Hello, everybody, and welcome to George Conway Explains It All. To Sarah, I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bullwork, and definitely not a lawyer. Because I'm not a lawyer, I have asked my friend George Conway from the Society for the Rule of Law to explain this week's legal news to me. There's a lot to explain because, George, I'm going to ask you to explain two Trump trials that are going on right now. The first is the E The E. Jean Carroll case happening this week, and the second is the Trump Organization fraud case that wrapped last week. And unlike the January sixth cases that we talked about last time, that was a criminal case But this is a civil case, right? Which means it's about money and not going to jail, correct?

Great. These are both civil cases, absolutely. But significant civil cases.

I'm getting better at the legal stuff already. Okay. So I want to start with the E. Jean Carroll case because Trump is big mad at you. He's out there bleeding at you right now on Truth Social. Yeah, he's very mad at you. You've made him upset.

This makes me very sad.

Yeah, I'm sure you're really torn up about it.

This is my sad face.

Okay. So let me just read you a couple of things. First, a recent filing in this case says that the idea of suing Mr. Trump crystallized in Ms. Carroll's mind as a result of a conversation at a party with George Conway, a Republican lawyer who does not like Mr. Trump, and that Mr. Conway then introduced her to a lawyer. Then today on the stand, when E Jean Carroll was asked why she decided to sue Trump, she said that at a party, you explained the difference between a civil and criminal case, like you just did with me, and walked her through the steps to sue and said that you would help her get a lawyer. And then, in a bleat on truth social today, Trump complained about the unfairness of the trial and wrote, even E. Jean Carroll's lawyer is a Democrat political operative. She's a Democrat? A Democrat.

A Democrat. Nobody told me that.

A Democrat political operative. This whole hoax was funded and conceived of by Reid Hoffman, George Conway, and many others in the democratic system of thugs.

All right, three questions. I'm a Democratic thug.

One, what party was this? Why wasn't I invited? And how does it feel to be a Democratic thug?

Okay. Well, once upon a time, there was a President. He was a bad man, and he used to sexually harass women. I'm automatically attracted to be the boy. I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. I don't even wait. When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Whatever you want. Grab them by the. One day, a woman wrote a book describing all the bad men in her life, and the book came out and mentioned this President as being one of them. And he had raped her in a department store in New York City. I did not know anything about this until I read it in a magazine, New York magazine. And it just so happened that I wrote something in the Washington Post a few days later that basically said, Hey, if you guys believe Juanita Broderick, then you got to believe this woman, because what happened was, I saw Jean Carroll's original story, and then I saw this interview in the New York Times where it was clear that she had told to people, to other people, almost immediately after it happened. And to me, that's a very, very, very compelling circumstance when it comes to these me too type cases.

If the two things that I think are the most compelling, if follow the work of Ronan Farrow in the recent last few years of stories coming about, about bad men doing things to women, the two factors that you really have to consider are, did the guy do it to other people? And were there contemporaneous witnesses? Because if something bad happens to you, you're going to want to tell somebody, even if you don't go to the police. And to me, this was a pretty compelling case. And it happened that I had I've never met Jean Carroll before. But the following week, within a week or two, I was at a party in New York at Molly John Fath's Apartment. And lo and behold, there's Eugene Carroll. And she came up to me, and she thanked me for the article that I'd written in the Washington Post, which had effectively defended her. It was basically, I was just arguing that, well, Trump made a big deal out of Juanita Broderick during the campaign, he and Banon. I think that there was some credibility to Broderick's claim, but it wasn't as strong as Jean Kalzhan, which is the point of my article.

Jean thanked me for that. And then she mentioned the fact that some people were telling her that she should sue and that she was thinking about it, but she didn't know anything about whether it would make sense or not. And what did I think? She was just asking me. And my immediate reaction within a millisecond was, You have a libel claim. Because if this happened, and I don't have any reason to disbelieve you, and in fact, the evidence seems to support it based on what I've been reading in the paper. And then there was Trump lying about never having met her when, in fact, there was a photograph published in the New York magazine of the two of them together with other people. I mean, it struck me that he's lying, she's telling the truth, and she has a liable claim, even if you couldn't bring a lawsuit for something, a physical assault that happened two and a half decades before. So I told her, and I know precisely the lawyer to bring the case. And it was my friend, Robbie Kaplan, who I'd gotten to know over the prior year or two. She is just a fantastic lawyer.

