The News Agents: The People v Donald Trump - Part 2: Trump in the Dock

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Thank you very much everybody and we have to save our country.

God bless you all, God bless you all.

And I never thought anything like this could happen in America, never thought it could happen.

The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.

It is a quarter to two in the morning here in London, a quarter to nine in the evening in Florida,

where Donald Trump has been addressing the people who adore him most at his private members club at Mar-a-Lago

at the end of what has been the most remarkable, eye-popping, jaw-dropping, hair-raising day where you couldn't quite believe what you were witnessing.

But at the end of it, Donald Trump is seeming to rehash every conspiracy theory, every plot that is against him.

Donald Trump loves titles. He has his name stamped onto every hotel he owns.

And just think back, when we first got to know him, 2015, he was candidate Trump.

2016, he was President-elect Trump. 2017, he was President-Trump.

2021, he was former President-Trump. He had lost. Today, 2023, he became Defendant Trump. He was under arrest in a Manhattan courtroom, and it was painful to watch.

And later in the podcast, we're going to be talking to one of Donald Trump's right-hand people who spoke to Donald Trump just seconds before he went on stage tonight at Mar-a-Lago.

That's still to come. Welcome to the News Agents.

It is John.

It's Emily.

And we are pulling an all-nighter at News Agents HQ because we have been just wrapped by the events that have unfolded during the course of a day.

We're going to take you back to Mar-a-Lago in a bit, but it's just...

Yeah, people talk about the arc of history. We're going to talk very briefly about the arc of a day because it started with Donald Trump emerging from Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, his fist clench, red tie-on, blue suit, looking defiant.

All right. And now we do have Donald Trump there on the move.

You just want to bring this to our viewers right here. SkyFox showing now the four-mile journey from Trump Tower to the courthouse there. And you can see the people there on the sidewalk.

And the weird thing is that in my mind, when I start thinking about a criminal court, I think the old Bailey. I think wood engravings. I think mahogany and wigs.

And this court, well, for a start, it was way up in the air. It was 15 floors up. And secondly, it was clinical and cold and quite shabby.

It looked like the inside of a hospital, to be frank. And we were all poised looking at this shot of the corridor, the hall, waiting for the double doors to open.

And for that former president, defendant Trump to come through.

And the doors had blackened windows. And as you said, Emily, in the introduction that Donald Trump loves titles, he loves pomp. He loves ceremony.

And although he has never been a great respecter of the office of president, he always wanted to be treated as the president.

And the door opens and a few marshals of the court emerge and they let the door start to close as Donald Trump is walking out.

And Donald Trump has to push the door open. We were talking about this in the office. I said, I suspect that's the first time in 15 years that Donald Trump has had to open a door by himself.

And you corrected me and said, that's probably the first time in 50 years that he's had to open a door himself.

It's a four second clip. It captivates so much. It captures so much.

It was subtle but excruciating to watch because the door is almost going to hit this former president in the face and he catches it and he pushes it.

And he stares down the barrel of whatever camera he can find there.

You can decide whether you think that's defiance or annoyance or whether he thinks he's just being well behaved.

But it took me right back to the Republican Convention of 2016 and Rudy Giuliani who had got the crowds going, chanting, chanting, chanting.

It was visceral and it was loud and it was like a circus and they were talking about Hillary Clinton.

They were shouting, lock her up, lock her up, lock her up. That was the shout. That was the MAGA shout at the time.

And we didn't really know what to make of it except it seemed a weird thing to shout about your political opponent.

Fast forward seven years and he is in custody. He's under arrest.

We're going to debate the wherewithal of that in a second.

But just for that one moment, that one image, you'd kind of come a weird full circle.

And there were a number of still photos that emerged of Donald Trump, defendant Trump, when he is sitting in the courtroom as the charges are being read out.

And the defiance, the clenched fist has gone.

He looks slightly deflated. He looks like a man where suddenly the weight of what is happening has caught up with him.

