‘Two-Tiered System of Justice’: Kash Patel Dissects the 34-Count Trump Indictment and 16-Page Statement of Facts
“As a prosecutor, you either have the facts and the law to bring the case or you don’t. You’re not supposed to go in there and create a novel legal theory. That’s the job of the state legislature,” says Kash Patel.In this episode, Kash Patel and Jan Jekielek do a deep dive into the 34-count indictment and the 13-page statement of facts released on April 4 after former President Donald Trump was arraigned in the Stormy Daniels “hush money” payment case.What is the legal basis of the case? Why did Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg issue a speaking indictment? What does Patel think the defense’s strategy should be?Follow EpochTV on social media:Twitter: https://twitter.com/EpochTVRumble: https://rumble.com/c/EpochTVTruth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@EpochTVGettr: https://gettr.com/user/epochtvFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/EpochTVusGab: https://gab.com/EpochTVTelegram: https://t.me/EpochTV
Of course, this week we are going to spend the entire show talking about the indictment of the former president Donald J. Trump.
So many facets to dive into.
And since we are doing this from different locations, John, I thought it'd be fun to remind everyone, you and I have never used a teleprompter on this show, and we're not going to start today.
No, absolutely not.
And you know, yeah, again, there's so many things to kind of dig into.
Of course, got the indictment, we've got this statement of facts, we want to break down everything that's in there.
Um, why don't we just start with the indictment?
The indictment is this kind of cookie cutter thing with 34 cut and paste, at least that's what it looks like to me.
I mean, what's what's the meat of it?
So we're talking about 34 counts.
So that means the allegation in the indictment is from Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in New York, is that there are 34 separate criminal offenses alleged in the indictment.
Now, when you read through it, as you said, it reads sort of like kind of like a repeat, rinse, enter here, repeat, rinse, enter number here, repeat, rinse.
And in most types of fraud cases, or what we call paper cases as a prosecutor, because you're relying on the evidence of receipts and ledgers and checks and things like that, you would see um documentation that shows the fraud.
The problem here, and we haven't seen the underlying documents, but the problem with the indictment as it's laid out, is what Alvin Bragg is alleging, and we'll get into why he has to allege an actual crime to connect the 34 counts of fraud to to make it an actual crime, which I don't believe he met the threshold.
But he's saying every time that there was a check or what we call a ledger, a payout of money from one entity to another, Alvin Bragg is alleging that that is illegal because it was done with the intent to commit a conspiracy by Donald J. Trump to defraud and rig the 2016 presidential election.
So I mean, I'll I'll just read from the indictment.
It's falsifying business records in the first degree with the intent to defraud and commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof.
But the crime at this point is a mystery.
So let's jump to that since you brought it up.
So under New York law, in order to bring a charge like this one outlined by Alvin Bragg, the fraud, the checks, the ledgers have to be connected to an actual crime on the books in order for it to be a crime in its totality.
So if you don't have part A or part B, you can't bring the case under the law.
And what you're saying is what's the attached crime to the purported fraud that Donald Trump perpetuated by utilizing these checks and ledgers?
It's a great question, Jan, because there isn't one that I see outlined in the indictment.
And there isn't one that Alvin Bragg has talked about in public about it.
And the indictment, just to remind our audience, is the charging document.
And as every judge who's ever presided over a case, and every prosecutor and every defense attorney who's ever presided in a courtroom during a jury trial, the indictment as the judge will instruct the jury, is not evidence of any crime whatsoever.
That's the law in all 50 states in the federal government.
But what the prosecutor is supposed to do in the indictment is inform the judge what is the legal threshold that I am bringing to you, the judicial officer, this case to be heard by ultimately by a jury.
And the conspiracy, what he's saying is if you look at the first portion of the indictment, I think he calls it a catch and kill scheme.
It's in bold in the uh statement of facts.
What exactly is a catch and kill scheme?
That's not a crime.
What it is to me is a headline.
And what I think Alvin Bragg has been trying to do this entire time is have the mainstream media run another level of a disinformation campaign, like they've done so many other times, but utilizing his indictment to just say Donald Trump's a criminal.