She later tried the Charlottesville case. But the thing that she'll always be remembered for, she won on behalf of Ed Winsor, the challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, obviously a very historic case. And she won that case, and And she's also just a terrific trial lawyer and a great person. And she's also bringing another lawsuit against Trump for the pyramid scheme that he was running on The Apprentice. And that case is scheduled to go to trial in a few weeks. But anyway, I told Jean Carroll, I think I know the right lawyer for you. And the next day, I got in touch with Robbie Kaplan, and she met with Jean, and Jean retained her, and the rest is history. We got this great verdict during the first trial. What happened was she brought suit for the libel that he libeled her and defamed her by calling her a liar when he was President. And Jean testified about what happened to her in the department store, and her friends testified about what she said happened to them back in the 1990s when this happened. And then there were a couple of other witnesses who testified basically that Donald Trump did the exact, tried to do the exact same thing to them.

Natasha Stoynov, who was a reporter at People magazine, testified that she was doing, she was assigned to do a feature story on Trump, and Trump cornered her in the Mar-a-Lago ball room and tried to sexually assault her. And she was saved by some guy who said, Oh, Mr. Trump, Melania is coming. And then there was a woman who he molested on an airplane, of all places. But anyway, the jury came back with a $5 million verdict last summer in favor of Jean Carroll, $2 million for the rape and $3 million for the defamation. As a result, the judge has ruled that basically that first verdict means the only issue in this trial is damages. So this case is only about damages. And that is what's going on right now before Judge Kaplan in the Southern district of New York, a trial that's only about damages.

Why do you think he's so fixated on you in this? Why are you winding leading up in the testimony? Who cares about God as lawyer? That doesn't seem germane.

Because he's a narcissistic sociopath. Narcissists are obsessed with getting revenge. They feel persecuted. I mean, they feel like they should be able to do whatever they want. But when somebody says, No, you can't do that. You can't rape people, they get mad. When they're told, No, you can't just stand in court and just yammer stuff. You have to answer questions and be sworn. They get mad. And they're always seeking to blame somebody else for their conduct. And so I'm a very convenient target. Happy to be the target because I think I did something pretty good when I found Jean, her lawyer. But yeah, he wants to deflect attention from himself. He wants to avoid responsibility for his own actions, and he's always seeking vengeance. And he's also seeking to distract from his own conduct by alleging a massive conspiracy, which, of course, makes no sense. Actually, I would have a liable claim against him if I chose to bring one for alleging that I perpetrated a hoax, which makes absolutely no sense since I didn't know anything about Jean Carroll or what had happened to her until after it became public. And so therefore, it's hard to imagine that this was some a put-up job.

Her story was baked in the cake years ago. She told what happened to people decades ago before I even knew who a Jean Carroll was. But nonetheless, I'm a Democrat, so I'm getting me out of it. You know how it is.

Do you have any response? What do you do when he does these things. It's probably less bad now than when it was Twitter because so few people are on Twitter.

I take it as a badge of honor, and I mock it, which is what everyone should do. Everyone needs to mock Donald Trump because he is so mockable And it's just... He has to be taken seriously because he's a danger to the Republic, but you can't ever lose sight of the fact that he's a complete buffoon. And we have to keep saying that the two are completely consistent. He's a dangerous buffoon. And it's funny because I think his own people, people that I know who have worked with him or for him, they don't take him quite that seriously because they think he's a buffoon. So they make fun of us for saying, Why are you so obsessed with him? Why do you think he's so dangerous? Because they know he's a buffoon. But the fact of the matter is, he's a dangerous buffoon. And for reasons that you and I could go on for days about.

Charlie Sikes always says, A clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower.

Correct.

I always think that's a nice way to talk about this.

