I attended the Trump trial this week in the Manhattan courthouse, and there's no substitute for being there in person. You can read about something. You can even watch it at times on tv. Not this trial, but you can watch something on tv. But it's not quite the same as being there in person.

The atmosphere, even the smells in this case, literally the smells in a dingy, third rate courthouse that looks like it comes from the third world. But even just the affect of the jury, the atmosphere created in the courtroom, the demeanor, and the dynamic between the judges, the prosecuting attorneys, and the defense attorneys, between having a former president of the United States and likely future president sitting in that seat as a defendant and myself, to be there in the breaks and otherwise, with what was happening in the dynamics of that courtroom and outside with the media, it was interesting. I'm going to tell you about my experience in the courtroom, but more importantly, we're going to get to the heart of what the heck is actually going on in these multiple prosecutions against Donald Trump. And the moral of the story is it has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It has to do with you.

It has to do with us, with every one of us as Americans. It has to do with why our founding fathers fought a revolution 250 years ago. That's really what's at stake here. But I find that republican politicians often hover at the level of standard talking points, repeating themselves time and again. You don't need more of that.

So what we're going to do is actually go into some level of depth, some level of detail to get into the essence of what's actually going on. And then on the other side, emerge with a stronger understanding of what's actually at stake and why this matters, not just to Americans who follow politics, not just to Republicans or Democrats, but to every American who cares about living in a self governing constitutional republic where they are free and bound by the same standards of law. That's what's at issue. I was in that courthouse. It was like I was sitting in the middle of a Kafka novel.

I'll tell you what I mean by that. It's the dingiest place I've been in a long time. It'd be sad as an American to understand what us taxpayers, and, frankly, New York state and city taxpayers are paying to go sit inside what looks like a building that might have reminded me from a bureaucrat's office in India in the 1990s, in a third world nation that in many cases has outstripped the United States in the quality of its own infrastructure or buildings. This is what it felt like as a reminder to me. It was dingy, it was stuffy in the air.

The finishes in the building were ugly. It was a depressing atmosphere. None of that really matters, but it gives you the look and feel of what's actually going on in a, I would say disastrous New York City courthouse. But it was fitting. That's what made it most remarkable.

It was fitting for how disgusting what actually is happening in that courthouse as well. The thing that made it depressing wasn't just the interior finishes or the fact that the electric wiring is showing in a courtroom, which should have supposedly have the austere environment of justice. It's the fact that that was appropriate for a courtroom in which what we saw playing out was nothing other than a political sham in the name masquerading in the name of justice. And so, in a certain sense, it was a poetic fit that was rather depressing. And the day I was there, it was focused on finishing the direct testimony of Michael Cohen and then the beginning of his cross examination.

Perhaps one of the most flawed witnesses you could imagine in the conduct of any trial, let alone this one. So I want to get to the heart of the real question that needs to be answered. Trump is being charged with a crime, a criminal trial, conducted right here in New York City. It's where I'm recording this today, because I just ended up being in New York. We're not at our home base.

I'm in New York today, fresh off my thoughts of what I saw in that trial. The number one question we need to answer is, what exactly is the crime that Donald Trump is being charged with here? It's a legitimate question to ask. What exactly is the crime that has a former president of the United States sitting in a courtroom from 09:00 a.m. To 06:00 p.m.

Or 09:00 a.m. To 05:00 p.m. Every day, or 04:00 p.m. What exactly is the crime at issue? Nobody seems to have a good answer to that question.

They've said a lot of things, that he did a lot of paperwork here and there, hush money payments. People understand the atmosphere, the vibe of something that happened that seems sinister and wrong. But again, a clear statement of what exactly is the crime? There's a lack of a good answer to that question. And after the period of the trial that I attended, where Michael Cohen testified, that answer is now less clear than it ever was.

So what you saw for hours, I was in the courtroom while they did this was Michael Cohen going through invoice after invoice that he submitted for Donald Trump in the name of legal services. And Michael Cohen on the stand, a guy who has perjured himself, lied over and over and actually said so yesterday. The countless number of times that he had lied before says that, you know what? That was his falsifying of a business record. That was his alleged violation of not actually submitting a legal receipt as something that was something other than a legal receipt submitted as a legal receipt.

So I think Michael Cohen, for several hours during the time that I was there, established that he had submitted false receipts. But what exactly was the crime that Donald Trump committed? Nobody has yet answered that question. Now, I'll tell you what their prosecution's theory of the case is. Prosecution's theory of the case is that Donald Trump participated in falsifying those business records based on how those were recorded.

Those legal invoices that came in were recorded as legal expenses. And supposedly, that's an allegation involving falsification of a business record. Well, let's take a look at that for a second. If you're running a business and a lawyer sends you an invoice citing legal expenses, and for all you know, that is to settle an NDA or a non disclosure agreement that that lawyer made on your behalf, that involves foreclosing a legal liability. The alleged crime here of Donald Trump falsifying a legal record, a business record, not Michael Cohen, who's writing up false invoices that he claims he thinks are false invoices, but Donald Trump and his business recording a legal invoice as a legal expense, that's the heart of what they're challenging here.

