was an incident that struck at the very heart of American democracy: the attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power according to the people's will, as expressed in the presidential election in 2020.
		And that is a deeply serious crime against constitutional democracy.
		And so, even though President Trump obviously is no longer subject to those criminal actions, Jack Smith dismissed those charges in accordance with long-held Department of Justice policy that a sitting president cannot be criminally prosecuted.
	That doesn't mean that the underlying facts are no longer true.
	And so, I think this is appropriate for the history books for Americans to know this information.
	And I will be very interested in seeing that report when it is eventually made public.
	Well, let's get to calls.
	Barb is joining us in Iowa, Democratic Caller.
	Hi, Barb.
	Hi.
	I'm just, I'm so tired of Trump being allowed to say lies, things like calling the judge in New York a conflicted judge when you have Clarence Thomas sitting on the Supreme Court with his wife, a big part of the big lie and the stop the steal, Alito, you know.
	And then also with him talking about winning the cases in Florida, he didn't win anything.
	There was a corrupt Trump judge who happens to be married to a friend of Trump's who has connections to the mob who dismissed those cases, those cases which happened to be him stealing top secret nuclear documents for Lord knows what purpose.
	So that's all.
	I'm just so tired of his lies and the public buying it.
	Thank you.
	Elizabeth Wedger, your reaction.
	Yeah, I think what we're hearing from Barb, your caller, is a frustration that a lot of people are feeling on all sides of the ideological spectrum.
	There is this loss of confidence in the judiciary.
	And, you know, we see it at the Supreme Court with a lot of the ethics scandals that have happened.
	The caller mentioned Justice Thomas and Justice Alito.
	And that has really dampened public confidence in the courts, particularly the Supreme Court.
	I think there is greater confidence in the trial judges, particularly because they often work with a jury of everyday Americans who are the ones who sit in judgment when people are brought before the court on criminal charges.
	But it's a real concern that we have a loss of public confidence in the courts because the impartial and fair administration of justice is a requirement for our constitutional democracy to work and for the rights of all of us to be respected and enjoyed.
	I think she's right in the sense that Trump is incorrectly claiming that he won all of these cases.
	He has not been exonerated on the facts of the case.
	As I mentioned previously, the reason that Jack Smith dismissed these charges is not because he no longer thought they were appropriate based on the facts, but because there is this long-standing Department of Justice policy that while presidents can be charged after their term is over, you cannot criminally prosecute a sitting president.
	And so once Donald Trump was re-elected to the White House, that is why Jack Smith dismissed the charges.
	So he has not been exonerated of these crimes.
	He also has not been convicted because the cases didn't get to that point before the election happened because of appeals and delays.
	But she's absolutely right in that sense.
	And, you know, I think that it will be important for the American people to see this report, particularly with respect to the obstruction of the peaceful transfer of power and the attempts to overturn the will of the people in the 2020 election.
	Chuck is in Gasden, Alabama, Independent.
	Hi, Chuck.
	Good morning.
	Let me ask you this.
	When this gets thrown out, in other words, and I believe 100% that it will, are you going to come back on and say, you know, that the Justice Department worked?
	Because I don't think it's been working at all with what's been going on.
	And if you don't think that the judge was, you know, compromised, then you are not a very smart person.
	Thank you.
	Ms. Wadra, do you want to react?
	Yeah, I mean, I'll put aside the little rude part of that.
	But, you know, I think that, look, the appeals process will continue to play out.
	And if there are concerns about the actual substance of the criminal conviction, then those will be handled through the normal course of the justice system.
	And look, there are lots of people who think that the justice system doesn't work.
	There are lots of people who think it particularly doesn't work for the powerless.
	We see powerful people being able to game the system and evade justice and accountability.
	So, you know, look, there are lots of concerns that the justice system is flawed.
	You know, we try to work to improve the justice system and ensure that due process is available for all and that accountability applies to not just those of us who are everyday Americans, but also to the people who sit at the highest rungs of power in this country.
	You know, when it comes to the actual substance of the conviction, that again will play out through the appeals.
	But I think it's important to note that, you know, we did have a jury of everyday Americans, of regular New Yorkers, who looked at the facts, who said that there were these hush money payments that were made by President Donald Trump when he was a candidate to try to hide this information from the American voters.
	And they found him guilty on those felonies.
	And that's the way that it works for people who are rich and powerful, as well as other regular working New Yorkers.
	Joseph in Stafford, Virginia, Republican.
	Joseph, question or comment?
	It's going to be primarily a comment, but I would like some type of an answer to the lady's comment that only the part of the report of the insurrection is going to be released.
	Ma'am, no one was charged with insurrection.
	Nobody.
	There's a lot of people's obsessions with that don't necessarily like Donald Trump that keep using the word insurrection.
	It was not an insurrection.
	That's like saying you're being charged with murder and all you did was shoplift.
	You need to be accurate.
	And my other point, if I can, very quickly, the other caller that said, with Trump with all these very expensive lawyers, why couldn't he beat Alvin Bragg?
	The answer is very obvious because I used to live in New York.
	Yes, there's a jury, but all of them are super uber liberal Democrats, and all liberal Democrats hate Donald Trump.
	That's why Alvin Bragg's case got convicted, not on the merits.
	All right, we'll get a response.
	Elizabeth Wydra?
