UNCONSTITUTIONAL WITCH HUNT—ELECTION INTERFERENCE! MAGA!!!
Video transcript
and join us from our on all of this as former federal prosecutor, Andrew Derkaski. So good to have you. What about that point? He says this case never should have been brought. We have looked to see if anybody else has ever been indicted or prosecuted for this. It's hard to find anything on it. Should it have never happened? Well, I think Donald Trump has two fights that he's fighting right now. One is the fight that this should have never happened. And there aren't comparable cases. And it seems like even if you had some degree of comparable cases, the amount of punitive damages that Letitia James is going for is just astronomical. And that kind of brings the second point because there is a case to make in mitigation here. Going in today to say to the judge, there is no damage. There are no complainants. Nobody lost anything here. So whatever the punishment should be, should be extremely limited. Andrew, in the state of New York, what is the appeals process like? How would that unfold in a civil trial like this? Well, after a verdict, then you have a time window open in order to file your appeals. That goes on usually for months, could last into years. Obviously, an appellate court is going to have a lot of interest in this case, and they're going to move things more quickly. We see that happen all the time with Donald Trump. But appeals can take an exceptional amount of time. The point that Dana just made is that there's no precedent that we have found for the state of New York to put somebody on trial and convict them for misstating the value of the piece of property, okay? This is the first time. If it were to reach the New York State Supreme Court level, is that Republican? Is that Democrat in a blue state like New York? What is the breakdown? Well, you're largely looking at Democrat judges in the state of New York. At the end, what they're going to be looking at are two separate things, abusive discretion or plain error. Those are the standards that you're talking about in appeals courts. And so the different legal issues and factual issues at play, at each stage of appeals, the Trump team will bring those up and seek their relief. They haven't found much favor from the appellate courts yet. I want to play this for you. So we were watching the courtroom, so the president has spoken, so I don't think you're going to see him again. We'll keep an eye on that. The Tisha James is an interesting person, right? So she campaigned initially on this. She's been pushing forward. She's in the courtroom every day. She's making sure she's in that camera shot. And she had planned this for a while. Let's watch here. Call for number one. The president of the United States has complained that I'm engaging in some sort of political witch hunt, that I've got some personal vendetta against him, that I campaigned against him. That is not true. I look forward to going into the office of attorney general every day, suing him, defending your rights, and then going home. We will rise up together, and we will resist this president, and ultimately we'll bring him down. What do you make of that? She's a politician, and she's running a campaign, and she's continuing to deliver on the campaign that she ran. So what we see when we see Donald Trump in court now is her looking for astronomical damages for something that banks had an opportunity to investigate. If a real estate agent tells you your house is worth a million, you list it for 1.5, and it sells for two. What was the house worth? I mean, that's the sort of thing that Trump is looking at at the end of the day, trying to make a case that he was just doing business. He was being a businessman. And they made the case that nobody suffered damages here. The banks were fulfilled. They were happy with the loans they made, et cetera. Apparently there was an email exchange yesterday. They were trying to postpone today's hearing, in part because Melania Trump just lost her mother and the former president wouldn't go back to Florida to be with his family. I just want to put it on screen here. I don't have it on paper. And this is what lawyers said with the judge, "I won't debate this yet again. Take it or leave it. Now or never. You have until noon. Seven minutes from now, I will not grant any further extension." So that's from yesterday. It didn't happen. Is that par for the course or not? Well, it's been par for the course throughout this entire trial. I think one of the things that's most important in any trial is that a judge appears to be fair and unbiased in what they're doing. And there are serious questions about that in this case where the judge effectively ruled on a matter of fact before the trial ever took place. There's been hostility throughout. Certainly Donald Trump has had hostility towards the judge and towards the court throughout the case as well. So when the judge in the last minute continues to just all caps and that sort of message, it doesn't feel fair, I'm sure, to Donald Trump or to his supporters. Are other real estate tycoons or even investors in New York worried about the outcome of this case? I think every business person in New York should be worried about this. The idea that you are negotiating with other companies, with banks, with lending institutions, the way that that comes out and how you trust certain people in your team and what they say the value is. For example, my example about the real estate agent, it's a very difficult thing to dance through and then all of a sudden political opponents attack you. I would say just a couple more things here. Put number two up, guys. These are the properties we're talking about, primarily New York City, but also New York State. We live here. These are substantial properties. We can say that and agree on that. Absolutely. And they want to find him $370 million. What they want to do is take him and his kids out of New York State entirely and forbid them from doing business here. Yeah. Can you do that? You know, constitutionally, we talk about life and liberty. Liberty is typically this idea that you have the right to work, that you have the right to create your fortune. Donald Trump being stripped of his right to do business in the state of New York, to be stripped of these properties, that is a tremendous consequence. It is something that is just shy of going to jail. It is something that I think we should be looking at with a great degree of skepticism where he doesn't have a jury, where the judge is reaching decisions pre-trial. These are concerns for the state of New York and the people who do business here.
Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.
AI Day Analysis
Machine-generated analysis of the 2024-01-11 posts below. Not written by their author.
Courtroom Humiliation Triggers Daylong Persecution Barrage With Named Prosecutor Targeting
Trump spent the day consumed by the closing arguments in his New York civil fraud trial. The night before was dominated by upbeat campaign messaging aimed at Iowa voters, but the mood darkened sharply once he arrived at the courthouse. He posted a barrage of grievances accusing the judge, the attorney general, and the Biden White House of conspiring against him, repeatedly naming specific prosecutors and accusing them of criminal conduct. He also seized on the emerging Fani Willis relationship scandal as further proof of a coordinated persecution campaign. The day ended with the same compressed fury it carried through the afternoon — no resolution, just angry repetition.