Well, what else are you supposed to do when an attorney sends you a legal invoice for something relates to a legal matter involving an NDA and the enforcement of NDA and avoidance of liability under that NDA recording, that is a legal expense. That is what they would say is falsifying a business record that fails on its own terms. But let's go a layer deeper into this. This is where going into the details of the law actually matter. That alleged crime, even if it was committed, which for the reasons we discussed, if you get a legal expense, you're running a business.

A lawyer, an outside lawyer, sends you an invoice. It says it's for legal services. You know, it relates to dealing with a legal matter, and you record it as a legal expense in your business ledger. To call that a crime itself should frighten every business owner, not just in New York, but any other jurisdiction in the United States where they're going to adopt this kind of politics in prosecution. Even if you accept that ridiculous theory that that itself was a crime, look at the New York law.

Under New York law, that supposed crime is only a misdemeanor. It's not a felony. Donald Trump is being charged with a felony. I'll get to that in a second. But that crime of falsifying that business record, failing to record that non legal expense, but recording it as a legal expense, that is only a crime up to the level of being a misdemeanor.

You can't go to prison over it, right? It's not a felony. It's the kind of thing that involves, you know, say you accidentally run through a yellow, right. But actually learn, turn red. Let's say you're speeding on the highway.

These are things that are classified as misdemeanors, not as felonies. Furthermore, that misdemeanor has what's called a statute of limitations applied to it. What's a statute of limitations? Basic concept in the law that says after a certain amount of time, we don't want people thinking about certain transgressions and have it way over their life, the prosecution or the government has a certain amount of time to charge a crime. That's what's called the statute of limitations.

And the statute of limitations for this particular alleged crime or misdemeanor is five years. Trump's actions here that are alleged are far beyond that five years. So in order to be able to actually charge this crime and bring it within the statute of limitations, and to further be able to charge it as a felony, something that could send you to prison, not just something that would have you have a small fine for misdemeanor. They had to charge a different underlying crime. That's what the New York law requires.

It says that unless this falsifying business record was in furtherance of a separate felony, you could only charge that as a misdemeanor. And by the way, you only have five years to do it. There's no way they could have brought this case. And even if they brought this case within that five years, they couldn't have charged it as a felony. But they're charging as a felony long after that five year window.

So that five year window then expands if you're charging it as a felony. Here's a funny little wrinkle that other people haven't commented on. Even the felony charge has a statute of limitations that would have otherwise expired, but for certain exemptions that the prosecution has asked for because of COVID that should further extend that statute of limitations even for the felony. So that's a side wrinkle I'm not even going to go into in depth, but using every little potential exception or trick in the book, what they're saying is that this allegation of falsifying business records, recording a legal expense as a legal expense in a business ledger, that that supposed crime is no longer just a misdemeanor, but is a felony and it can be charged outside the statute of limitations because it is in furtherance of another crime. Another felony.

That's the heart of this case in New York. What is that felony, you might ask? Here's what it is. They're claiming that this is a violation of federal campaign finance laws. So this is interesting.

Alvin Bragg, the Da in Manhattan, is a local da. He operates and enforces supposedly state laws. Side note, look at New York City, where I actually was yesterday in the courthouse recording it right here this morning before leaving town. It's interesting how you could go left and right in New York City and see crimes being committed on any given day. I used to live in New York a decade ago.

It's not the same city as today. And yet the concern of local prosecutors in New York is not to actually stop the violent crime being committed across the city and across the state, but instead to go after fictitious crimes that are politicized in nature. It's funny how that works. But his pursuit of going after it says he could go after local crimes enforcing the state law. Why would Alvin Bragg bring a case involving federal law?

He can't. But the contorted legal theory is he can bring that federal law in if it's tied to the falsification of a business record, which is a New York law. He couldn't charge the falsification of a business record under New York law unless he tied in that federal crime. So they're really walking on a tightrope here to say that he gets to charge the New York misdemeanor under New York state law as a felony outside the statute of limitations because he's charges a separate underlying federal crime. But he couldn't have otherwise charged that federal crime were it not for the auspices of doing it under a state law that itself has expired.

So that's a funny little dance right there. But now let's go into even further detail. His whole theory of the case is that not only did Donald Trump falsify a business record, which is a misdemeanor, but that it becomes a felony that the New York prosecutor is able to charge under state law because it was in furtherance of a federal crime of a campaign finance violation. What is that campaign finance violation, you might ask? Here's the whole theory of the case.

The entire case comes down to this one question. Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor here, the New York prosecution claims that this was a constructive campaign contribution. What was that? This, this was the payments made to Miles Michael Cohen, which they say were reimbursements for Stormy Daniels Hush money payment, an NDA that Stormy Daniels signed to say that she could not talk publicly about her alleged, the affair that she alleged with Donald Trump. Donald Trump has denied the affair, but that she alleges it, but nonetheless, that they signed an NDA with her to make sure that she couldn't speak about it publicly.