That's a nice way, right.

Okay. So moving on from Trump's big emotions. Big picture. Can you explain? So you talked about how this is about damages, but what's going to happen? What's next?

Okay, what's going to happen is Jean Carroll testified on direct examination. Her lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, took her through what happened to her. I haven't seen a transcript. I saw some live tweeting of it. And basically, I mean, her story is the one actually she told at the first trial, which is Trump lied about her. The jury is being instructed that Trump lied. This is a fact. Trump cannot contest it in this trial, and the jury has to take it as a given. And she explained the consequences of that lie to her emotionally, to her needing security, which is a big thing, and her career, and all the different negative things that happened to her as the result of Trump telling this persistent lie, and how Trump continues to tell the lie even after a jury found that he had lied. And in fact, he has been tweeting or Xing or whatever you want to call it incessantly more lies about her, that he never met her, that she's a liar, and that it's a put-up job. And so that's going to go to punitive damages because one of the If somebody doesn't get the message, that's the poor purpose of punitive damages, to punish bad behavior from people who not only just violated somebody's rights, but didn't give a shit about violating someone's rights.

Oh, you're going to bleep that. I'm sorry.

That's up to Barry.

He'll decide. That's up to Barry. Okay. This is a podcast. Okay.

So now that we've talked about Eugene I do want to move on to what was the original topic, which is the Trump Organization Fraud Trial. There's so much legal news. There's so much. This just wrapped up last week. Just like the judge today, that judge told Trump's lawyer to control his client. Because Trump's always doing that presidential-level headed vibe stuff. That's just how he behaves.

Yes. Obeying the rules like he always does.

Yeah, very normal, very cool.

Showing respect for R for authority. Absolutely.

That's right. Can you just lay this one out? What's an issue in the fraud case?

What's an issue in the fraud case is basically the books, the records that have been kept by the Trump organization and its myriad subsidiaries and related entities for many years. Essentially the DA's case, not the DA, but the AG's case is this. Those books were all cooked. They were cooked in any number of ways, but mostly they were cooked in terms of values of Scribe to his various assets. And those were used, those financial statements and balance sheets were used to induce banks into lending money and to give to insurance companies. The problem that Trump has is that the numbers are just not supportable. The numbers numbers in his books were just not supportable to the point where his own accountants disclaimed the numbers and then later quit as his accountants. His only defense is, Well, the banks They're not going to lend me the money anyway. Nobody actually relied on this stuff. But the problem for that, for Trump, is that under New York law, that doesn't necessarily matter. It could matter if somebody was seeking damages on behalf of a bank or something, or somebody who purchased securities. But it's essentially in New York, if you're going to do business in New York, either as a New York Corporation or as a non-New York Corporation that is authorized to do business in New York, you're obliged to keep accurate books and records.

And if you do not, you can forfeit the right to do business. The judge essentially has already found that the books were cooked, and this is a question of his intent to to do that. And it's pretty clear the judge is what was issued at the trial, even though the judge had found on the basis of documentary evidence and granted summary judgment for the trial on the question of falsity, the issues here were his state of mind in participating in the making of those false statements in the books. And again, which is not something that has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt because this is a civil case. It only has to be proven basically 50.01 %, more likely than not that he intended to put false statements in the books, and there's going to be a little question about that. And then the other issue would be how much restitution, how much is the state entitled to recover from him in terms of ill-gotten gains because he was able to keep his business running with these false books for so long. So he's going to lose that case. The The question is how much money he's going to have to pay, and that's not good for him.

Okay. So it's money, but is there anything else at stake for his family? What penalty are we potentially talking about?

I don't remember the precise amount that the attorney general is seeking, but it is a $200 or $300 million or more. It's a lot of money. That's real money. It's different. It is real money, and I don't know. I have no sense of I don't know how much liquidity he has, but it's going to be a bad thing for him if he has to pay that judgment.

What are the chances he does?

The chances? I think the chances are reasonably high, but we'll see. I mean, this judge is going to rule fairly quickly. I think it's going to be a substantial number. He didn't seem to show much sympathy for Trump's arguments or his antics. And we'll see.