	Yeah, I do think it's important to remember the very serious charges that were brought against the people who attacked the Capitol and attacked the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th.
	We're talking about charges of seditious conspiracy.
	We're talking about charges of assaulting police officers, law enforcement.
	So, you know, what happened on January 6th was a very serious attack on our democracy.
	And we've seen that reflected in the charges that have been brought and the convictions that have been obtained against other people, people other than Donald Trump, who participated in the events of January 6th.
	Will you go to John in Florence, Massachusetts, Independent?
	Yeah, I hallelujah to what the last guy said.
	That's absolutely a joke.
	Yeah, nobody was charged with insurrection, so you can stop saying that.
	You know, that's a fool's thing to say.
	Why was the election official not allowed to testify about federal elections and how it wasn't a federal election violation?
	Hmm, that's reversible error.
	Play that part where John Malcolm talked about that.
	Why was Trump not charged for a federal election crime?
	Hmm, that's weird.
	That doesn't make any sense.
	How were the felonies, how are the misdemeanors upgraded to felonies to make them relevant still?
	That's all reversible error.
	And you could play that part where John Malcolm said that.
	And why wasn't Biden charged for his documents case?
	They said he was a well-meaning, demented, retarded, deadhead retard.
	He's so stupid.
	So figure that out.
	And you can keep trying that.
	Thanks a lot.
	Elizabeth Widrow, respond to his citing of what John Malcolm had to say during our previous interview.
	Well, there's a big difference between the way in which the classified documents were handled in the instances of Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
	President Biden cooperated with the investigation into whether or not he had inadvertently retained classified documents, and they did find some classified documents.
	They returned those when they were asked.
	That is in substantial contrast to the way that President Trump, with the very serious, as your caller mentioned earlier, very serious classified documents that deal with vital matters of national security.
	Not only did they deny that they had those documents, they tried to thwart the search for those documents.
	They refused to turn them over after they had been asked to return them to the National Archives.
	So there is a big difference in the way in which there was a response to the retaining of classified documents.
	You know, it happens.
	Sometimes even the most well-meaning people can keep documents that they didn't realize they had in their private possession.
	But the way that one reacts to being asked about those documents and being asked to return them, I think is very telling.
	And I think that is a substantial difference in why President Trump's case ended in criminal charges and President Biden's did not.
	Going back to January 6th, Monday was the fourth anniversary of that on Capitol Hill.
	President-elect Donald Trump signaling again that a possibility of offering pardons to supporters who participated.
	I want to show what the President-elect had to say and get your reaction to that.
	More than 140 police officers were injured by rioters on January 6th.
	Will you pardon anyone who attacked a police officer?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, the only one that was killed was a beautiful young lady named Ashley Babbitt.
		She was killed, and there was actually somebody else that was killed, also a MAGA person, but people don't give it 100% credibility.
		I'm going to find out about it.
		We're going to find out.
		But Ashley Babbitt was killed.
unidentified		She was shot.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		She had never been shot.
		She was shot for no reason whatsoever.
		In fact, they say that she was trying to hold back the crowd.
		And the crowd was made up of a lot of different people, so we'll see.
		But I will tell you this: the person that was killed was Ashley Babbitt.
		The other thing is, when they talk, you know, there were never charges of insurrection or anything like that.
		But if there were, this would be the only insurrection in history where people went in as insurrectionists with not one gun.
		Okay?
		And let me tell you, the people that you're talking about have a lot of guns in their home for hunting and for shooting and for entertainment, a lot of good reasons.
		But there wasn't one gun that they found.
unidentified		Elizabeth Wyder, your reaction to the president-elect and also clemency powers.
		Yeah, so, you know, first, there were other people who died as a result of January 6th.
		Officer Brian Sicknick, for example, and some of the charges to people who were present on January 6th related to Officer Sicknick's death from strokes that were caused from, you know, being sprayed with toxic chemicals, for example, by some of the January 6th rioters.
		And, you know, I think it's important to remember the seriousness of the charges and, you know, the potential deadly violence that could have occurred on January 6th, you know, if not for the brave efforts of our law enforcement officers.
		There is a report that was put out this week from Courage for America and Public Citizen that highlights some of the individuals that could be pardoned if President Trump decides to do a blanket pardon for all the January 6th rioters.
		And so I encourage listeners to check that out if they want to look more at some of the individuals involved in the January 6th riot and so, or insurrection.
		I think it's absolutely appropriate to call it that, even though obviously some of your callers disagree.
		And, you know, on the clemency powers, it certainly is within President Trump's pardon power.
		It's a very broad constitutional pardon power to issue blanket pardons or individual pardons to people who participated in January 6th.
		You know, I think whether it's good for America is obviously a different question.
		Certainly he has the constitutional authority to do it, but whether that sends a positive message about the sanctity of the ballot box and the importance of ensuring the peaceful transfer of power, I think is something altogether different.
		Now, of course, given that there, as we saw from the evidence from the January 6th Committee in Congress and from Jack Smith's case brought against Donald Trump for January 6th, there certainly are allegations that President Trump supported, allegedly incited that action.
		So it's not terribly surprising that he would want to pardon the people who he allegedly called to action.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Sharon in Dade City, Florida, Democratic caller, we'll hear from you next.
unidentified		Hi, I'd like to thank Ms. Wydra for coming on and giving us the facts, which are vitally important right now.