There's nothing illegal about an NDA. But what they're saying is the use of those payments to Michael Cohen, which they allege were misrecorded by the Trump Organization, were actually campaign contributions that were paid for by personal money, but should have been paid for by campaign funds or should have been recorded as a campaign contribution. That's the heart of this entire case of what makes this a supposed felony, is that these alleged payments to Michael Cohen, which were alleged to be reimbursements for a stormy Daniels payment to enforce an NDA, that those should have been recorded as a campaign contribution, rather than just the personal payment that they were actually made through. Let's examine that for a second. The idea that a personal hush money payment should have been made and recorded as a campaign contribution should have been made out of campaign funds is actually a laughable idea.

Let's have the same shoe on the other foot. You want to get the best litmus test for whether a prosecution is politicized. Here's what it is. If the defendant would have done the exact opposite, the exact opposite thing of what the prosecution wanted, the exact opposite thing of what the prosecution says. Prosecutor says this is a crime.

What you did was a crime. Suppose the defendant did the exact opposite thing of what the prosecution is alleging. If the prosecution could have still brought that case and would have still brought that case, that proves that it's a politicized prosecution. Right? Because if you do a, they're going to prosecute you.

They say a is a crime. Well, let's say you do the exact opposite of a. The thing that they claim in this case that you should have otherwise done, and then they would still come after you for it. That means they were going to get you either way. That's a politicized prosecution.

This is a classic textbook case. This will be taught in law schools for the next century. It certainly should be as an example of what is a politicized prosecution, because let's examine this claim. The New York prosecution rests on the idea, the entire case rests on the idea that Donald Trump failed to record a personal hush money payment as a campaign contribution. Because part of the point of making that contribution was to influence the perception of voters being, having Stormy Daniels stay quiet was supposedly to improve the perception of voters.

Even if you accept those facts which are being contested in court, even if you accept those facts, if Donald Trump had used campaign funds to make a personal hush money payment, they would no doubt be prosecuting him for that. And the irony is they'd have an even stronger case for doing it. There's good examples of this. You don't have to surmise. Take politicians who for years, you have congressmen, you have Sarah Palin caught up in something like this, where she was alleged to have used campaign funds for personal expenses.

Let's say it's the clothing you buy. Suppose you want to dress up in a nice suit and tie, but you feel like you wouldn't have bought that nice suit and tie of that quality, spending $5,000 or whatever it would be for a nice suit, you wouldn't spend that money. As a politician who hasn't achieved millions, is not yet a millionaire, but wants to go into public service, say that, you know what? I'm going to use campaign funds to do something that affects the perception of voters that voters have of me. If I show up in a ratty gym t shirt and shorts, I don't think voters are gonna vote for me, even if that's what I normally wear.

So I'm going to incur an expense that is designed with the goal of influencing the voter's perception of me. So let's say a republican politician decides, you know what, I wasn't going to spend that personal money on a suit for my personal life. But the only reason I'm going to buy that $5,000 suit is because I want to influence voters perceptions of me. That's a reasonable basis for many politicians to believe they're going to actually have voter perceptions affected by how they dress. Now, multiple congressmen back in 2009 used this argument to use campaign money to buy personal attire.

Sarah Palin got caught up in what became a similar scandal. But what the Federal Election Commission, viewing federal law says, is political candidates cannot use campaign funds to make a personal clothing payment, a personal sartorial choice, even if it is explicitly designed to influence the perception of voters. Interesting how that works. So the prosecution's entire theory of the case here is that Donald Trump is making a personal hush money payment. There's all kinds of personal reasons, very much a personal issue of whether or not somebody's making a false allegation of an affair they had with you, or an allegation of any kind that they had an affair with you.

But you're entering an NDA as a married person to somebody who has all kinds of personal and business reputation to maintain, to sign an NDA with them. But to say that, no, no, no, because that could influence voters perception of you, that you had to use campaign funds to do it. Had he used the campaign funds to make that payment, they would be going after him for misusing campaign funds to advance a personal goal, the exact same thing they did to congressmen and other candidates who have used campaign funds to buy personal clothing. Let's go through any other example. Say it's to get a haircut.

I wouldn't have gotten a haircut. Certainly not an expensive, fancy one. You could pay $300 for a haircut. Well, you only might get that haircut as a politician if you really care about the way you present yourself on a debate stage in the media to voters to influence voters perceptions of you. If you had a politician who was using campaign funds to make personal haircut payments, there is no doubt that federal prosecutors or the Federal election Commission would be coming after you for that.

As opposed to saying that if you used those same campaign funds for getting a haircut, you wanted to look good for voters at a rally or at a debate, to then say that, oh, no, no, no. Because that was designed to influence voters perceptions of you somehow. That was supposed to have been made using campaign funds. That means there's literally no way to run for office, because on one hand, if you use campaign funds to make a personal payment, they're going to come after you for that on the end, if you make a personal payment. But it was designed with somehow influencing the perceptions of voters of you, that you were gonna get dinged, because it should have been a campaign expense.