And some of the bravado would no longer be appropriate for him.

And I thought he seemed slightly chastened and maybe that's reading too much into body language.

But there was none of that kind of alpha male.

It looked like someone who thought, oh my God, what is happening and what might still happen.

And I think the interesting thing about the way that Trump has tried to position this and this is quite a Trump thing to do.

Is he comes at it as if to say, this isn't about me. This is about you, America.

And I'm the only thing between these terrible radical lefties and this terrible upended rule of law and them coming for you.

Which is weird when you think that it's not a particularly relatable crime.

Most people probably haven't paid hush money to an adult actress or confuse their campaign finances in so doing.

And yet he sets himself as being, if you like, the human shield between whatever enemy is coming for him and America.

Well, let's hear what it was like in that courtroom because apparently when he walked in, you could hear a pin drop.

There was absolute silence. Just the scale of this moment in the kind of 250 years history of the American Republic

had never seen a moment like this. We spoke to Adam Klassfeld, who is the court reporter and the managing editor of law and crime.

And he was in the courtroom when Donald Trump walked in.

From the beginning and through the length of the hearing, he was very stolid.

Even the way he walked, the courtroom was very still. I think the best word to describe it is plotted.

Just small steps to his seat. And he didn't say much, but I think even more interesting than his responses to those questions

was immediately after the hearing, he goes back to making those statements again.

And we will see. It's kind of planting the seeds for future hearings. Already this kind of tension is building up

where you have the judge warning him, directly warning him to stop making statements that could incite violence

or speak to the integrity of the proceedings against him.

Adam Klassfeld, one of literally around 10 people in the world inside that courtroom today.

And whilst all this is going on, we're waiting for the big moment, which is the unsealing of the indictment itself.

We have been waiting since Friday to see what those charges are.

We know that Donald Trump and his team have now had wind of what it actually says.

And finally, about half an hour after this appearance, it starts to filter out.

34 charges, some 32 pages, and everyone is waiting for the bombshell.

They're waiting for the surprise. They're waiting for the thing, the smoking gun that leads you right into understanding

how the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, was able to make that leap to the indictment.

And can they find it? Not really.

Yeah. So we've talked about this before on the podcast.

There is a difference between a misdemeanor, a relatively minor offence, and a felony.

A felony is one that will require a prison sentence.

Donald Trump has been charged with a felony.

Now, I'm going to try and explain it with the most stupid metaphor in the world,

but this is what the burden of proof is that turns a misdemeanor like this into a felony.

And remember, it's about the reporting of your finances.

So Donald Trump has reported his finances inaccurately about the payments towards Stormy Daniels.

That's the charge.

A misdemeanor is if I climb over into Emily Mateless' garden as a trespasser.

But if the court can prove that my intention was to break into her house and steal all her jewellery,

then I've committed the misdemeanor with a view to committing another crime.

That makes it a felony in US law.

And so what they're saying is that the kind of smoke screen that was thrown up around the payment to Stormy Daniels

was part of an effort to commit another crime.

But, and this is where I think the prosecution is on weak ground.

It doesn't spell out clearly what that offence is that Donald Trump was trying to create.

And I think that gives room for Trump's lawyers to say foul.

I think part of the problem is on the page versus in the telling.

When you saw it on the page, it was just very, very blunt and stark.

Fact, fact, fact, fact, charge, charge, charge, charge.

In a moment, we'll hear from Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of New York, who brought this case.

And he makes, if you like, the narrative case for why these all add up to something much bigger than a misdemeanor,

why it is a pattern of behaviour, of fraud, that actually makes it into a felony.

But before we hear from him, he's the one that brought the indictment, don't forget,

we're going to hear the response of Trump's own lawyers.

And guess what? They were kind of unimpressed.

Here's what we're going to talk about today. Here's what we're going to talk about today.

We're going to talk about the insufficiency of this case.

And I will say this to you, today's unsealing of this indictment shows that the rule of law died in this country.