		And I'd like to make two comments and then ask for a question.
		It's pretty evident from this last election that our forefathers didn't anticipate that our public would put their own greed and fears ahead of what's best for the country and elect a convicted felon.
		So, you know, I'd like to ask her, like, what can we do in the future?
		Because we'd hate to think that this is a precedent now being set that, you know, anybody with a criminal past can run for president and get elected because of people's fears and greed.
		So, what does the future look like?
		That's my question.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I think that's a really important point that the caller makes, which is that the Constitution lays out lots of different structures, institutions, procedures, rights, but ultimately it's up to the American people to be the holders of the flame of American democracy.
		And there are lots of ways in which we decide the direction.
		You know, the Constitution puts out a map, it puts out certain guardrails.
		But the Constitution is a document that I think to Frederick Douglass, who was a great interpreter of the Constitution, who talked about how the Constitution has been used as a tool for oppression.
		And in that particular instance, he was talking about the institution of slavery.
		But it also could be a document that could be wielded for emancipation, that could be wielded for freedom and liberation.
		And a lot of that depends on the ways in which the American people choose their leaders in our constitutional Republican democracy.
		And so it is really up to all of us to engage in each generation with the Constitution.
		And we've had before us generations of activists, abolitionists who worked to make the Constitution through the amendment process a document that is more inclusive, that is more egalitarian, that is more just.
		And it's up to all of us to make good on the promises in the Constitution and to vote for people who will manifest that promise of the Constitution.
		And, you know, I do think the founders envisioned that there would be people who would try to seek power in the United States who might use it for corrupt means.
		And they did put a lot of anti-corruption measures in the Constitution.
		But ultimately, the accountability and the decision for who will lead the United States comes down to the people.
		And so it's really our responsibility to educate ourselves about the Constitution, its values, its promises, and to educate ourselves on the issues and the candidates who are running for election.
		And, you know, it's important from the state and local level all the way up to the office of the presidency and to carry on that constitutional obligation that we have.
		Leah in New York, Republican.
		Good morning.
		Hi, I want to address the hush money debacle.
		Michael Cohen said he'll say anything not to go to jail, admitted President Trump knew nothing about the payment.
		The sham jury trial was meant to confuse the juror's verdict.
		And that $130,000 hush money payment over a decade ago cost taxpayers millions in phony charges.
		And lastly, the government is using taxpayer money to hush sexual allegations against Congressman impeachment requirements to this day.
		Thank you.
		Elizabeth Wader, your reaction?
		Yeah, you know, look, it was hush money payments that were alleged to have been in the service of keeping information from the American people that could have been vital to their votes in the presidential election.
		And a jury of everyday New Yorkers decided that the evidence that was presented met the criminal standard and convicted Donald Trump just like lots of other people in the United States and other New Yorkers get held accountable for their actions.
		So, you know, if she'd been on the jury, I'm sure she would have voted differently, but that's the way that the jury in this case voted according to the evidence presented to them.
		Elizabeth Wader, the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, your group has taken Mr. Trump to court before for violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause.
		Explain why you pursued those cases and the clause.
		Yes, so as I mentioned a few moments ago, the drafters of the Constitution did envision that there could be people who would rise to power in the United States, including the Office of the Presidency, who could seek to use their office for corrupt means to enrich themselves.
		And one of the things that they were particularly concerned about is that this type of corruption could come from foreign governments, which could obviously compromise the national security of the United States and could cause an elected leader to act in the interests of a foreign government to get money, profit, or other emoluments from a foreign government that would compromise the American people's public interest.
		And so the emoluments clause, foreign emoluments clause, prevents an officer from taking these types of profits, money, honorary titles, for example, or gifts from foreign governments, unless they first lay before Congress the foreign emolument that they would like to receive and keep, and Congress approves it.
		So, you know, I think it's important to note that, you know, President Trump, if he continues to get profits from his businesses that involve foreign governments, you know, he could go to Congress and say, I plan to do this.
		And particularly since Congress is now controlled by his party, you know, presumably if it was not compromising the American people's public interest, they might approve those.
		But the fact that he previously did not even go through that process as outlined by the Constitution is a clear constitutional violation.
		And so we at the Constitutional Accountability Center represented the largest number of members of Congress to come together to say that they wanted the right, they wanted their right to vote on these foreign emoluments to be respected and enforced and the Constitution to be honored in this really important anti-corruption principle that the founders of our country wrote into the Constitution.
		We'll see whether he continues to ignore the foreign emoluments clause in his second term, but certainly we are going to be watching to see whether or not that important anti-corruption part of the Constitution is respected by all officers with responsibility in our federal government.
		You can learn more about the Constitutional Accountability Center if you go to theusconstitution.org or on X at my Constitution.
		Elizabeth Wydra, thank you very much for the conversation this morning.
		Thanks so much for having me and thank you to your callers.
		We'll take a short break when we come back.
		Continue with a conversation with all of you about the New York Hush Money case, the sentencing hearing happening in just a few minutes in New York.
		We'll be right back.
		American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
		At 7 p.m. Eastern, in the lead up to Inauguration Day, American History TV looks back at famous inaugural speeches.
		This weekend, speeches by Jimmy Carter in 1977, Ronald Reagan in 1981, and George H.W. Bush in 1989.