Okay. So I want to read some quotes from Trump on the last day of his trial. So he said, This was a political witch hunt. We should receive damages for what this company has gone through. And also, this is election interference, playing all that hits here. The person here, meaning the New York attorney general, hates Trump and doesn't want Trump to win elections. Excellent use of third person Trump there. He also directed a comment at the judge and said, You have your own agenda. You can't listen for more than one minute. Now, again, not a legal scala over here, but this seems like a typical courtroom behavior for a defendant in a serious lawsuit. What happens when you just act like a lunatic like this, yelling at the judge?

You don't get much credence from the judge. I don't think a judge is going to change his conclusions because of this. A good judge will not do that. A good judge will not get resentful and seek vengeance in his judgment. But the truth of the matter is, if that's what you're doing, it reeks of weakness. The way to appeal to a judge is to show that you have some facts and that you have some law. And he's not doing that because he's not capable of doing that. And that's not good for him. And it's not going to be good on appeal. It's not going to be... He's created a terrible, terrible record for himself. And at this point in the other case, in the Jean Carroll case, he's got this lawyer who basically doesn't even know how to try a case. She was basically getting schooled by the judge today on how to do things like mark an exhibit, move an exhibit into evidence, cross-examine a witness based upon a deposition transcript. I mean, things that law students and sometimes mock trial participants in high school learn how to do. This woman, Elina Haba, did not know how to do that.

Can we talk about this Haba attorney for just one second?

Haba, yes. Haba. Haba, nice day.

Why would he choose? She has done... I have seen her make all kinds of comments that she shouldn't be making in public, on TV, as this has. Why did he choose her?

Because she plays to him. His idea of... He's not capable of reason thinking or reason to argument. He is a narcissistic sociopath, a psychopath, not a rational man. And the law is generally, it tries to be, a rational process. And so he's fighting it every bit of the way because it involves evidence, it involves rules. He doesn't like evidence because it doesn't conform to his delusions or fantasies or desires to have people believe false things. And he doesn't believe in rules or laws unless they're applied to other people and unless he's making the rules and laws up as he goes along. So he's always been in a continual battle against the legal system, and this is just part of it. And it's not going well for him, and it will continue not to go well for him.

So let me float a theory at you, which is, so Trump's obviously going to appeal this case, right, against the Trump organization. And the way that he's talking to me reads like, he's trying to delay whatever the impact is, and he just wants to... He needs to win the election, right? He's basically... And so what he wants to convey coming out of these court cases is the like, I'm the tough guy. I, none of these judges are getting to me. Also, I'm the victim. And so to me, it seems like a political play.

It is. It's an instinctive play, in part, because he's a narcissistic sociopath. But it is also a political play because that is how he's made it in politics, that the lying and the playing the victim appeals to a significant, as we've learned, a significant a number of people for their own psychological reasons. And so I don't think it's part of... I hesitate to say that it's part of some master plan So as a sociopath, he's not capable of extensive planning. He's more reactive, he's more instinctive. He's got a reptilian brain, except the reptiles are generally smarter. And he's just doing what he naturally does. And yes, it fits into his political approach, which is basically to play the victim. And But that's what he does. He'd be doing this. Even if he weren't running for public office, he'd be playing the victim because that's what the narcissists do.

I mean, one of the things that's crazy to me is that if the Trump order that was found to be cooking the books, this is part of his political the lore of him is that he's a great businessman and that he's super rich. And part of what this case shows is that he's inflating his wealth all over the place. But never failed- Which actually isn't new because it came out years ago that he basically was lying to the Forbes to get on the Forbes 400.

And there was this lawsuit that he brought against Tim O'Brien lying that he had to settle because he claimed that Tim had liable him by saying he wasn't as rich as he made himself out to be. Well, it turned out that he couldn't sustain that claiming. He had to drop the case. So this is not new, and it's consistent with everything we know about the man is that he exaggerates. He self-promotes. He lies about everything about himself, even when it's not necessary to he lies. It's pathological.