The problem he's run into Is even the mainstream media has said, as you have astutely pointed out, Jan, what is the crime?
The crime, if I were to do Alvin Bragg's job for him, he needs to connect an actual conspiracy on the books.
Conspiring to defraud and rig the 2016 election in general isn't a crime in the New York state judicial process.
And as we now know from the Federal Election Commission, the Department of Justice and the Southern District of New York, the federal prosecutors, who all refuse to bring any sort of case on these facts against Donald Trump.
What Alvin Bragg would have to do in a state court is allege a state crime and connect it to a state violation to bring those two together.
He's done neither, in my opinion.
If he tried to bootstrap it to a felony, which is essentially the narrative he's putting out there, that's unconstitutional.
That's not how New York state law works.
And we can get into the legal weeds about it if you really want to, but I think what's important for our viewers to understand is the mechanics of the state court system and a federal court system.
There are two for a very good reason.
State law violations are prosecuted in state court.
Federal law violations are prosecuted in federal court.
You can't just combine the two and say, hey, I'm going over here to court my home court advantage for my home team here because I think I'll get a better reception, which is essentially what Alvin Bragg's done.
And since we have the answer from the federal government, and that they didn't bring a charge, it's up to Alvin Bragg to show us what an actual crime connected to this catch and kill scheme is.
And I don't think he's done that.
Maybe this is a little bit in the weeds, definitely.
So there's this indictment, right?
Which is, you know, essentially 34 times of a this is a very short statement that I made at the beginning.
Um and then there's this statement of facts where the kind of, I guess the legal strategy or their legal theory is developed.
And and so are these both part of the indictment?
How does this work exactly?
Yeah, they sort of dovetail into one another, but let's stick with the indictment for just one more minute, Jan, and talk about the 34 counts just so we can uh illuminate some things for audience.
What Alvin Bragg is saying in terms of the duration of the criminal enterprise that Donald Trump supposedly committed began back in 2016 and ran all the way through 2017.
The problem with a substantial number of the counts is he's alleging Donald Trump tried to rig the presidential election of 2016 in year 2017.
That's just problematic without the law.
That's just logically impossible based on facts and you know, time.
So putting that aside, I just want to catch our audience up onto the actual components of the 34 counts.
What he's saying, Alvin Bragg, is that people in Trump's world, Michael Cohen and others, were directed by Donald Trump to every time there's an allegation account in the indictment, he's saying there was a different instance where a payment was made, recorded on a ledger, either utilized via check or direct cash payment or the like.
And each one of those instances, Alvin Bragg is saying is a separate crime.
Whether it's a separate crime is a whole nother story.
I don't agree that it is, even if the outline case was a crime.
But that's how he chose to bring the case.
And as a prosecutor, you have the option of just laying a bare bones indictment like he did that we've all now seen, or you can turn it into what we call a speaking indictment and include information that you want to disclose to the court and ultimately the public, because they're gonna see it, obviously, the most watched case in U.S. history.
Alvin Bragg chose to include a statement of facts.
What he's saying is he is trying to layer meat on the bones of the indictment by saying this is the overarching scheme that Donald Trump perpetuated with people like Michael Cohen and other attorneys and other individuals that are highlighted by that are highlighted by by title to protect their actual personal information.
Anyway, so let's turn to the statement of facts.
Now we get into what Alvin Bragg is really thinking internally on how he brings this case.
And what he's saying is each one of those instances of the 34 counts in the indictment, each one tracks with the specific set of facts, i.e., Donald Trump instructed Michael Cohen to pay this amount of money on this date, and on next date, this amount of money was transferred from Trump org to this bank account or from Trump org to this checking account and the like.
That's what he's saying the overarching scheme is.
The problem is, let's pause on the counts themselves.
I don't believe the counts themselves meet an allegation sufficient to warrant a crime.
Because if it were true, then any individual in elected office, state or otherwise, who took campaign funds and spent it on lunch or t-shirts or a limousine service or the like, could under Alvin Bragg's theory of prosecution be charged for interfering in the electoral process by utilizing campaign funds.
And I put improperly in quote marks because Alvin Bragg has determined what he believes is appropriate and not.