They're gonna get you either way. But the question is, do they like you as the actual defendant? Do they like your politics? Do they like what you represent? That's what this case is actually about.

Imagine if Donald Trump, who rides around in planes that land in hangars. It says Trump on the plane, part of his brand is success, landing at rallies that have been held at hangars. Suppose he bought that personal airplane and owned it because, he says, my ownership of an airplane is going to affect voters perceptions of me. Had he used campaign funds to do that, that would be a scandal on the front page of the New York Times. Likely federal action against him for that.

Yet the entire prosecution's theory of the case is, oh, if you're using funds to influence voters perceptions of you, you are committing a crime unless you use campaign funds to do it. It is an impossible bind. It is a Hobson's choice. You're damned if you do, damned if you don't. That's really what's going on here.

So back to the heart of this case. The original question I asked, what exactly is the crime that Donald Trump committed? They say it was falsifying a business record in furtherance of influencing an election with an illegal campaign contribution. It fails on every metric of that test. First of all, recording a legal expense as a legal expense was the alleged falsification of a business record.

That itself fails on its own terms. Even if that was a crime, it was only a misdemeanor that fell outside the statute of limitations. And the only way they were able to upcharge it as a felony was by tying it to a federal crime that local prosecutors otherwise could not have charged. But that federal crime involves using personal money to make a personal payment. And had he used campaign funds to do it, as the prosecution alleges that he was obligated to, he actually would be in violation of laws based on precedents set by federal regulators and federal prosecutors in the past.

That's where we are right now with this case. It was clearer to me than ever after watching Michael Cohen testify that the entire legal premise for the case rests on these falsehoods. And this is the case of an attorney who spent an hour testifying, in part based on recordings that he took while he was the attorney for that client, secretly recording those conversations. Think about this. An attorney, supposedly for the benefit of the client, without telling the client, is secretly recording those conversations.

And now those conversations have been aired in a prosecution against that client. Anybody who's dealt with a lawyer, anybody who's been through law school, any layperson who has an understanding of the law, understands that seeking legal advice is subject to something called attorney client privilege. You could debate the policy on this. Is that good policy or not? There's a separate debate to be had.

There's good arguments on both sides. But we as a country and in the law, in countless cases, thousands every year, respect the concept of attorney client privilege, which is to say that the conversation that a client has with an attorney while seeking in good faith legal advice is protected and cannot be used against that client, because otherwise, you couldn't have a legal system that functioned because a defense attorney couldn't actually be doing their job if their client couldn't talk to them. This is true in the cases of murders. This is true in the case of mass murders. True in the case of rapes through, and true in the case of some of the most heinous crimes that are committed.

But that's part of what we think of as the due process of law in the United States of America that has a judicial system that we can trust. Yet yesterday, what I witnessed in that courtroom was a guy testifying about the content of his interactions with his client, secretly recording them in those recordings, being the linchpin of the prosecution against that exact client. That's not just a threat to Donald Trump, that's a threat to every american in this country. Every American who, in good faith may seek how they're going to actually not violate the law, only to have that be used against them when they're seeking that legal advice. It flouts the very idea of attorney client privilege.

And had this been any other case, I think that every newspaper in this country and every lawyer in this country would be calling it out. But because of the political backdrop, they're too afraid to say it. That was a big part of the testimony yesterday as well. And so you have an attorney testifying that he believes he himself committed crimes, but is attributing those to Donald Trump in flagrant violation of attorney client privilege on the backdrop of a legal theory that fails on its own terms. So that's what's going on in this legal case in New York.

I think it is a disgusting prosecution. And the fact that that courtroom is, sadly, as disgusting as it is shameful as an american citizen, that this is where the third world atmosphere in which the carriage of justice is actually carried out, the saddest part of all is actually fitting for what's actually happening in that courtroom, because the only thing more third world in the interior of that courtroom is really the content of what's happening in there. This is the stuff of banana republics. This is the stuff of third world countries. If this was another country where on the back of this type of politicized case, we saw a former president that was running for president, was a leader the party of the party and the party of the president in power is then using these prosecutorial tools to, through the back door, prosecute that major opponent.

We would call that the stuff of banana republic. We would say that's an autocracy. And the worst part is we haven't even gotten to some of the other details that you would see in a banana republic. Let's go through a couple of them. Alvin Bragg, the lead prosecutor, the Manhattan DA in this case, ran for office on the campaign pledge of going after Donald Trump.

It was an old soviet saying, you show me the man, I'll find you the crime. What does that mean? It means the law doesn't matter. You tell me who we need to go after and then I'll use the law to justify it. It was disgusting.

It was a good example in the United States of America. That's how the Soviets in communist Russia did it and the communist USSR did it. We do things differently in the United States of America. Well, no, that's exactly what Alvin Bragg did. He ran on the campaign promise of going after somebody that was politically unpopular in the jurisdiction where he was running hard blue New York.