Yeah. In a different world, the idea that he had made his political brand around being rich, and then there being a case in which he was convicted for cooking the books at his company, that would have an enormous earthquake of political consequence because it would like, topple down like the whole thing has been a champ. I don't think this will change anything.

No, I don't think it will at all, because I think we've seven years in, we've reached this point of what psychologists call malignant normality, where people just accept the bizarre as even people who don't like Trump, accept the bizarre as just perfectly normal. And so none of this is going to be... I mean, the people who support him are just going to disbelief it, no matter what the evidence shows, no matter what the findings are. And then the people who oppose them all and say, well, we already knew that. And in that sense, he benefits because he's so crazy, he's so mind boggling disturbed that None of this is news anymore.

Yeah. The results of this are going to be decided by that judge, though, the one he's yelling at, right? Correct.

Yes. This guy, man. Because apparently, because Well, apparently Lena Hobba forgot to ask for a jury, I think.

Oh, that's right. This is this case. You know, part of it is even... So I'm obviously... I don't always understand the ins and outs of the legal side, but I follow it pretty closely. And I forget Which things attached to which things attach to which case. When we were talking about E. G. And Carol, I was like, Right, this is the one where there's the video of Trump when he's getting interviewed and he says... He's like, Yes, when you're a you're allowed to... It's like what he said.

Right. No, that was admitted into evidence both at the first trial and the second trial, the Access Hollywood tape, because it goes to his state of mind and so on and so forth.

But it wasn't even the Access Hollywood tape. It was like him, he was saying- Yes, yes.

In his definition- In this video, I just start kissing them.

It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the bell. You can do anything. That's what you said, correct?

Well, historically, that's true with stars.

It's true with stars that they can grab women by the bell?

Well, if you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true. Not always, but largely true, unfortunately or fortunately.

You consider yourself to be a star?

I think you can say that, yeah.

They have let great men do whatever they want. Unfortunately, I was like, Unfortunately or fortunately.

That's right. That was at his deposition. That was at his deposition in the Jean Carroll case. Robbie Kaplan basically showed him or quoted at him the Access Hollywood tape and asked him, Hey, is this true? And he basically said, Yeah. And that's consistent with his narcissistic sociopathic way of looking at the world. It's why he says he likes to talk about how Kim Jong Un wants to see him. He said this the other day. Kim Jong Un wants to see him President again. I mean, it's the same sickness. What an endorsement. Yeah, what a great endorsement.

A murderous dictator wants to be that.

A murderous dictator, right. And it's consistent with Trump the other day saying that, Sammie the Bull, Gravano had it right, that Trump is a great man, and these judges better watch out or something like that. I mean, something- Who's that?

Who's that person you're talking about?

What? Sammie the Bull, Gravano, a mobster? Who was that? Famous mobster who was apparently giving an interview saying nice things about Donald Trump. And So Donald Trump said, This is great. I'm not making this up. I can't make this up.

Let's talk about a place where if nobody's ever liked you, you'll take a compliment wherever you can get it, even if it's like- No, It's worse than that.

He likes people. He likes that type. He likes criminal dictators. He likes mobsters. He admires them. He thought the best lawyer in the world was Roy Cohn, who was the most unethical lawyer, one of the most unethical lawyers in American history. I don't know what else. He admires people who are fellow sociopaths. That's just basically how he rolls.

Well, I, for one, I know that's that expression, the wheels of justice turn slow, but they turn fine.

Yes. They grind slowly, but they grind fine. Yes, absolutely. That's basically what's happening to him.

That is what's happening. They got to be.

But he has you right. He's absolutely trying to run out the clock. I mean, that's part of what he's doing. He is trying to run out the clock on all of this stuff because he has figured out, I'm sure people have told him that if he becomes present, not if the civil case is he can't, it won't help him. But basically, if he were in jail at noon on January 20th, 2025, having been convicted of something or other this year, and he gets 270 electoral votes, well, they're going to have to spring them, I think, under the Constitution, which wouldn't be great. But that's his best play, and that's what he's trying to among others.