Unfortunately for him, the law determines that.
And the reason that no other political elected officials have been charged for this type of violation is because not only would it be unlawful to bring such a charge, it would be a violation of free speech in and of itself for people who are out there campaigning for elected office.
As you're describing this, uh I can't help but think, right, of this uh, you know, not too long ago fine that the DNC and the Clinton campaign had to pay for basically hiding as legal fees what was effectively the development of opposition research.
It strikes me as somehow similar here.
Right.
I think that but it's it's similar and it's different, right?
Uh of course, no one ever prosecuted Hillary Clinton for it, but the distinction is that Hillary Clinton actually had to pay a fine and admitted to improperly utilizing campaign dollars to buy the steel dossier, which the FBI used unlawfully to lie to a federal court and ascertain a surveillance warrant on then candidate President Trump, all for the purpose of actually interfering in a federal election.
When you take that case precedent, you see an actual violation of campaign finance laws and a conspiracy to rig or steal, or whatever verbiage you want to use, a presidential election.
The case here with President Trump, even if we were to presume the facts alleged by Alvin Bragg as true, still fall short of the Hillary Clinton Russia Gate steal dossier case because there has been no proof shown that the money,
even if it were paid to the people as quote-unquote hush money, was used for the purpose of interfering with the presidential election, especially since most of the dates in the indictment are after Donald Trump assumed the oath of office.
No, that's fascinating.
So the there's a couple of things that jump to my mind here, and I'm thinking about the statement of facts here.
You know, one of them is that Cohen actually did plead guilty to making illegal campaign contributions, right?
If I if I'm not mistaken.
So that's something that's outlined in there.
And likewise, the National Inquirer Company, right?
Yeah.
So what you're referring to, let's take, let's take that in reverse.
The head of the National Inquire entered into a non-prosecution agreement, which is essentially a get out of jail free card.
If you admit that you did X, we will not charge you with the felony and withdraw any possibility that you'll ever be charged.
It's almost as if you don't have a criminal record whatsoever.
They're just saying, admit to X and this head of the National Inquirer, according to the indictment admitted to federal investigators or state investigators, his involvement to help perpetuate whatever scheme that Alvin Bragg has laid out in the indictment.
Switching to Michael Cohen, it's a slightly different or largely different comparison.
Michael Cohen, as we've talked about in depth, is a federally convicted felon who defrauded and schemed Against individuals to enrich himself financially.
He went to federal prison for three years for that.
And he's the main source, as you can tell by the indictment, even though his name's not used, the whole world can see for themselves that that individual outlined in the indictment is Michael Cohen.
So they have taken a large chunk of this indictment and rested it on the individual that is a convicted felon who has massive credibility and bias issues.
We've talked about that before.
But the two individuals, the National Inquirer Head and Michael Cohen, I think are not similarly situated.
And even if we take the totality of their information as alleged in the indictment as true, let's just say that, as we talked about at the top of the show, it doesn't amount to a crime because there is no crime that Alvin Bragg connected that fraud to, which is what the law requires.
And so when you only have half the equation, Jan, as a prosecutor, you're supposed to stop.
If you don't have all the elements of the case or all the ingredients to make the cake, you don't bring it.
That's the job of a prosecutor.
It's not to prosecute, it's to apply the facts to the law and see if the burden of proof is met so that you can bring a case before a jury.
And if you don't have that burden of proof met, ethically, you're you are not allowed to bring a prosecution.
But that gets us into the whole two-tier system of justice, and what should we what should we do about that, if anything?
Well, one of the things that comes to my mind is you know, we had a number of legal commentators, both uh Republican and Democrat in our NTD broadcast uh yesterday.
And uh essentially all of them agreed that what they saw in the indictment was very underwhelming.
I think that was the term that a number of them used.
And in one case, you know, one said, well, I but I reserve, well, well, you still have to see what else he has, so I'm gonna reserve my judgment.
But that's that's that was basically the the everybody kind of agreed on this point, it seemed.
Well, the folks that you're referring to are are people who have vehemently against anything Donald Trump stands for and don't want him re-elected.