		At 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures in History, Hillsdale College professor Richard Gamble on civic faith and how American nationalism incorporated religious elements and symbolism during the Cold War.
		And at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on the presidency, Keith Hartage Lee, with her book The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon, recounts First Lady Pat Nixon's time in the White House, including her support for the Equal Rights Amendment, a woman on the Supreme Court, and more in mid-to-high level government jobs.
		Exploring the American story.
		Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell has spent 40 years in the United States Senate, 17 of those as leader of his Republican colleagues.
		That's the longest any senator has been at the top of the leadership rung in either political party.
		Senator John Thune was elected a few weeks ago to head up the Republican majority in the Senate in 2025.
		Meanwhile, journalist Michael Tackett's book, A Profile of Senator McConnell, is called The Price of Power and subtitled, How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party.
		Mike Tackett, the deputy Washington Bureau Chief of the Associated Press, conducted over 50 hours of interviews and was granted access to never-before-released oral histories.
unidentified		Journalist Michael Tackett, with his book, The Price of Power, How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
		BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts.
		It isn't just an idea.
		It's a process.
		A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles.
		It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted.
		Democracy in real time.
		This is your government at work.
		This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered.
		Washington Journal continues.
		Welcome back to the Washington Journal, happening today in New York City in a Manhattan courtroom.
		There it is on your screen.
		That's the hallway just outside of the courtroom.
		President-elect Donald Trump will be sentenced in that Hush Money, New York case.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The president-elect will not be there.
unidentified		We expect that he will appear virtually, the judge in that case giving him that option.
		And the sentencing will take place, even though the president-elect asked the Supreme Court in an emergency appeal last night to stay, in other words, stop this hearing from going place.
		Here's what the Supreme Court said in a five to four decision.
		The three liberal judges, along with the Chief Justice and Amy Coney Barrett, who was nominated to the court by President-elect Donald Trump in his first administration, they wrote the following.
		First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-elect Trump's state court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the president-elect's responsibilities is, they write, relatively insubstantial.
unidentified		In light of the trial court's stated intent to impose a sentence of unconditional discharge after a brief virtual hearing.
		Unconditional discharge.
		That means no fines, no jail time, no probation.
		We're getting your reaction to this this morning.
		Jimmy in Irwine, Pennsylvania, Republican.
		Hi, Jimmy.
		How are you?
		Morning.
		Good morning.
		I just want to say that I wish Elizabeth was still on because she must be either a DEI hire or paid by George Soros.
		Let me explain.
		I'm just a street guy, but you're going to tell me that all these illegals, does she know that it is a felony to cross into our border?
		It's a felony.
		It's not a misdemeanor.
		And getting back to what she said about that President Biden, he had classified material in a garage with a $6 lock on it.
		They wouldn't put him in jail because, as the prosecutor said, his mind is gone and they wouldn't convict him.
		And then the whole crux of her thing is this.
		I don't want to be disrespectful.
		She's a lady of the night.
		She's a $20 hooker, and only the Democrats put her up.
		You're going to worry about paying some woman off.
		Gretchen, this country is so fouled up.
		And as far as the insurrection, when Elizabeth said that, oh, they were sprayed with toxic chemicals.
		Look, I was in the Army and exposed to Agent Orange.
		Never got a penny.
		I was glad to serve my country.
		That's why I hope Ramaswamy and Elon Musk get rid of these left-wing nuts.
		All right, Jimmy, I'm going to leave it there so we can stick to the topic here this morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		George in Missouri, Democratic caller.
unidentified		George, your thoughts on this hush money case moving forward to the sentencing phase.
		President-elect saying he will appeal.
		Yes, I just can't understand what's going on.
		The Constitution of the United States is this guy was a convicted felon, and now he's a convicted felon.
		And I can't, my in-laws and people in Normandy would turn over their graves if they knew something like this was going on.
		Having a convicted felon as a president of the United States is all these other countries are laughing at us.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		George, it's interesting.
unidentified		He was convicted by a jury of his peers on 34 counts.
		We learned earlier from John Melcombe because of a New York law, he's not actually convicted until the sentencing hearing takes place today at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
		Yes, I understand that.
		And I hope that these people that voted for this man is happy that now we've got a convicted felon as of 9:30 today as President of the United States.
		All right, George, and this is what the judge, Judge Merchant, had to say about why he was moving forward with the sentencing.
		A jury heard evidence for nearly seven weeks and pronounced its verdict.
		Defendant and the people were given every opportunity to address intervening decisions, to exhaust every possible motion in support of and in opposition to their respective positions in what is an unprecedented and likely never-to-be-repeated legal scenario.
		This court must sentence defendant within a reasonable time following verdict, and defendant must be permitted to avail himself of every available appeal, a path he has made clear he intends to pursue, but which only becomes fully available upon sentencing.
		Terry in Stanford, Connecticut, Democratic caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning to you, Terry.
unidentified		Yeah, hi.
		My question is: should the appeal process wait until after the term of the president is over due to his power over the court and the judges?
		I mean, because if he's appealing as the president, I think anybody, all the judges would be sort of like afraid to rule against him.
		Okay.
		Terry's suggestion there.
		Joseph, Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, Republican.
		Hi there, Joseph.