To say that, I'm gonna go after and investigate this man. He didn't say what crime. He just, I'm gonna investigate that man. Well, he's now keeping his campaign pledge. We should not wanna live in a country where prosecutors are bringing cases that are just fulfilling campaign pledges that they've made to go after specific individuals on vague charges, on nebulous legal theories, on flawed legal theories that they wouldn't have gone after anybody else for.

I'll give credit to Fareed Zakaria for saying the hard truth that everybody recognizes this case would not have been brought if this man's name were not Donald Trump. And I think that's disgusting. It's not about Trump. It's about every American. If they can do it to Republican today, they can do it to Democrat tomorrow, every Republican, every Democrat, every black or white or man or woman, black or white person or man or woman in this country should be equally concerned.

This has nothing to do actually with partisan politics. The concern about it has nothing to do with partisan politics when you have a justice system that is obsessed with partisan politics in the process. But it's not just the prosecutor can't make this stuff up. So you got a prosecutor who's run for office on the campaign pledge of going after this man, doesn't care about what crime, doesn't say what crime, uses. This flawed legal theory that we've described to now levy that crime.

That's the prosecutor in this case. Then you take a look at the judge. This is the backstop, right? This is the backstop of a judicial system. Is the backstop of a fair and just judicial system.

The person who's providing instructions to the jury, the person who decides which objections are or are not sustained, the person that decides which evidence gets presented to the jury, the person who provides daily and final instructions to that jury to deliver a verdict, the person who can deliver a directed verdict at any time, the judge, single judge, presiding over this case. You can't make this stuff up. I had to. I had to double check this stuff to be certain. Cause I didn't believe what I saw the first time I read it.

His daughter is a leading democratic party operative who is making millions of dollars from democratic clients that include the likes of Adam Schiff, who have made it their career plank to go after Donald Trump and lead the impeachment charge of Donald Trump while he was in office. This is the opposition party to the party that Donald Trump is leading right now as the republican nominee for us president. This judge has a daughter who is making money off of doing business with the very democratic clients who have made it the hallmark of their campaigns and their fundraising ploys to point to Donald Trump's trial. It gets even worse. They have specifically, during this investigation and trial, made money off of fundraising emails and fundraising calls to action that were based on the trial itself.

Think about that. Imagine the same shoe fit the other foot. Imagine if this was a republican judge with a republican operative daughter who ran a private business that made money off of clients in the Republican Party who their core campaign was predicated on going after Joe Biden. And suppose Joe Biden was the actual defendant. There is no doubt that anybody on the other side, any person in the media, if the same shoe fit the other foot, would be crying bloody murder.

And it would be wrong then, as it is wrong now, that they're raising funds off the very existence of a trial and her firm making money off of it that her own father is presiding over. Let's get this straight. Do you think they're going to make and raise more money from their own anti Trump base? If the judge comes down with a verdict in favor of Trump or in favor of a verdict that's against Trump, think about which one is actually going to have his own family members profit from that decision? There's an easy solution to this.

The judge could have recused himself. He refused to do it. That reveals what this prosecution is about. This is an exercise in politics all the way up and all the way down. And that's what makes it so disgusting.

It's not the atmosphere of the courtroom. That's just a detail from being there in person. You get to see that in person. It's the essence of what's happening inside of it. And what's happening inside of that courtroom is a microcosm, an emblem of what's really happening in the United States of America today.

Turns out it's not just this case. I want to stay on the Trump cases for a little longer because they're a great lens, a filter, a prism to see what's happening in America. But this really has nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with America, which I'll get to in a second. But before we leave Trump, let's take a look at the other actions then brought against Trump.

Right. This is the Manhattan da Alvin Bragg case brought against Trump for allegedly falsifying business records. We've gone into that in depth. Now let's take a look at the most other recent New York action against Trump. Another person who campaigned for office on the premise of going after Donald Trump didn't say what crimes.

LeTitia James, I'm now talking about the Ag of New York, who then recently went after Trump for supposedly over inflating his property values for the purpose of securing insurance. I want to take a look at this crime. So in the same period that you have this other flawed investigation, farcical sham of a prosecution for falsifying business records, you have this separate case that's been brought to say that, hey, there's a consumer fraud statute, a statute that's designed to protect consumers, everyday Americans, from being defrauded. For people who sell them false bill of goods, who lie to them, to sell them something false, that's a crime. It's a consumer protection statute in the state of New York using that consumer protection statute to go after Donald Trump on a different axis, to say that, you know what, you slightly inflated the values of your properties to secure more favorable terms on commercial insurance.