Because while everyone is not above the law, no one's below it either.

And if this man's name was not Donald J. Trump, there is no scenario we'd all be here today.

Please understand that based on these charges.

So that's Joe Takapina, Trump's attorney.

There was also a huge amount of time spent when they were talking to reporters trying to defend Donald Trump's language about the judge,

about the district attorney.

About his social media posts.

About his social media posts, which we were hearing a moment ago from Adam Klarsfeld, who was in court,

saying that the judge warned Donald Trump about those posts.

And that is going to be an ongoing difficulty and a source of legal jeopardy for Donald Trump.

Because if he continues to slag off the judge, to slag off the district attorney, to slag off the court system,

then there's a possibility that Donald Trump opens himself up to conspiracy charges.

On part one, yesterday's podcast, you and I talked about the dangers and the need for his lawyers to rein him in.

And that is going to be a challenge on the form that we have seen in the past 12 hours,

on his social media posts that have continued and the things he was saying at Mar-a-Lago.

So back to the charges.

Trump's lawyers don't really think that there's a strong case at this point.

Alvin Bragg, who is, don't forget, the New York district attorney who has brought this case,

then comes out publicly and tries to explain what those charges say.

And this is the case he makes.

Under New York state law, it is a felony to falsify business records with intent to defraud and intent to conceal another crime.

That is exactly what this case is about.

34 false statements made to cover up other crimes.

These are felony crimes in New York state, no matter who you are.

We cannot and will not normalise serious criminal conducts.

So his point is that he was making false statement month after month in 2017.

It was this pattern of behaviour.

And the irony is that he was trying to pay Stormy Daniels hush money

because he thought it would hurt his election chances.

That's the charge.

Think back to that time and the Access Hollywood tape, when he said horrendous things about women,

quite openly on that tape that was discussed, and it didn't hurt his chances.

The irony in all this is he might have won the presidency anyway.

But this is the case that Alvin Bragg is making.

He sat down with Adam Kaufman, who was a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan.

He knows Alvin Bragg well.

And we asked him whether, well, does he think that the case actually holds water?

No indictment is absolutely watertight.

No, there's room here on a number of grounds.

And they will of course move to dismiss.

I don't think that the case will be thrown out.

I think this case is going to trial.

I think it's reasonably clear to me that the indictment is legally, technically solid.

You know, of course, the judge will review the testimony and evidence from the grand jury.

But what it spells out, and if you look at the statement of fact that the DA filed,

it spells out a fairly compelling narrative of Mr. Trump intentionally and knowingly falsifying records

to cover up payments to Stormy Daniels and make it look like legal fees.

So as a technical matter, I think the case stands.

So my question to you would be this, if you had been in that position in the DA's office advising,

would you have made this piece of history and brought the case against Donald Trump on what you had?

Having had a previous DA look at it, ignore it, federal looking at it, ignored it,

and yet Alvin Bragg has decided to pull the trigger.

You know, if you have this evidence locked down, how do you not bring the case?

And does this indictment have any bearing on other investigations?

Do you think it's more likely that the special counsel will move a little bit faster now?

Do you think it's more likely we'll see something coming out of Georgia,

or are they completely separate and isolated from each other?

The legal answer is that they're completely separate.

There's no control of one or the other, and each of those offices and individuals

is conducting their own investigation and finding their own facts.

So from a legal and formalistic perspective, I would say that it has no impact

and they're all totally separate.

Well, that is obviously what you need to watch.

That was Adam Kaufman there, the former assistant district attorney for Manhattan.

There is a defense that Donald Trump has got about the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels,

which could show that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the election campaign.

But it is a defense, I suspect.

His lawyers will not make in court because the defense is this,

that Donald Trump paid that hush money so that Melania never found out,

because if she had, that would ruin the marriage and that would be potentially ruinous for him

and very expensive indeed.

And that is why he paid the hush money.

It wasn't to do with saving his election campaign, it was to do with saving his marriage.