		Hey, Greta, how are you?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just, can I make two comments and then I want to ask you specifically a question, if I'm allowed to.
		I'll be quick, all right?
		All right.
		The people on this show, are they just calling up saying that Trump is a convicted felon?
		That's why the Democrats are doing this.
		They want to have that talking point.
		And it's just that laws were changed just to convict him.
		Laws were changed.
		The Bragg case, Stormy Daniels.
		And then you had the woman on before, your guest, saying that January 6th, there was no peaceful transition of power.
		What Trump was like the last time there was no peaceful, they tried to get him from the first day in the office with the rushing.
		They were spying on him.
		They were spying on him.
		And I just wanted to ask you a question.
		She brought up the Imam Monero's cause cause.
		I just want, as your report, I listened to you.
		I don't know which way you lean, right or left.
		I don't know.
		I like listening to you.
		But the guest before mentioned Trump making money as a president.
		Didn't you think in the back of your head that President Biden and Hunter Biden were making money?
		And you didn't push back on that?
		Hunter Biden is making money illegally off of his name.
		And he's getting away with it.
		And she didn't bring that up.
		Trump has done nothing wrong in making money from other countries.
		He's never been accused of that.
		I just want to know why you didn't bring that up.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Joseph.
unidentified		Well, thank you for that feedback.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We were at the end of our segment with her.
unidentified		It's something that her group pursued during the first Trump administration.
		I was asking her about it at the end of the interview.
		But you're right.
		Something I could have brought up about the allegations against Hunter Biden.
		Kurt in Conway, South Carolina, Independent.
		Hello, Kurt.
		Good morning to you.
		I was an original Trump supporter with his first run until I got about a third of the way through his presidency.
		I could learn what he was all about.
		Now, he's been legally elected to run again, although he is a convicted felon.
		He's up for sentencing today.
		What I think they ought to do is, since things can be run electronically remotely these days, I think they ought to find a very nice, large cell in a federal prison.
		Let him sit in the cell, let him run the government from the cell.
		And that would give me some satisfaction to ease the angst I've had over the last several years with this guy who is a liar, a criminal, and he doesn't have a clue how to run any kind of government.
		That would be my suggestion.
		All right, Kurt Sott's there in South Carolina.
		Eddie in Huntington, New York, Republican.
		Yes, good morning.
		The issue I have with this whole case is originally the Federal Elections Commission didn't want to take it.
		The attorney in the Southern District of New York didn't want it.
		Dy Vance didn't want it.
		And actually, Bragg didn't want it initially.
		And then all of a sudden, this guy, Colangelo, the number two or three man in the Justice Department, comes down here to do the case.
		Also, if you listen to people like Alan Dershowitz, who said he never voted for Trump, but he looked at this case and he still can't figure out what the charges are.
		And they also said that there are at least 26 reversible decisions that this judge made.
		His daughter was making a lot of money off the case.
		The judge donated to Biden's campaign.
		So I think the whole process of bringing this to court should have been questioned.
		Obviously, it's too late for that, and hopefully on appeal, if it works, it works.
		But I just find it very ironic that this whole process started two years after he decided to run for office instead of when the alleged crime happened.
		Okay, Eddie in New York, Republican.
		And Eddie, if you missed it earlier, we spoke with John Melcom of the Heritage Foundation.
		He was making similar arguments to what you just had to say.
		So for you and our other viewers, if you missed that, you can go to our website, c-span.org, and find it there.
		We just spoke to Elizabeth Wydra, who argued on the other side of this.
		She's the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center.
		And if you're interested in hearing her arguments, you can find it all on c-span.org.
		Trina in Bryan, Texas, a Republican.
		Trina, your turn.
		Yes.
		Hello, am I on?
		You are.
		Most of what I was going to say has already been said while I was on hold.
		But your guest that was on said that Trump's biggest crime was that he hid evidence prior to an election from the American people.
		Isn't that the same thing that Biden did prior to the 2020 election by saying the Hunter laptop wasn't Hunters and it was Russian misinformation and he didn't talk to the Chinese, he didn't talk to any of Hunter's business partners.
		He hid all of that and of course it's all coming out.
		It was true.
		So and she also said that a president can be tried after he's out of office.
		So I mean isn't that going to happen?
		I mean if we have equal justice, isn't Biden going to be in trouble for what he did prior to the 2020 election hiding evidence from the American people?
		Just seems, you know, they always say, well, you know, justice is no one's above the law.
		Well, it looks to me like there might be a case there for what Biden did prior to the 2020 election.
		A lot of people said, had I known about the laptop story, I would have not voted for Biden.
		So it seems to me like there's going to be a case here for the other side.
		If that's truly what your guest said, his biggest crime was.
		He hid it from the American people.
		All right.
		Thank you, Biden.
		Trina in Texas, Republican caller, sharing her thoughts with us.
		An update for all of you in the national newspapers on the wildfires burning in the Los Angeles area, front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning.
		More than 10,000 structures have burned.
		Officials fear the death toll will rise as well.
		Inside the Wall Street Journal this morning, let me show you what they have to say on the cost of this.
		Damage costs are likely to set a record is the headline there.
	And the campfire 2018 burn in California cost $12.5 billion.
	And according to estimates in other newspapers, this fire that is still burning in Los Angeles could be a lot more.