So when you have folks like that, and let me give you an example.
Andy McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, who lied to federal investigators about leaking sensitive information about the Hillary Clinton and other matters to the media while the deputy director of the FBI, the same Andy McCabe who stated to me under oath that had there not been a steel dossier, there would not have been a FISA warrant.
The same Andy McCabe that authorized the Russia Gate investigation and presented information through his team to the FISA court fraudulently, this individual, now a CNN contributor, came out and called the indictment a disappointment.
Just let that sink in for a matter.
The individual who has been so public about his hatred for the target of the investigation calls this indictment a disappointment.
So, like so many others that you're referring to in the media out there, when they're using terms like that, what they're actually saying, in my opinion, is uh this falls way short of the legal mark.
And you have to ask yourself, Jan, whether you like Donald Trump or hate Donald Trump, why are they doing that?
They've been able to spin disinformation from Russia Gate onto Jan 6th onto Ukraine impeachment, anything that Adam Schiff has said, they were willing to take lies and put it out there.
If these individuals can't themselves stand up and say Alvin Bragg has made a case, you don't need to listen to me, Jan.
I think the case is by their own admission deeply flawed.
Cash, let me just actually read from this statement of facts again.
You know, you we mentioned this the catch and kill scheme to suppress negative information.
There's kind of three other parts to the argument.
The second one is the defendant falsified business records, the third is investigation into lawyer A, that's Cohen and the defendant's pressure campaign.
And finally, you know, lawyer A and AMI admit guilt in connection with the payoffs with the intent to influence the election.
To me, that's the entirety of the legal theory, is that right?
That's it.
Um they are saying Donald Trump's intent was to interfere with the election By concocting this scheme.
And therein, I think to me, lies the problem.
You have a convicted felon saying that this was what Donald Trump wanted, and you still don't have the nexus to the conspiracy that we talked about earlier, making this whole scheme an illegal act.
So it sounds, as if that's the best that Alvin Bragg has, he's gonna have some serious problems.
And look, Jan, as a prosecutor, let me just tell you this in the indictment, if you're being professional, you keep the indictment very bare bones, just outlining the information that you want to make public under the law as it is required for an indictment, and you just show the court the charging document and you have an arraignment and you move on.
A prosecutor that writes this statement of facts in support of his indictment is one who wants more attention immediately out of the gate.
And he had his opportunity, Jan, to put his evidence forward.
He chose every word in the statement of facts himself with his prosecutorial team to put meat on the bones of this indictment.
And I think he fell far short of the measure.
And if he had anything better, Jan, it's not like he's holding it back.
He would have brought it.
Well, the other thing that I guess kind of surprised me and was that the basically the next appearance where uh Donald Trump is supposed to appear in front of the court is actually way down in December.
Well, is that is that standard?
Yeah, uh, you know, it it sounds like a long time for those not used to the state court process, but a case, a criminal case in New York on average can take about two years to get from arraignment, which is what happened this week, to jury trial.
There's so many intermediary steps that occur in between those two.
And in the New York state court system, 95 plus percent of cases never get to jury trial.
But all of that is to say there's a reason, is because there's so much volume in the state court system that a case can't be ingested by a judge, attorneys brought in, a jury convened, all the due process rights upheld, and a matter adjudicated in a week.
It's not realistic.
It doesn't happen in any state, and it doesn't even happen in the federal court.
So that's why you're seeing the next date so far out.
You could check the cases right before and right after President Trump's arraignment.
I bet you they're all set in December at the end of the year.
Well, so then let's discuss what is actually going to happen between now and then.
And you know, one of the things, of course, will be the production of documents.
Uh, you know, there'll be some discovery.
I know that I think there's something like 65 days, one of our hosts uh mentioned yesterday uh that their evidence has to be presented to the judge who's gonna decide because at this point, there the judge is going to be just deciding on whether the case should go forward, if I understand correctly.
Um that's that's partially right and partially uh a little too general.
Let's dive into the specifics.
So when at an arraignment, a defendant has the right to plead guilty or not guilty.
President Trump pled not guilty.