Now, this is bizarre because they're using a consumer protection statute to supposedly protect some of the most sophisticated financial institutions on the planet. The largest banks and financial institutions and insurance companies that are to say they're big boys would be an understatement. These are some of the most sophisticated financial institutions on planet Earth that have repeatedly done their own due diligence, entered their own partnerships and client relationships with the Trump organizations, and haven't sued them, haven't had any damages, in fact, have repeatedly made money off of their business relationships with Donald Trump. But the state of New York is saying that not on behalf of those organizations which aren't suing him, which haven't sued him, which have no claim of damages, and haven't made any public claim that they were harmed or damaged, says that the people of New York were somehow damaged by the fact that Donald Trump slightly inflated his property valuation. Now, as a side note, most business people who would look at what the judge says those valuations should have been, anybody looking at real estate in south Florida, you got nine figure houses listed.

Anybody been to Mar a Lago, to say that, you know what? If that should have been valued for $19 million or whatever the prosecutor says it should have been valued at, I think it's a good deal for anybody to be able to buy that property for that value. I would do it. That would be a great business deal somebody could make to buy a real estate property of that valuation. So it's ridiculous what they ascribed as the valuation, but they said that Donald Trump valued it at more.

Well, he's probably right about that. Anybody who knows the real estate market and knows these assets may agree with me, but the irony is, this isn't for some armchair prosecutor to adjudicate. If somebody was actually harmed by it, they would have sued him for it, they would have pressed the charges. They didn't do it. These are sophisticated financial institutions who made money off of their relationship with Donald Trump over the course of years, did not lose money.

And you have a prosecutor saying that somehow the people of New York are a victim. They're not. It's a joke. It's another farce. It's another exercise in what we call lawfare, the use of the law to adjudicate politics.

It's a bastardization of our legal system. So the same time you've got Alvin Bragg, who ran for office on the pledge of going after Donald Trump, you have another state ag, Letitia James, who did the same thing. She ran for office on the pledge of going after Trump, didn't say what crime. Now, levying the statute book thrown after him, same formula. You find me the man, I'll show you the crime.

That's exactly what they've done. There is no crime, yet they allege one anyway, at that same time. Now, you see, these are just two of the prosecutions at the exact same time. And so I'm not going to go through every one of the other prosecutions, but we could just go through them one by one. Take the Jack Smith prosecution playing out at the same time.

This is one for Trump, retaining documents in Mar a Lago that he should not have retained as a former president of the United States. That's the allegation here. That's interesting. They allege this under the 1917 Espionage act. Okay, this is the same overbroad statute from over a century ago that they've used to charge people from Eugene Debs to Julian Assange, people who've been politically unpopular at the time, a vague, broadly written statute.

And I've written about this extensively in the Wall Street Journal op ed pages about why I think the statute is garbage. It's anti american at its core, but part of the reason it's anti american at its core is it allows prosecutors with a political motivation to go after their opponents for vaguely defined crimes that weren't actually crimes when committed. Because that entire indictment of Jack Smith, now moving to that topic of the so called documents case, leaves out any mention. What is it, a 40, 60 page indictment? Whatever it is, that leaves out any mention of the much more recent act that governs how a president of the United States is supposed to deal with confidential records that he kept while us president.

Confidential records of the United States while he was us president. And afterwards, it's called. You might be surprised to know, in 1978, the Presidential Records act. And the jurisprudence on this, the case law on this is clear, that the person who decides what does or does not qualify as a classified document and does or does not qualify as what the US president then can keep with him after he leaves office is none other than the US president. Now, you might debate that as a policy matter.

You might say that we as a people should not want to trust the US president with whether or not he gets to keep documents after he leaves office. And that's a fair debate to have. Keep in mind, this is the same US president that we entrust with the nuclear codes. This is the same us president that we entrust as the commander in chief of deciding whether to send our sons and daughters to go die in foreign wars or to defend our own soil. That us president, I think it actually is pretty reasonable to say we also trust with deciding which documents should or should not remain under classified status in the White House versus ones that could be exposed to at least public, the general public, or even kept by yourself after you leave office.

I think it's a reasonable policy judgment. You could debate the policy, but that's what the law says. The courts have already upheld that interpretation of the law. You have a judge in the Clinton sock drawer case of 2012 that said the exact same thing. That in that case, President Bill Clinton, a Democrat in this case, it doesn't matter what party, it shouldn't really.

But a Democrat in that case, democratic president, recorded conversations that he had with foreign leaders. He had all kinds of discussions, sensitive discussions with Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, about real matters of foreign importance to the United States that he took with him. And he kept them in his sock drawer, presumably as personal memorabilia. No one's alleging that Bill Clinton was trying to sell that to our enemies, just as nobody's alleged or offered to shred a fact that Donald Trump is doing the same thing with documents that he kept. And yet, in that case, the judge, federal judge, held that the person with the sole authority, the sole discretion to determine what was or wasn't covered by what needed to be kept in the government versus what the president could declassify or take with him was none other than the US president himself, the same person we entrust with the nuclear codes and protecting this country as commander in chief.