	According to JPMorgan Chase, it could exceed $20 billion and some experts putting that price tag even higher.
	A Wall Street Journal editorial today, California's fire insurance catastrophe.
	And they write insurers had already scrapped hundreds of thousands of policies and limited coverage in wildfire-prone areas.
	Democrats blame climate change, which has become an all-purpose excuse for any disaster relief failure.
	But the real insurance problem is that state regulators have barred insurers from charging premiums that fully reflect risks and costs.
	California is the only state that hereto therefore hasn't allowed insurers to incorporate the cost of reinsurance in premiums.
	As a result, insurers are paying out $1.09 in expenses and claims for every dollar they collect in premiums.
	This is financially unsustainable, which is why many have paired coverage in areas at high fire risk with expensive homes.
	State Farm dropped nearly 70% of its policy holders in one Pacific Palisades neighborhood where the average home price is $3.5 million.
	That's the Wall Street Journal editorial board with their opinion today.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Sandy in Minneapolis, independent caller.
		Sandy, we're talking about this hush money case and the sentencing that will go forth today.
		Go ahead, Sandy.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Morning.
		All I can say is you've got to be kidding me.
		I can't wait till January 20th when all this harassment will be over and the country can continue to survive.
		Okay, Sandy, and just a note that we've also learned that the this is the the, the the scene outside of the courtroom, as we've told you, this proceeding getting underway at 930 uh a.m. Eastern time.
		We're past that point now, so we do not have cameras in the courtroom.
		They're not allowed and, as many of you who have been tracking this case uh, you know that already, but this is the uh pool camera that's outside of the courtroom in New York.
		Uh Josie, in Florida.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Democratic Caller.
unidentified		Good morning to you Josie, go ahead.
		All right, I had two brief things.
		I believe uh, judge Martan donated 15 dollars to the Democratic Party.
		Compare that to the 250 million that Elon Musk donated to Trump last summer.
		But the other thing is that Trump was still paying off Stormy Daniels in the summer of 2017, as he wrote checks and signed them, he and Don Jr.
		These checks are in the indictment.
		While he was president, he was still paying her off like thirty dollars a month or something, so it wouldn't be as detected, but I don't know that that was presidential official acts of paying off a mistress.
		I don't know.
		All right Josie, Josie's thoughts there in Florida.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Also want to let you know about the latest numbers on the economy, uh, this is from the NEW YORK Times, but it's in many of the newspapers.
unidentified		U.s job growth ends this year.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Strong employers finished the year with a burst of hiring, adding 256 000 jobs in december.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1 percent in december of 2024.
unidentified		Sean Uh in Pennsylvania, an Independent.
		Good morning to you, Sean Uh.
		Good morning uh.
		I think.
		For myself, the biggest issue of this trial is I think it speaks to a lack of faith in the judicial system as a whole.
		Um, I think it really highlights just the gross power that the presidential pardon Pardon happens because, but for the presidential pardon, I don't think this trial would have been thrown out as easily.
		And then, likewise, President Biden being able to give a blanket pardon for any Hunter-Biden felonies has also highlighted just how gross of a power overreach the presidential pardon is.
		And it's turned a lot of trials like this one into a farce that leads to people believing less in the judicial system.
		All right.
		In the New York Times this morning, updating on the proceedings that are happening in the Manhattan court this morning.
		Maggie Haberman reporting from inside the courtroom.
		The president-elect is now in a familiar pose, his arms crossed in defiance.
		He shakes his head again as Joshua Steinglass, the prosecutor, says that the once and future president has made clear he has disdain for the rule of law.
		That coming inside the courtroom in Manhattan, there it is on your screen.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Those are the doors outside of the courtroom, the hallway there, and the president-elect attending this hearing virtually.
unidentified		Tammy in Cleveland, Ohio, Democratic caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Tammy.
unidentified		Tammy in Cleveland, Ohio, Democratic caller.
		Let's hear from you.
		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Porter in Indiana, Republican.
unidentified		Hi, Porter.
unidentified		Hello.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
unidentified		Hi.
		When Elizabeth was on that last paragraph that she was put out there, it reminded me of Biden, all the corruption and everything that she was saying that Trump could possibly do.
		It reminded me of what Biden has already done, and nothing's being done to him.
		I hope that he's held accountable after he's out of office.
		As far as Trump, us Republicans believe that it was a kangaroo court, so we don't even consider that court as their verdict as guilty on felonies.
		We don't even look at it that way.
		Maybe the Democrats do, but thank you very much.
		Okay.
		All right, Porter.
		Clay in Mississippi, Republican caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Clay, what are your thoughts on this hush money case, this sentencing hearing that's taking place right now in New York?
unidentified		Well, thank you for taking my call.
unidentified		Good morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
unidentified		I just wanted to point out that this is actually still an obstruction of, you know, President Trump being able to do his job.
		The purpose for the Constitution is to try to prevent putting an undue burden on an elected president while he's in office.
		And if they do their sentencing, which I think their window of opportunity is pretty much passed for them to do that so that it wouldn't be a burden, then what they're doing now is to force him to possibly, and he may not do it, but to have to appeal something because it puts a burden.
		Yeah, Clay, you're breaking up.