It's been telling, and you noted it the other day,

that you'd have thought when Donald Trump came down the steps of Trump Force One,

he was alone. Melania has stayed out of New York throughout all of this.

And stayed out of Moralago this evening.

She was not at his side for that speech because quite frankly,

what can she say as the wife to a man whose mistress,

one-time mistress, is now dominating every court proceeding that is on our lips?

And Melania Trump is very judicious about when she is there by his side and when she isn't.

We're going to be back after the break to talk about some of those other cases

and also going back to Moralago and Donald Trump's performance this evening.

This is The News Agents.

Welcome back. We have left New York behind and as Trump's Hair Force One was landing in Florida,

we were landing in Leicester Square.

And we're now going to take you right in to Moralago and that is his country club.

It's sort of impossible to put into words unless you've sort of seen the shots,

but you can imagine it is gold, it is brassy, it is big, it is rich.

It's the place where people who love Donald Trump dream of getting married

or dream of having their birthday parties or dream of just wandering through the lunch buffet

and bumping into the former president.

And what happens is that he has a table ringed off on the terrace at Moralago

and a friend of mine, her ex-husband, was a member there and she used to go regularly

and when Donald Trump walks out the doors open, opened for him

and everyone stands at their table and round of applause

and Donald Trump waves benignly to adoring fans and he takes his seat at his table

and this is where Donald Trump gets peak adoration every night and he feeds off that.

So think of that as your set. This is high end rallying.

This is high end fundraising right now.

It's hundreds of thousands.

And interestingly enough, the sign that had the Trump sign that was in the hall

had a little text 88022 number for anyone to fundraise as they went.

So you've got people there very well healed waiting for Trump to do his stuff.

They've waited all evening for him to get back and give him his first thoughts

of what he's been through today.

And here's a snippet.

And this is where we are right now.

I have a Trump hating judge with a Trump hating wife and family

whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris

and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign and a lot of it.

And then it all came out. Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, FBI, DOJ,

millions of votes stuffed into ballot boxes, collusion, Hunter Biden's laptop.

And I'm going to be honest here and I hope it won't kill it for you

but it actually got quite boring.

And it got boring because I suddenly felt

and we've both been listening to Trump and Trump's speeches and Trump's rallies

for a far too long time now.

Far too much of our lives have been dedicated to Trump's speeches and Trump rallies.

There was nothing new. There was no energy.

There weren't even any kind of new buzzwords.

It was stuff that had gone back four, five, six, seven years.

The greatest hits, the playbook.

And it actually felt really low energy.

Well, I was going to use the word it was low energy victimhood.

You can do speeches which are low energy where you're talking about environmental protection

and it's kind of you've got to get through all these facts and it's quite dull.

He was talking about how the whole system conspires against him

and him in particular and nobody else.

And it's just Donald Trump that everybody seems to hate.

And that even that just had this kind of, oh, come on.

You know, if you're going to do this, give it some oomph and give it some pizzazz

and there was very little of that from him.

It was a kind of really flat performance.

Now look, let's face it, the guy is 75 years old

and he's probably absolutely knackered and drained at the end of it.

But if you're so drained, then maybe not the best time to be giving a speech.

Make it shorter.

You can get a lot into a few words or a little sentence.

But everything we talked about, about how his legal team want him to row back

on all the attacks on the judges where we saw that those warnings have fallen on very deaf ears.

I mean, what I would say is that he really left the court behind.

He left New York behind quite quickly and he turned it into just a standard, a bog standard campaign speech.

The areas he touched, which I think will hurt, was talking about the Afghanistan withdrawal.

He called it a low moment in American history and embarrassing time.

That I think will hurt, Biden.

He talked about raging crime statistics, you know, he can do what he wants with that.

He talked about his own defeat of ISIS.

This is the kind of Trump's greatest hits.

But I think where it stopped being meaningful was when he said we're two minutes away from a nuclear war under Biden

and they've got a local racist district attorney in Georgia after we'd had a perfect phone call.