Yet in the Trump documents case, what they're alleging is they did not make any mention of the Presidential Records act, but are invoking some vague statute from 1917 called the Espionage act, passed during World War one to go after anti war dissenters during World War one, to now charge Donald Trump with preserving documents in a way that Bill Clinton did. But somehow, when Donald Trump does it, it's a crime. And the irony is he's running against Joe Biden, who wasn't protected by the presidential Records act when he was a us senator. That actually took a bunch of documents, including classified documents that he held in an unsecured location in his own home. And the only reason they even went after him at all was because they went after Donald Trump.

This is otherwise a dated allegation that otherwise never would have been brought but for air cover. So that's the documents case. Then you go to the Georgia case, that's a state case being brought by Fonny Willis against Donald Trump, where you see all kinds of procedural missteps. And by the way, in the documents case, you see them with procedural missteps, too. Jack Smith, in that particular case, has now been found alleged to have tampered with that evidence after collecting it.

So you have an entire case against a defendant brought on the premise of mishandling documents. And then the prosecutor who brings that case does what? Nothing other than mishandle those documents, which will likely toss this case out of court. At the same time you see that happening, you have a different case being brought in the state of Georgia, where the prosecutor who's going after Donald Trump, Fonnie Willis over there, has now a personal conflict of interest, apparently a, now we know for sure, based on testimony, a deeply personal conflict with the very attorney who she otherwise put in charge of prosecuting and bringing that case against Donald Trump, which has completely compromised the integrity of that case. And I'm not going to go into those merits here because our time is limited.

But my point is to ask this question. I went into depth in the New York case. Number one, you got the Alvin Bragg case. Then you got the Letitia James politicized crusade. Then you have what's going on with Jack Smith, his own mishandling of the documents in the mishandled documents case, ignoring the Clinton sock door case, judicial precedent, and the Presidential Records act.

What's the disaster that's unfolding in Fulton County, Georgia, with Fonny Willis and her personal relationship and her affair and financial relationship with the prosecutor who she's put in charge? Is that a coincidence? It's not. The reason why is if the whole premise of these prosecutions was political in the first place, then the politics is going to guide the mistakes that those prosecutions make. This is not complicated.

This is exactly what you could have predicted if these cases had nothing to do with the law. It's no surprise that those prosecutors are behaving in a manner that has nothing to do with the law. When you have prosecutors that have made campaign pledges to go after one man and keep that, that's not justice. When you have a judge whose family member is making money off of the existence of that case while presiding over that case, that is not justice. When you have century old laws being used in tortured and overexpanded ways, while ignoring more recent laws that govern that us president charged in a criminal prosecution, that is not justice.

And when you have a prosecutorial system in the United States of America, that goes after you now because of your political beliefs, that is not justice. That is a bastardization of justice. This is a third world nation. It's a stuff of third world nations. It's a banana republic behavior now here in the United States of America.

And that has nothing to do with Donald Trump. That has to do with every american in this country. And now I want to talk about what's really at stake in these prosecutions. It's not about the details or legal minutiae of these cases. It has to do with the heart of why we fought a revolution in 1776.

And that's what's really at stake, is a skepticism of democracy itself. These cases would not be brought unless Donald Trump were running for president. And furthermore, unless they feared there was a possibility that Donald Trump could be elected president again. That's what this is about. And I say this as somebody who ran against Donald Trump in the primary.

Right? I say this as somebody who for a year, was running to be US president in the same election where he was running. This has nothing to do with politics. I said this in the primary, and I think Joe Biden should say the same thing. We should not want to win elections by seeing opponents eliminated in the middle of a prosecution, in the middle of an election.

We should not want to be a country where prosecutors decide the outcome of an election rather than the voters. You look at one of the recent headlines from mainstream press in recent months. It says the problem with democracy is actually the voters not making this up. You can look this up yourself. There's countless other pieces that have been written like it.

It's not a joke. It actually reflects an honest intention. It's not an odd view. It's actually the view that's existed for most of human history. You see, the thing about the United States of America is we are the exception in human history.

For most of human history. In old world Europe and dating back to most civilizations, people were skeptical of the idea that citizens could self govern. The idea that you get to speak your own mind freely, as long as I get to in return, that's a crazy idea. For most of human history. For most of human history, it's the idea that people are able to express any opinion in public.

That's ridiculous. The idea that you get to decide who your leaders are, that you get to hold them accountable at the ballot box in a process where every citizen's voice and vote counts equally. That's the stuff of crazy futuristic talk of a society that isn't supposed to last. That's what old world Europe thought. That's what King George thought.

But that's what makes America great. That's what made America great the first time around, is that for better or worse, and that's a crucial part of the bargain. For better or worse, we the people create a government that is accountable to us. We the people decide who actually wins our elections and who governs, not bureaucrats sitting in the back of three letter government agencies, or prosecutors in a prosecutorial system, or judges who are conflicted. No, we the people settle that every November.

That's what makes America itself, and that's what's at stake here. They're afraid that it is possible, increasingly, if you look at the polling numbers now, likely, that the one man who this system has an anaphylactic response to might actually just get elected as the next president of the United States. And they are going to stop at nothing. And they've made clear they will stop at nothing to keep this man away from office. There are the cases we've talked about today.