Accompanying that under the due process laws of New York State and the federal government, there is a what's called a demand for discovery and jury trial.
He's made those demands.
And the judge has granted them, as is his constitutional right.
So what happens now?
Discovery is a fancy word for evidence and information.
The prosecutor is supposed to turn over in at least a rolling fashion, all of the evidence he has ascertained in his investigation, whether it proves guilt or whether it shows innocence or somewhere in between, he's supposed to start filing that over to Donald Trump's defense team.
Whether it's paperwork, electronic communications, voice recordings, videos, source provided documentation, and the sources themselves, all of that over the coming months moves over.
Now, the reason that there's such an extended process is because as this stuff is ingested by the defense counsel, they are going to be making pretrial motions.
Motions before the jury trial date comes up to say, judge, based on this evidence, we feel that you should censure the prosecutor for withholding evidence of innocence based on this discovery obligation, the prosecutor has failed to meet his burden on X, Y, and Z, and there can be some kind of censure.
What I think you'll see in this case ultimately, and in my opinion, they should not seek a motion to dismiss right out of the gate.
What they should do is akin to what we did in Russia Gate or what any good defense attorney would do.
Get all the information the government has in its possession.
Collect it, ingest it so you know what they are going to charge your client with in public.
And then utilize that ammunition.
This is a public defender strategy, not something that's just applicable to Donald Trump.
Then you go into court and say, Judge, there's a Brady violation.
Judge, there's some prosecutorial misconduct.
Judge, there's a grand jury violation.
How did this material leak to the public before the arraignment occurred?
And there's so many other matters.
Judge, we need to know more about source X, Y, and Z. He's highlighted here, but the prosecutor has failed to provide us with more information.
So there's that constant back and forth.
And I believe what you'll see in this case, which is why so many people in the media have said they're disappointed, is that there's not going to be a showing of this, you know, show of force of evidence to just inundate the Trump camp to say, oh wow, look how guilty it is, because the crime itself doesn't exist.
And if the crime itself doesn't exist, what is he going to do?
Create evidence that doesn't exist?
These are going to be problems Alvin Bragg's team is going to have going forward.
And then you'll get to the motion to dismiss.
That's my approach, how I would take it.
I don't know, I haven't talked to these defense attorneys.
I don't know if they're going to go for the motion to dismiss right out the gate.
But I think there's an opportunity here for those out there who've been saying anyone that says there's a two-tier system of justice is floating some sort of crazy conspiratorial theory.
You know, and we've sort of covered this over the years from Russian onwards, and I think this case, which will be the most watched criminal case in US history, is a way to show people who don't necessarily pay attention to these matters what exactly is going on.
And was there prosecutorial misconduct or prosecutorial overreach?
Is the judge, and oh, by the way, John, uh Jan, on a motion to dismiss, that's an extreme measure for a judge to issue a ruling in favor of the offense.
They're rarely granted because a judge is very reserved to take the case, as we say, from the jury.
The jury system exists for the jury to adjudicate the matter.
But a judge will grant a motion to dismiss if the case is legally impossible, or there's a legal flaw, or there was prosecutorial misconduct.
So if you can show one of those things, then the judge will enter and rightfully so, a motion to dismiss in favor of President Trump.
But that's why there's such a long way to go, Jan.
You could take one document and spend a month on it.
All these prosecutors and defense counsel can go to the court and say, Judge, we need more time.
We need more time to review it, we need more time to hire experts, we need more time to talk to consultants, we may need to bring in another legal team to handle this specific matter.
They don't know any of the facts yet.
I doubt that the Trump team, upon the airing of our show, has seen much, if any discovery, because the obligation from the court is not that it needs to be turned over tomorrow, but there's a window, probably about a couple of months, in my guess, without looking at the standing order, that they have time to produce that information.
So this is why it's going to take, in my opinion, if the case isn't tossed out, it's going to take past the next election cycle.
You know, you mentioned Brady evidence, which is something I think a lot of the concept that many of our viewers will be familiar with due to you know past trials that we've discussed on this show.
And so this is, of course, you know, evidence that's exculpatory evidence that would prove the defendant's innocence that the prosecution may have.