That was the phone call where he was trying to find the votes.

And he talks about George Soros, hello, anti-Semitism and he has to name check Kamala Harris,

which I think is another dog whistle there.

And so you end up thinking, I just kind of mean they're done it, got the mugshot t-shirt.

Look, he's running for the presidency in 2024.

He's probably got 30% of support among the Republican population.

But 30% does not win you a presidential election.

You've got to be reaching out to new people.

And I feel he's constantly retrenching with a smaller core who are ever more fanatic.

But are you going to reach out to all those people who didn't vote for you in 2020?

And it's not just the fence at us.

He's got 25% core Republicans who call themselves never Trumpers.

That's a lot of people who will virtually vote for anyone else.

It's not just they haven't decided, they're undecided or they might not.

They definitely won't.

And if what you want is in 2024 someone who has a vision of what America going forward looks like,

who has organizational capability to marshal the forces of the federal government

to deliver on some projects that will show some ambition,

that will deliver economic growth and all the rest of it.

And you have somebody who is just going on and on about the Russia hoax,

about the Ukraine hoax, about my first impeachment, about my second impeachment.

He is still living between 2016 and 2020 and all the injustices that have happened to him in that period.

And this is on a day when actually there has been really important news around America.

In Nashville, in Tennessee, there was a march by young students against gun crime.

There were people who wanted to hear there would be a change in the gun laws.

In Wisconsin, there is one of the most important elections going on today in the Supreme Court,

which is all about women's birth rights and abortion rights.

Now just imagine, that's what Obama, now just imagine for a second,

that's what Barack Obama has been tweeting and writing about today,

is the election in Wisconsin, get out the vote.

Nashville, that's what Democrats want to be talking about,

changing gun laws, stopping young people, school kids, dying in their droves in school.

So actually, you've got this very stark contrast right now,

with the old man who is replaying his greatest hits, having just emerged from custody.

And I don't know, kind of the forward-thinking ones who are really trying to push on

with what America needs to do next.

I was thinking, if you're Ron DeSantis and you've had a torrid few weeks

because Donald Trump has been the center of attention

and Donald Trump is using victimhood rather effectively at the moment in Republican circles

to advance his ambitions for 2024.

But I was thinking, if you were listening to that speech and you're Ron DeSantis,

you'd still think my message about, yes, have MAGA policies,

but have someone who is organized and intellectually disciplined to deliver it,

I still think will resonate.

But let's speak now to somebody who is at the heart of the Trump operation.

Hogan Gidley, I first knew when he was deputy press secretary at the White House during the Trump years.

He then became national spokesman for the Trump campaign in 2020,

and he's at Mar-a-Lago and has been speaking to Donald Trump this evening.

Hogan, good to have you with us.

Hey, how's everybody doing?

I thought it was a rather low-key event from Donald Trump this evening.

Maybe it had been an exhausting day. What was your take?

In some ways, I think the room was more excited tonight than it was even for the announcement

that he was going to run again for president.

And please forgive, I'm literally at Mar-a-Lago,

and if anyone knows, the planes taking off from West Palm Beach International

go right over to Mar-a-Lago.

So periodically, you're going to hear these planes.

But nonetheless, look, it's so funny because when Donald Trump gives a real big fiery speech,

everyone says, wow, he's just too fiery. We need to be more presidential.

Then he comes out and gives like a standard speech with some good information, some good data,

rallying the people around the concept of making America great again.

Everyone goes, wow, it's kind of flat.

I think the fact of the matter is Donald Trump understands the gravity of the moment,

and he wanted to come out here and tell his supporters in America that he was in the trenches fighting for them.

And despite the fact that he was the one indicted today,

he also understands and made mention of this, that this was our fight.

Because the government of this country is doing this to all of our citizens in various ways,

and he's the one standing in the gap. He's the one fighting for them.