Hey, what did you think? So this was something interesting that just came out of Iowa with one of the things that was in the exit polls or entrance polls, and those are not terribly reliable, but it was something like 31% of the primary voters said that they would not vote for him if he was convicted of a crime. Do you believe that?

I believe that there are... Here's my theory, and I don't know why I'm telling you this, because you're I'm the one who actually conducts focus groups and talks to voters unlike I. I do not. But I do think there are going to be, broadly speaking, there are going to be people who are never going to believe anything bad that's said about Donald Trump, even if they're shown video of it, they will say it's a deep fake or something. And then there are people who don't like the Democrats, want to vote for a Republican, but are exhausted by Trump and embarrassed by Trump. And I do think that those people can be moved more so than in 2020, because I just think it's incumbent upon all of us to really, really hammer at him in a way I don't think happened even in 2020. I think 2020, it was easier because he was President. I think now his big advantage is that he's been off everyone's radar screens, this deep platforming100 %. De-platforming of him has made him more of an abstraction. You forget how bad he is, and then you worry about things that are not really as significant as having a sociopath in charge of the second largest nuclear arsenal on the planet.

So that's going to be the important thing is for us, every single one of us, including people who are listening, you've got to engage people and tell them what you think and tell them why this is bad. And I think there's another potential effect. And again, I defer to you. Maybe this is fantasy on my part, but I do think that the more this happens, the more it demoralizes even the fanatics. And my one data point on this, well, I mean, the one data point is turnout, although that could have been due to the weather in Iowa. But there was also an interesting report that was leaked. It was a report prepared by Club for Growth. You may have read it or seen it, but they had run... They had focus group tested a bunch of negative ads about Trump, and they found two things. The first thing was it didn't affect people's willingness to say they were going to vote for Trump. They basically show all the bad things about Trump. And people said, well, I still support him. But they found that it dampened their enthusiasm. And I think the people who support him are exhausted, too.

And I think at the end of the day, what we're going to see, assuming nothing bad happens to Joe Biden and the Democrats do what they should be doing, and God knows they have the money to do it, The turnout is going to be huge for people who don't want to see Trump again, and it's not going to be so great for the people who are just trying to stick by him because deep down, a lot of them know better, and also they're just exhausted. And that's why I think at the end of the day, I'm hopeful that we will not all end up in Guantanamo.

Yeah. I want to underscore something you said there. I was just talking about this with a reporter It is this idea of right now, Joe Biden is front and center for people. I hear this in the news all the time, right? So they know what they're annoyed about with Joe Biden. They're frustrated with the economy. I heard this in 2022 from swing voters going into the election as well. They were mad about Joe Biden, whatever. But then when you said, Okay, well, then who are you going to vote for, Blake Masters or Mark Kelly? They were like, I'm not going to vote for that psychopath, Blake Masters. He's crazy on abortion. He thinks the election was stolen, and he likes the Unibomber. I'm not going to vote for him. I I think the contours, I think we're at a low watermark for Joe Biden and a high watermark for Trump because he's about to get a coronation in this nomination. But then I think once that contrast becomes clear, because something else that's clear in the groups is that people don't know yet that it's Biden versus Trump. They just have not grabbed it.

They don't believe it. They haven't focused. It's not clear yet. I still second that to you, and I'll use even bigger data points. In 2016, Hillary was ahead until Hillary became the issue. And one of the things that happened when they got rid of Manifort and put in my ex-wife and so on in the fall was they started making the campaign about Hillary, and that's why she lost. In 2020, he lost because the election was about him. He was the incumbent. In 2024, it's going to become about him again, even though he's not the incumbent, because everybody's All of us are going to make it about him, and he can't help but make it about himself.

I think that's 100% right. I think that also underscore your part about we're all going to have to do this job. It's one of the reasons we need to make sure people understand what's happening in these court cases. George, then I appreciate you. Another week of George Conway explains it all to Sarah. I feel like we're all getting a lot out of this. It was great to talk to you, and we're going to come back and do this again next week.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because Lord knows there will be something next week as well.

There will be. All right. Thanks so much. Bye.