03/20/23

Good morning! It’s Monday, March 20th.

International Day of Happiness.

And oh boy… like you wouldn’t believe.

And now, the news.

Trump Crime Update Time

-AP News // The Hill // CNN // NY Times // AP News // Reuters // The White House // CBS

Friends. Family. Ruth the Cat.

It begins.

Trump Crime Update Time!

(Q and A Edition)

Okay, here’s what’s happening (Hey! I said the name of the show in the show! That’s fun)…

I’m recording this on Sunday. It sounds like, per news that broke on Friday, that Trump will likely be indicted on Tuesday. So, here’s my game plan… today we’re going to answer some questions I’ve gotten, as well as do a quick summary about how we got here.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, there won’t be an episode first thing in the morning. Instead, I’ll put out an episode after we have a better idea of what’s going on. And then probably on Wednesday I’ll have an episode out in the morning again to cover everything that’s happened but that’s pretty fluid. We’ll see. But the information will be here. And, as it is, it’ll be here in a non-hyper reactive way. It’ll be fun, we’ll make some jokes, but we’re not going to panic or celebrate (well, celebrate too much or too early).

So, in other words, it’ll be a normal show.

Let’s get into it!

First, let’s start with some basics. How did we get here?

Let’s fly on back to October 2016. We were so young. So naive. One month out from the election, porn star Stormy Daniels was trying to sell the story of her affair to Donald Trump. They originally offered the exclusive to the National Enquirer.

The bummer here is that they first called the Enquirer. Because the publisher of the Enquirer is was long Trump friend (whatever that means for him. Hard to imagine him going out for beers with some pals after a long day of grifting) David Pecker.

Hey. Heeeeeey. This is a serious news show. His name is David Pecker and that’s fine.

Anyway, so Daniels’ reps called The Enquirer, not knowing that Pecker had agreed to be on the lookout for potentially damaging stories about Trump during the campaign. In fact, at one point they practiced something called “catch and kill,” where they agreed to buy another story about a Trump affair and then buried it.

But in this case, Pecker didn’t buy the story. Instead, Pecker tried to work out a deal between Daniels’ and Michael Cohen. Cohen paid $130,000 to squash the story and Trump, during his time as president, paid him back.

Now let’s fly to 2018, where Michael Cohen pled guilty for a bunch of money crimes, federal campaign finance crimes including this $130,000 check, which federal prosecutors said was actually an improper donation to Trump’s campaign. Because this money was specifically spent to help him win the presidency.

Okay, so we know what Cohen did wrong. What did Trump do?

Well, in 2018, Cohen said Trump was the one that told him to pay to squash the story. So that’s part of it. Additionally, prosecutors are taking a monocle emoji look at monthly reimbursements to Cohen that Trump was making, which the courts believe Trump’s company falsely accounted for as a legal retainer. It wasn’t, and we know that because, although Cohen was a lawyer and actually became Trump’s lawyer, there was no retainer agreement between them.

Cohen has said that Trump knew about the fake retainer agreement.

Also, I saw “was” because that 2018 guilty verdict got him disbarred.

Now, look… of all the crimes this is kind of the most boring and for sure the least egregious. But it’s still a crime. We don’t let people get away with crimes because the crime is boring.

Now, for this to level up to a federal crime, the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, who’s running this show, must show that this was also done with the intent to defraud. And in that case, that would be a violation of the New York State election law.

So that’s the back story.

In New York, potential defendants have the right to answer a grand jury’s questions before they are indicted. And prosecutors recently offered Trump to testify. So this put a potential indictment on everyone’s radar.

And then Friday happened – which is when we learned that law enforcement officials were beefing up security ahead of a possible indictment.

But no official announcement has been made. So why do you think it’ll be Tuesday?

Because Trump made an all-caps announcement on his ironically named Truth Social: "Illegal leaks from a corrupt & highly political Manhattan district attorney's office ... indicate that, with no crime being able to be proven ... the far & away leading Republican candidate & former president of the United States of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week."

He also called for protests.

Which is, you know… haunting. Considering how much his followers listen.

And listen, like I said – we’re not going to panic or time travel. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Mostly because this has never happened – no U.S. president, while in office or after, has faced criminal charges.

So that’s important here. Because there are a LOT of questions that we just don’t know yet. And those questions will come up, and when we know more we’ll know more. But I would hope that IF you get your news in ways other than this show (first of all – how dare you? And also… good job!), you keep in mind that 24 hour news networks have 24 whole hours to fill. They’re going to say and guess and hypothesis a lot.

Here's what we do know: he says he will continue to run for President. This will not make him ineligible. All you have to do, to be president, is not be convicted of sedition, be over 35, a natural born US citizen, and a resident of the US for at least 14 years.

So he is eligible. He will likely continue to run.

If this indictment happens, and a deal isn’t brokered instead, he’ll be fingerprinted and processed like anyone else. But we don’t know what that looks like for a president. It’s gonna be… something. That’s for sure.

And, as a reminder, it’s not the only active investigation into him – we expect an indictment in Georgia for election crimes kind of any time now (“oh hey Brad, can you just find me some votes so I can win Georgia? Would be cool right? Easy for you to do? Come on Brad, it would be so fun!” ….once again I’ve nailed the impression); plus Coach Beard and the Case of the Time He Called Dibs on Classified Materials and also, separately, tried to burn the very fabrics of democracy to the ground simply because he lost an election.

Those last two might be a little further out, but the Georgia one is very likely on the way.

So… that’s… the deal.

Friends… This week is going to be exhausting, sometimes funny, hopefully not as dangerous as we’re worried about… drink water, eat an orange, subscribe to this show. We’re in this together…

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of people who didn’t do money crimes and election crimes. That’s nice. Seems easy. I often don’t do money and election crimes and it’s pretty easy.

It’s also National Ravioli Day. And we are ALWAYS proud of carbs.

But more than that, more than CARBS… I’m proud of you.