Because quite frankly, you know, America has a difficult time now pointing to countries like, you know, Russia,

who would potentially jail the leader of the opposition party,

when this country seems to be doing it itself with the weaponization of the government

and with the politicization of the justice system.

Hey, come on. I mean, if there's one person who sucked up to Putin throughout his entire time in office,

it was Donald Trump. You can't turn around now and say it wasn't Russia looking dangerous.

No, no, I said two things. First of all,

you mean Vladimir Putin, the same one that wouldn't dare invade Ukraine,

like he did under the previous administration and the current administration?

You mean that Vladimir Putin? I'm confused.

But then also, that's not what I was talking about.

What I was pointing out was the fact that America has lost the moral high ground here,

pointing to other nations jailing their dissidents and jailing people that stand up against their governments

when we're doing the same thing here in this country, and by the way, not just with Donald Trump.

If you stand up and say you don't like the curriculum in schools, you're a parent, you're going to jail.

I mean, if you stand outside of an abortion clinic and say, I oppose that, you go to jail.

That's what's going on in this country. It's dangerous right now and very unamerican.

Let's stick to the indictment, shall we, because I guess that's the subject of the day.

And you know that the grand jury, the grand jury, found it possible to bring those charges, 34 charges.

And in the words of Alvin Bragg, he said it was a pattern of ongoing behavior which you could not ignore

by ignoring that you were normalizing crime. Why would we do that?

Well, first of all, Donald Trump hasn't committed a crime and also in this country, I know it's a little backwards over there,

but in this country, you're innocent until proven guilty. So that's one thing.

Second of all, even Democrats like Alan Dershowitz, who I worked with on the impeachment case, by the way,

made the point a first year law student could get this thrown out of a court.

If the court, if the judge, wasn't facing peer pressure from his liberal friends,

this was Alan Dershowitz where it's not mine. Someone like Jonathan Turley pointed out this case was legally pathetic.

No one in their right mind thinks this is going anywhere.

And in fact, if it is a state charge, it's way past the statute of limitations.

If you try to make it a federal crime, it doesn't even come close to passing the test of what a federal crime is.

And I might remind you, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush all got popped with campaign finance violations

and all they did was pay a fine. They didn't haul them off to jail for a mug shot.

Well, I don't think you had a mug shot. It sounds like you're saying that his lawyers will succeed in getting this dismissed.

Is that what the team feels tonight?

Now, I will say this, I'm not an attorney. I'm talking about what I've heard from legal experts,

not just close to the president, but legal experts on the right and the left on CNN and other networks saying

there's just not much there there. It's not really a case. There's no criminality here.

Hogan, look, you know, we've known each other a long time and you have defended Donald Trump over all of this.

They said there's no illegality. Can you explain to me why he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000?

I wasn't anything around and knew Donald Trump at the time. I have no idea.

But the fact is these types of nuisance cases happen all the time, especially with people who are powerful and well.

He's a great businessman. Why would he pay someone who he hasn't had a relationship with, $130,000?

Well, again, I don't know all of the details of the case, but the fact is I don't think he paid him.

I think the whole point was that Michael Cohen did the pay, if I'm not mistaken.

Hang on, yeah, but Donald Trump has paid him back. I mean, it was done at Donald Trump's behest.

It was to save Donald Trump embarrassment in the run up to the 2016 election over a relationship which had happened apparently 10 years earlier.

So which is it? Did he commit a crime or are you trying to tell me that paying off someone to keep them quiet is a crime?

I'm confused because those NDAs happen all the time.

And by the way, if I'm not mistaken, my question was if he's such a great businessman and nothing happened,

why on earth did he pay $130,000?

You're asking me about why he paid her money? And again, it's my understanding Michael Cohen paid that money.

Donald Trump did. But even so, I don't know.

Well, Donald Trump has paid it. Donald Trump, where there is no doubt that Donald Trump has now paid the money.

Look, I didn't know Donald Trump at the time.

So I have not talked to him about this specifically, other than the fact that he's been very clear that he had no relationship with Troy Daniels.