		The President-elect said yesterday, last evening, when he was reacting to the Supreme Court's decision to not stop this hearing, that he does plan to appeal.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Also, from New York Times reporters in the courtroom, the heart of the sentencing when it began, this is from one of the reporters, that the president-elect was told that he will be allowed to address the court if he wishes.
unidentified		But first, it was Joshua Steinglass, one of the prosecutors, who started to speak first.
		Seinglass says then that the prosecutors agreed with the expected sentence of unconditional discharge.
		That means there would be no fine, no jail time, no probation.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And the prosecutors agreed with that.
unidentified		And that taking place when this hearing began this morning.
unidentified		Let's go to Dayton, Oregon, Independent caller Benji.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Your turn.
unidentified		Oh, hi, Greta.
		Thanks.
		A couple of things.
		One, most of us don't buy into the New York Manhattan Kangaroo Court.
		Obviously, I think it was a setup.
		I think the Supreme Court ruled correctly to let the sentencing go through because it's not going to be a big deal.
		It's going to be overturned on appeal because of the 10 reasons, the mistakes the judge made.
		The other comment I wanted to make was: I was disappointed that Elizabeth was absolutely the worst presenter you've ever had on.
		And I was disappointed you didn't push back on her more on the Emmolliums Clause and Joe Biden and Hunter Biden with the China and the Russia-Ukraine money and with the Hunter Biden laptop.
		There's a lot of stuff to push back on her.
		Has he ever sued Joe Biden for the Emolliums Clause?
		I was wondering.
		Benji, what evidence would you point to that the president himself benefited from Hunter Biden's business dealings?
		Well, most of the information on the laptop, identifying him as a big guy, and that he kept 10 to 20 percent of each sale that Hunter made on his name.
		All right.
		Benji there in Dayton, Oregon, independent caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to Ricardo in Warrington, Pennsylvania, Democratic caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Your turn.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Morning.
		I find it very strange that the Republicans can't concede that the Republican-controlled House could not find one centilla of evidence against Joe Biden, yet they still throw Joe Biden's name into these criminal things that didn't happen.
		When right in front of their eyes, Donald Trump has committed crime after crime after crime.
		But what do they say?
		They say, oh, it's a kangaroo court.
		Oh, it's the Democrats just going after the Republicans.
		Did we forget that the Democratic senator in New Jersey was convicted?
		Did we forget that Joe Biden's son himself was convicted?
		Yes, he was pardoned just like Manafort was pardoned, just like Steve Bannon was pardoned, just oh, caller, apologies.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We lost to you mid-thought there.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Terry in Boone, Iowa, Independent.
unidentified		Terry?
		Yeah.
		Hello.
		How are you doing, Greta?
		Morning.
		I'd like to mention that this is all about swaying the election.
		It's all about the hush money, is what the payments were made for, and why they were trying to hide it and everything.
		Well, if that's the case, the several callers for the last few times have been talking about Hunter Biden laptop, and nobody mentioned the 51 Intel agents that said that it wasn't real.
		Nobody mentioned the media that kept saying it wasn't real.
		Nobody mentioned you, C-SPAN, you, Greta, that kept going on and on and on and denying that this is even existing.
		To this day, you have not come forward, you or C-SPAN or any journalist and said, hey, we were wrong.
		You sit there every day and every time somebody mentions Hunter laptop, you run away from it.
		You should have seen yourself.
		Go back and watch this recording of yourself and see what you did.
		Thank you.
		Okay, Terry.
		Terry in Boone, Iowa, there.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We are watching this Manhattan Court House in New York.
unidentified		The media, the cameras are outside of the courtroom.
		That's the shot on your screen.
		There are reporters in the courtroom watching these proceedings take place.
		The president-elect not there, but he is appearing virtually to hear from the judge in this case.
		We'll go to California.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Francis is there, a Republican.
unidentified		Hello, good morning.
		Hello, this is Francisco Magania.
		Vitalia.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We're listening to you.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, Greta, you should be fighting for, you shouldn't be politics on both of them.
		You should be for everybody, but you always agree with the Democrats.
		I see you all the time.
		Always agree with Democrats, not with, not with the Republican or, you know, I mean, I don't understand that.
		Why do you do that?
		You know, I mean, that's not fair.
		How am I agreeing?
		You know what I mean?
		You agree with when Democrats would when Democrats are with Joe Biden and all this, and then you always pull up Trump's mistakes or not even convicted.
		He's not convicted.
		And you put that he's convicted.
		He's never been convicted.
		They're going to hear censorship, but he's not convicted.
		So you can't put that he's convicted.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I mentioned that very thing just a little bit ago.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Perry, Montgomery, Alabama, Democratic caller.
unidentified		Hi, Perry.
		Good morning.
		Good morning, Suspan and Supan audience.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		Now, I came here to meet Republican people the justice system is unfair.
		So if you're an African-American, the justice system has been unfair for years in this country.
		So should we be, should we not say the same thing that if African Americans go to court, that it's unfair for this country, these people that are judging these folks, because we know they had been biased before?
		So if Donald Trump cannot get a fair trial in this country, how can an African American get a fair trial?
		All right.
		The president-elect sentencing hearing underway in New York.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Patrick in New Hampshire, Republican.
unidentified		Patrick, what do you think of all this?
		I think I want to give you a big thank you, Greta, because this, what I'm watching on the screen right now, the court, this is what got Donald Trump elected and got us this next four years.