And of course, they they need to present that as readily as they would uh the of the damning evidence and so forth.
So, you know, but I was kind of curious about this because you're saying there's no case there the case isn't convincing in itself, so it's almost like anything out there becomes Brady evidence.
How does that work?
Well, that so that's a great question.
So from a prosecutor's position, anything that even comes close to what might be Brady evidence, that could be evidence of innocence.
Not that it is, that possibly could.
A prosecutor is supposed to, under his, under the canon of ethics that guide how we prosecutors operate and how due process the law operates, is supposed to err on the side of caution and turn it over.
And in any sort of close call, the prosecutor can always go to the judge himself and say, hey judge, you're the referee.
We're not sure what to do with this information.
We think we should turn it over, but we're not sure.
Will you take a look at it and let us know?
That's the sort of safe route you're supposed to take if you as a prosecutor for some reason can't come up with the decision on your own.
But as we're taught, if you're even questioning that it could be, you just turn it over, Jan.
Because it's not worth subjecting your case and prosecution to a chance Brady violation that the defense can come back and use at you when all you had to do was turn it over.
And 99% of the time, most of the stuff prosecutors failed to turn over, most of the stuff I caught them failing to turn over when I was a public defender, probably wouldn't have hurt their prosecution.
But since they withheld it, it did.
And I think you're gonna see some of that here.
Is this commonly done or is this uncharted territory?
That's the other question I have of you know, basically kind of this complicated legal theory or tenuous legal theory.
It's not commonly done.
As I said earlier, you know, as a prosecutor, you either have the facts in the law to bring the case or you don't.
You're not supposed to go in there and create a novel legal theory.
Um that's the job of the state legislature.
This New York State legislature, just like Congress does for the federal government, the New York State legislature has a penal code and it says these are the crimes in our book.
And if the crime is not in this book, it's not a crime because the Congress for the state of New York ascribes what is and isn't an illegal act.
Not the prosecutor, John.
The prosecutor's job is not to go in there and say, well, if we connect A to B to C and then maybe talk about a federal violation, I think we can sort of get there and say there was this overarching conspiracy and we have a crime.
That's not how it works.
And that's also why you have an appellate court system, which is likely where this case is going if it's not thrown out or resulting in an acquittal.
Um, of course, they're going to appeal this new legal theory essentially that Alvin Bragg has brought forth, that no other prosecutor, here's the kicker, Jan.
You we all know whether you like or dislike President Trump, the mainstream media, if another case like this ever existed, and I don't mean charging a president, I just mean another campaign finance ledger case trying to rig a presidential or congressional election, if that ever existed and was prosecuted, we'd have heard about it by now.
Whether it was in Arkansas or California or the Southern District of Texas or what have you, we'd have heard about it.
And the reason we haven't is because no one has brought it, which is why people on the TV have continuously said they're disappointed.
Which is why you have egomaniacs like James Comey, the former FBI director who signed off on the fraudulent FISA warrant, the boss to Andrew McCabe, who went out in the public and called it a quote, good day that Donald Trump was charged.
You were the number one police officer in the United States government.
And instead of looking at the facts and the law, you're espousing your opinion to say it's a good day that someone was charged improperly.
Well, it's not surprising to me since James Comey had conducted so many improper acts as FBI director and conducted the illegal act of leaking classified information.
I keep bringing these things up, not to regurgitate history, but because it puts it back into context when so many people for the first time hear these individuals speak and say something like this.
I think it's worth taking a second to note who is doing the talking, i.e., the Andrew Weissmans of the world.
Now that you bring this up, I want to touch on something that you mentioned earlier, which is just that if this legal theory goes forward, it opens the door to all sorts of prosecutions potentially for, you know, like you said, I think you said, you know, spending that you might have done for lunch and connecting that with some kind of election interference.
Um can you expand on that a little bit?
Yeah, let's just look at every member of Congress.
There's 535 members of Congress, 435 in the House, and 100 United States Senators, 535.
I understand there's only one president.
But each of those 535 individuals runs a campaign every two or six years, depending on which house you sit in.