In fact, she herself said she had no relationship with Donald Trump.

And Michael Cohen made the point too that he didn't do anything wrong in this context either.

Okay. What about the other cases coming forward?

Because you may say that this is a nothing burger and quote whoever else you want to say about there's nothing to what Alvin Bragg has come up with.

There is the secure documents, the confidential documents that were stored at Mar-a-Lago.

There is the Donald Trump on the phone talking to Brad Raffensperger in Georgia saying,

you've got to find me 11,780 votes. Those are all quite incriminating, aren't they?

Hey, don't forget. He also collided with Russia. Don't forget. He also was not in Beech, not once, but twice.

Don't forget. He also...

We thought you'd never say it.

How many times is this guy going to be rigged over the coals and accused of things he didn't do?

It's just like fodder for you guys.

Take us inside his head right now. Does he think the day went well? Does he think it went badly?

Does he think this is a great campaigning strategy now? Take us in his head.

And again, I've not spoken to him specifically about this. We just had some brief interactions as he was going to the speech.

Go ahead. What did he say to you there? Tell us everything. But I have spoken to his team.

They feel pretty good. The fact is, you've seen the short-term boost in poll numbers.

You've seen the massive haul in donations because of this weaponization of government.

So in the short term, at least, we know for a fact this has done nothing but help the campaign

with a widening gap of the poll numbers with Donald Trump over his opponents.

So currently... So is he pleased? Well, I mean, again, I can't imagine someone would be happy to be indicted,

especially over a nothing charge when you didn't do anything wrong.

But the fact of the matter is, if anyone has been able to take negativity in the tune, as it relates to the press,

93% negative coverage by all data and metrics and turn it into successes for the American people, is Donald Trump.

If he's done it once, he can do it again for sure.

Hogan, lovely to talk to you again. Keep well. Anytime, y'all. Thanks so much. Talk soon.

Hogan Gidley on a trenchant form defending his former boss, Donald Trump.

What we've tried to do in these two episodes is to set out some kind of timeline.

So after the break, what happens now and when the court resumes to consider its next move?

This is The News Agents.

So where are we now? Basically, Trump's legal team have to go away and see if they can get this whole thing dismissed.

They don't think it's watertight. And actually, there are others like John Bolton, who is no fan of Trump,

his former national security adviser, who says, look, I think Trump's guilty of sin, but this is not enough to go after him.

It isn't really a strong enough legal case. It'll be interesting to see what other Republicans say.

The moment they're stuck in this weird place where the party of law and order doesn't seem to believe in law or order.

But look at where we are in the calendar, because this will not now come back until December of 2023,

two months before the 2024 campaign starts in earnest in Iowa.

And just what you were saying about Republican voices,

Mitt Romney was one of the very few Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump at that second impeachment trial

and said he should be disbarred from office. And he too has rounded on the case that has been presented by the Democratic Party,

DA Alvin Bragg in New York today. They're disappointed. They kind of think that this is pretty weak, pretty flimsy,

pretty feeble and will not stand up to scrutiny and will let Donald Trump go free.

Now, Donald Trump has got some more active, more strong, more muscular, more alpha female voices.

Who will defend Donald Trump? It has been a day of soundbites.

It's been a day of extraordinary interventions, but none more so than our dear, dear friend, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

And the bits of history she draws from to talk about her hero, Donald Trump.

We'll leave you with Marjorie. Bye from both of us.

Bye bye.

President Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today.

Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus. Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government.

There have been many people throughout history that have been arrested and persecuted by radical corrupt governments.

It's beginning today in New York City. And I just can't believe it's happening, but I'll always support him. He's done nothing wrong.

To the hills of Tennessee, across the plains of Texas, I'm seen as fantasy.

I'm Detroit down to Houston, and New York to the late.

Where there's pride in every American heart, and it's time we stand and say.

That I'm proud to be an American, where it is now.

This has been a global player, original podcast and a Persephoneka production.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.