		And I want to thank you personally, Greta, because you as a Democrat pushed and pushed and pushed and said, look at this trial.
		He's guilty.
		He's going to get in trouble.
		He's going to be a felon.
		And then guess what?
		A host sitting in this chair, we didn't say that.
		I didn't say that.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		People didn't say that, that he was going to get in trouble.
		But look at this case.
		That was not said.
unidentified		You just said like five minutes ago, somebody said about Hunter Biden.
		Then you said, where's the evidence?
		Can you tell me where the evidence is that Joe Biden took any money?
		Yes, I asked that question because he made that claim.
		I was asking him what the evidence was.
		If he was going to prosecute, what would be the evidence?
		But it's like that's what I'm saying with this case.
		You guys all said he's a felon.
		He's going to be a felon.
		This is going to crash him in the election.
		And it didn't.
		The American people thought that.
		That was never said by a host sitting in this chair.
		Dave, in Las Vegas, Independent.
		First of all, I want to say I apologize for those guys that were saying what they said.
		They're ignorant.
		All the Republicans are just the ones that back Trump are ignorant.
		This guy is a felon, a rapist, got people killed, tried to overthrow our government.
		What's wrong with these people?
		They are so messed up.
		You got to have evidence.
		And they like Trump.
		The guy's the biggest racist.
		He doesn't want to fix anything.
		He's going to ruin this country.
		It's not Make America great again.
		He's Make America hate again.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		He'll take away.
unidentified		Lynette, Charlotte, North Carolina, Independent.
		Lynette.
		Hi there.
		I think what we, the American people, need to really be thinking about is how we balance the principles of accountability with the political implications of sentencing a sitting president and what this means.
		We see world leaders all the time get away with things.
		And from the outside, that just looks like there's no accountability.
		And here we have an actual opportunity for once to have accountability.
		And he is our leader.
		I accept that.
		We voted for him.
		We elected him.
		So now we need to move forward and decide what now from here.
		Do we have accountability or not?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Julie in Belleville, Michigan, and Independent.
unidentified		Julie, tell us what you think of this sentencing hearing happening right now in New York.
		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		You know, one of the things that really bothers me about this whole process is the breakdown of the judicial system to the degree that it became the onus of the American public to decide whether Trump is guilty or not guilty by virtue of an election.
		The judicial system was really fell down on its job, in my opinion.
		And I don't think it's right that the election was what decided, in essence, Trump's accountability or his whether or not he is a criminal, basically.
		I'm really upset with the judicial system.
		And it's going to get worse under Trump.
		He's going to place people in positions of power that should not be there simply out of loyalty to him.
		And I think he needs to be sentenced.
		I think there needs to be a fine.
		There needs to be a punishment.
		There needs to be accountability.
		I think the rest of the world is wondering what the heck is happening here in America.
		All right, Julie.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And none of those things will happen.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The judges said that there will be no fines, no probation, and no jail time.
unidentified		This is from the Associated Press, the president-elect appearing virtually inside this courtroom today.
		The proceedings are underway in New York.
		Michelle in Louisiana, Democratic caller.
		Yes, thanks for taking my call.
		I've heard that they're going to, he's not going to be able to sell any alcohol in any of his golf courses and being a convict, a felon, basically.
		Where did you hear that?
		I've heard it a lot of times.
		And he was going to sell all of his clubs to his son.
		And they were like, no, you're absolutely not going to be able to do that.
		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Rachel in New York City, Independent.
unidentified		Rachel?
		Hi.
		Hi, everybody.
		I'm calling.
		I'm a government information librarian, a nonpartisan, and I provide people information.
		So I'm coming from a wonky place.
		What's frustrating is that we're talking about what-if-ism.
		These allegations are very serious.
		They undermine our democracy as the most fundamental way.
		And I really hope that it doesn't matter where we are politically.
		Do we have accountability?
		Do our elections matter?
		Whatever side you're on, there is not a, the Biden is not equivalent to this.
		We can have issues with this, but we have to actually look at this case, what it means for American public wherever we stand, and make sure that we care enough about our country to say, listen, we think our elections have to be fair, information has to be out, and other things are very different.
		But right now, I don't care where you are.
		Let's stand together for making America great, but in the way that we have accountability.
		All right.
		Thank you all for participating in the conversation today.
		That does it for today's Washington Journal.
		We'll be back tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. Eastern Time.
		And today, here on C-SPAN, we're monitoring an event with Attorney General Merrick Garland and the outgoing director of the ATF, Steve Dettelbach.
		If they make remarks, we'll take you there live.
		Also later, President Biden will be getting an update on the wildfires in California.
		And at 1:30 p.m. Eastern, we'll take you live to the White House for a briefing with Press Secretary Corrine Jean-Pierre and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.
		We're also standing by for any comments from President-elect Donald Trump or his lawyers on his sentencing today in the New York Hush Money case.
		And over on C-SPAN 2, the Supreme Court is hearing oral argument on TikTok's First Amendment challenge to a law that requires the app to divest from its Chinese parent company or face a nationwide ban later this month.
		That again, live on C-SPAN 2.
		Witness democracy unfiltered with C-SPAN.
		Experience history as it unfolds with C-SPAN's live coverage this month as Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress.

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