And every one of those individuals pays people to advise them, pays people to come on to their staffs, goes out to lunch, goes to advisory uh board meetings, goes to luncheons, um, gets their hair cut, and utilizes campaign funds to do a lot of this while they're running for office and while they're running for re-election.
And we're just looking at the federal level.
How is it that none of these individuals have been charged with this same type of conduct before?
We haven't even dropped down to the state legislature level.
Each state has up to a few dozen members in their state legislative houses and senates.
How come none of them have been charged under this legal theory?
And in my opinion, the reason they haven't been charged is because it's a legal fiction.
They know that if this case were to result in a conviction, then the overwhelming majority of folks in Congress, state or federal, would be guilty of similar conduct, and then the question is who's going to bring those charges?
That to me is one of the most telling uh pivot points you have in the Alvin Bragg prosecution, because if it were illegal, somebody would have done it before Alvin Bragg and Donald Trump.
Well, maybe it's a little bit different in this case.
So I just want you to speak to it because you know, in this case, hiding you know, an alleged affair, right, so to speak, actually might help the electoral chances or likely would help the electoral chances of the candidate, right?
Right.
But again, let's say we're assuming it's true, and let's put aside the fact that Bill Clinton paid $835,000 to quiet his affair, if it was done to impact a federal election, that's not a state crime.
So bootstrapping a New York state legal theory to a federal conspiracy doesn't equate.
There's two systems of justice as we talked about, and as we also talked about, the federal government, which I believe rightfully chose not to prosecute Donald Trump on those facts because they believed it wasn't a crime to use campaign dollars in that fashion.
And just for the benefit of our audience and myself here, how is buying lunch the similar to uh this kind of uh hiding of a payment?
Great point, and I I should have clarified earlier.
If someone who is running for office sits down and uses campaign finance dollars to buy someone lunch and say that someone is an advisor, a campaign staffer, a possible donor, this is what politicians do every single day of the year that they are on the campaign trail.
And those individuals on the receiving end, the donor, the staffer, the advisor, the lawyer, what have you, are all in that seat to help define what the result of the upcoming election is going to be.
And that's why I equated it to that, and that's why that activity, in my opinion, is not illegal, and that's why this activity is not illegal.
Remember, Jan, the law doesn't distinguish between what you might find moral and immoral in terms of was this such a grotesque act having to do with hush money and possible marital affairs versus a lunch at a fancy steakhouse.
The law is anodyne to that, as it's supposed to be.
Unless there's a specific separate criminal offense for hush bunny payments regarding marital affairs during a campaign election cycle, then the Congress in the state of New York didn't intend for that to be a crime.
Otherwise they would have legislated as such.
And that's why to me, all of it is in the same boat, and that's why to me the crime fails for Alvin Bragg.
And Jan, you know, on this show we talk a lot about Congress's obligations for constitutional oversight when there's overreach by federal and or state government.
Well, I think Congress has a role here, especially now that Alvin Bragg has admitted himself that at least $5,000 of federal funding was used in the investigation and prosecution of these charges against Donald Trump.
Well, that's American taxpayer dollars.
And let's flip the script on them.
Were those taxpayer dollars utilized to interfere with an upcoming presidential election in 2024?
Did federal police dollars go to this fraudulent investigation?
If so, who authorized it and why?
The subpoenas from Congress, which now in the House of Representatives reside with the Republicans, should be going out to explore this admission by Alvin Bragg.
Now it could be that it was all above board and done right, but it's sufficient with the underlying indictment's problems that federal officers in Congress demand answers of Alvin Bragg under subpoena and then bring him and his officials in.
Remember, it's now been publicly reported that Alvin Bragg had to hire, I think the guy's name is Colegio, and he was the one who created this novel legal theory to prosecute Donald Trump.
Great.
Who paid him?
What dollars were used for that?
And let's go ahead and subpoena him so we can have that answer.
Because the two-tier system of justice can't exist in the federal government, and it definitely can't exist in the state court system either.
And if federal dollars were used, then it's worth examination, in my opinion, uh, because that's the accountability that uh this Congress owes every American.
Well, I guess we're gonna see in coming weeks and months how this all starts to play out.