There are the attempts to remove him from the ballot extrajudicially. Just a secretary of state saying that, you know what? I'm going to make a judgment saying that he should not be on the ballot because he did something that I disagree with, to the civil cases, to God knows what's coming in the next six months. That is not America. That is a bastardization of what this country was founded on.

And I don't care whether you're on the left or the right, we got to agree that the people who we elect to run the government should be the ones who actually run the government. Maybe those people disagree with my views. I have strong views on questions relating from climate policy to the politicization of justice, to, you think about issues related to the second amendment, to issues relating to healthcare. I got strong views on a lot of different things. You may disagree with me on those views, but we agree.

And part of our bargain is to live in a country where if our democratic process actually settles that at the ballot box, then it's up to us to hold our leaders accountable. And we live by those results. We don't use the courtroom in the prosecutorial system to settle it through the back door. And what we see right now is the old world monster rearing its ugly head again. King George's vision, as opposed to George Washington's vision for this country, a vision that was skeptical of citizens, skeptical that your voice could actually be trusted to determine who leads your country.

That's what's at stake right now. That's why we fought the American Revolution. That's why I say we live in a 1776 moment right now. This isn't some tax rate election. 1% higher or lower tax rate.

Now, this isn't one of those elections. This is an election about the basic rules of the road. Do we believe in the year 2024 in the ideals of 1776? Do we believe that you're free to express your opinion regardless of what that opinion is? Do we actually believe that your voice counts equally at the ballot box.

And it shouldn't be some government bureaucrat determining who can and cannot be the next president. Do we actually believe that the people who we elect to run the government should be the ones who actually run the government? Not three letter agency bureaucrats who were never elected to their positions, festering in that ever growing swamp in Washington, DC. The 4 million federal bureaucrats that are actually making policies rather than the congressmen who you elect, that's what's at stake in this election. It's the american revolution.

The same question, except this time, the way we're going to settle this, I hope, is through open debate, through an actual revival of those ideals that we long for. Americans across this country, especially young people, I see it, are lost or hungry in a nation. Why wouldn't they be lost? A nation that preaches one set of ideals enshrined in the Declaration of independence and the Constitution, yet today, living a very different set of ideals. It's no surprise to me that many people, young people, independents, people of every age across this country, are lost, have been unmoored from understanding who we are, are lost at a moment where faith has disappeared, family has disintegrated.

Now our national identity is gone, too. We're told we have a declaration of independence and a constitution. Yet now bureaucrats are telling me who I can and cannot elect, what I can and cannot say, what opinions I can and cannot express. That's not America. We've lost our sense of identity.

We've become unmoored. That's what's going on in this country. I don't think it's a stretch to say that's part of what's fueling this mental health epidemic across our country. People that have lost their sense of grounding, people have lost their sense of commitment, people have lost their sense of citizenship and identity. And so what we talked about today, these trials against Trump, it gets a little bit technical at times, talking about the specifics of, well, why is this legal case, actually an unlawful case that's being brought against him?

It can be technocratic at times, but part of the advice I'd give you is the more boring it sounds, the more you need to pay attention. Part of what they're trying to do is to pack in a political agenda, wrap it in the veneer of technocracy, and sell it to you as a legal or technical judgment. No, you got to see through the details. Arm yourself with knowledge. That's how we're going to win the revolution of 2024.

Our founding fathers had to do a different way against the british empire in 1776. But this time, the way we do it is not through physical action, not through violence, but through knowledge. Equip yourself and understand what's actually going on. Know the things that you're sure they don't want you to know. And that's how we're going to get this country back.

That's how we're going to restore a justice system that's no longer politicized. That's how we're going to restore free speech in this country. And that's how we're going to save this republic. And if we don't get this right before, say, my kids are in high school, I'm going to see them later today. The older one's four years old.

If he's in high school before we get this right, I don't think we have a country left. That's the window we're working within. In 1776, the American Revolution that our founding fathers started, it lasted for seven years. Seven years, and then some, maybe eight years. If we don't get this right in that same period, we don't have a country left.

That's what's at stake. But I don't think it has to stay this way. I'm not some fake optimist, but I'm not just going to be a pessimist for the sake of being a pessimist either. You got to see the problem with clear eyes if you're to fix it. The best step to solving a problem is to name it first.

That's what we're doing here. But the next step is for every one of us to step up and speak our mind and to take the time to actually educate ourselves. Not just read the front page of the New York Times and accept that as gospel, but to do your own homework and understand, that's what I'm telling you. Get it from everywhere else, too, to get to the truth of what's really happening in this country. And now, as ever, the truth will be what sets us free.

That's what this is all about. Thank you for joining this episode of the Truth. It's why we brought this back and we are not going to stop. I don't want standard conservative talking points. If you want that, you can get that elsewhere.

But if you want the actual hard truths and to be challenged by it, this is the place for you. Subscribe to the podcast. We're going to be out with one of these per week, and I'm looking forward to it. We're just getting warmed up.