You know, the one other thing I wanted to mention on the show, it's just very, very curious timing that the Ninth Circuit Court basically just ordered Stormy Daniels herself in a totally separate case, uh this defamation case where she is needed to pay out President Trump's legal fees uh for the defamation case to pay, I guess the final payment is something to the tune of 122,000.
Is this just you know completely unrelated or is there any connection here that we should be looking at?
There's a connection in terms of the facts, but in terms of the judicial process, it's completely unrelated.
Um, the timing is an actual coincidence because it's brought by completely separate entities.
But it's worth highlighting, I'm glad you brought it up.
Stormy Daniels is, of course, one of the individuals alleged by Alvin Bragg to have been involved in this hush money or received this hush money uh payments from from Donald Trump in the indictment.
But if in a separate matter where Stormy Daniels were suing Donald Trump for defamation, the decision by the judge to issue not just a ruling throwing out the case in favor of Donald Trump, but also mandating that Stormy Daniels pay for Trump's entire legal team during his representation of that case is a rare move by a judge.
But it's done because the judge felt that the case that Stormy Daniel brought was so flawed and had so many problems, it's essentially equivalent to prosecutorial misconduct.
And remember, defamation case is civil, so there's no prosecutors involved, but there's a plaintiff and a defendant, and Stormy Daniels in this case is essentially the prosecutor saying I was wrong by Donald Trump.
And the judge said, not only was were you not wronged, you owe the defendant money because you, the plaintiff were wrong.
And look, while it may be factually unrelated, these matters can be raised before the state court jury should this ever go to trial because Stormy Daniels is one of the witnesses, the critical witnesses in this case.
And they can present this information to the jurors and the judge and say, wait a second, you already alleged this defendant who is on criminal trial now wronged you, and it turned out that it was improper that you did that, and it was wrong that you did that.
Now you're alleging criminally in state court that the same defendant wronged you or you were or was involved in a criminal scheme that involved you being on the wrong end.
That's a tough hill to overcome factually and credibility-wise when someone has already been ruled against in a massive judgment like the 122,000 dollar one you just raised.
So sure, but in a way, I mean Stormy Daniels is kind of incidental to this, isn't it?
Isn't she like the it's the it's the payments themselves that are the issue, right?
So in our in in the Alvin Bragg prosecution, Stormy Daniels is quote unquote one of the essential witnesses because he's saying the money, as alleged in the indictment, went to her.
Now, she's gonna have to come in and say, this is what the money was for, and yes, I received it.
But remember, this is the same individual who's going to say who tried to say in another court hearing that the same defendant wronged me and spoke ill of me and falsely of me.
It's very hard.
Now you've established a pattern of conduct, you as the witness in the case to say, uh, not only was my case against this individual thrown out, I now have a bias.
I now owe him $122,000.
These are all things jurors are allowed to hear about the credibility of the witnesses.
And it's problematic because the critical witness for Alvin Bragg is Michael Cohen, who has all the other problems we've already outlined.
So remember, the issue here is not whether money was paid from A to B. That's not the illegal act that Alvin Bragg's alleging.
The issue that Alvin Bragg is alleging is that money was paid from A to B and it was done with the intent to defraud a federal election.
That's a whole different narrative.
Even if that law were on the books, which I don't believe it is, even if that law were on the books, I don't think they have the facts to meet it.
But that law, this is the distinction, Jan, isn't on the books.
And that's what everybody's been saying in the media as to why they have a problem with this prosecution.
Yeah, and of course, I'll add that President Trump uh vehemently denies that there was any affair with Stormy Daniels in the first place, too.
And there's a ton we're gonna be finding out over coming weeks and months.
We'll cover it on the show when appropriate.
Um, I guess it's time for our shout-out.
Indeed, it is, Jan.
This week's shout-out goes to Rhonda Hensley.
Thanks so much for posting your comments on the board for Cash's Corner, and thank you, everybody who participates in our weekly live chats on Friday night.
We hope you've enjoyed the live chats.
We're gonna continue to do them, and we ask you to keep posting your comments on the board as Jan and I read them all when we have a spare minute.
