Law enforcement said they're ready for any possible unrest if that does happen.
>> And speaking of that, we have this video that we just got moments ago.
This is the New York Police Department.
They're installing security cameras on light post that is outside
the Manhattan criminal courthouse.
>> Authorities are preparing for potential outbreaks of violence
following news that former President Donald Trump might get arrested and
indicted in connection to the hush money payments that were paid to adult
actress Stormy Daniels in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election.
Now when Trump heard of the news, he began riling up his supporters and
encouraging them to not only get rowdy and violent on his behalf but
to protest and he did that in multiple posts on Truth Social.
We'll get to those comments in just a second, but let's back up and
try to kind of Figure out what this potential arrest could be about when it's
likely to happen if it happens and whether this is an open or shut case.
Now at the center of this case is the $130,000 that Donald Trump paid
adult entertainer Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.
They had met each other back in 2006 when Melania Trump was pregnant and
engaged in a sexual rendezvous.
Now, she had shared her story on 60 minutes and we knew the details about
that, but apparently Trump decided to pay her $130,000 to kind of keep
that story under wraps so it wouldn't hurt him during the presidential election.
At least that's the theory.
Now, if Trump is eventually indicted, it will be for falsifying business
records in the first degree, which by the way, that alone is just a misdemeanor,
but it becomes a felony if he falsified records in order to commit another crime.
In order to elevated to a felony, the defendant needs to have created the fake
records with an intent to commit or conceal another crime.
Here it's unclear whether the Manhattan District Attorney's office plans to argue
that there's a second crime.
If the grand jury does not vote in favor of prosecuting it as a felony,
it could direct the prosecutor to file a misdemeanor case instead and
this could all just be a big nothing burger.
But with all of that said, Donald Trump has completely lost it and
is trying to get his supporters to protest, which is why authorities in
Manhattan are preparing for it with metal barricades and with surveillance cameras.
So what do you think about this so far Cenk?
>> Yeah, so this is political but not in the way that the right wing thinks it is.
So let me break it down.
It took five years for the Manhattan DA's office to charge Donald Trump
who was a co conspirator of Michael Cohen after they charged him,
convicted him and sent him to prison.
So what they wait around five years for?
This is the one case that I was saying all along is open and shut.
There's no question that he paid the hush money.
There was a violation of campaign finance laws and they falsified the records.
There's overwhelming evidence to that effect and
they already convicted his co conspirator, right?
They waited around for permission from both democratic and
Republican establishment figures because Republicans don't give a damn about
democratic establishment, but they do care about their own donors, they wait for
permission from their own donors.
Democrats wait for permission from their donors and Republican donors.
And so finally Alvin Bragg got that permission when the Koch brothers Murdoch
and everybody else turned on Trump.
So he's not like, I've been waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting,
waiting, waiting.
Yeah, I have permission.
I'm gonna go forward now.
Now. >> Now that's, that's your take on it,
right?
Like obviously you don't know for sure, but
I think that your take on it is absolutely correct.
I don't know if it has to do with donors.
I think it has more to do with the political appetite on both sides,
the political appetite among establishment politicians on both sides to finish Trump.
>> Yeah, I don't want you to mistake what I'm saying, Anna is absolutely right.
It's not like Alvin Bragg is good and get paid by Republican and
Democratic donors for this.
No, it's groupthink, it's conventional wisdom.
For Democrats, they're the cowards and
the weaklings in this play that you see the national theater of politics.
And so they wait for
permission in the group think of like, Republicans also agree.
Okay, finally we can do something, right?
And so that's why Brad didn't do anything for
all this time and neither did his predecessor.
So now what is the play here?
What are they gonna do?
Are they gonna finally actually indict him?
Yes, it looks like they're gonna finally indict him, right?
Is he going to actually go to prison?
No way.
No, because this is political they're trying to hurt his chances, right, and
distract him and smear him and said, now the thing is the right wing is thinking,
what do you mean?
That's exactly what we think.
No guys, he actually did do it.
The real problem is that there's no quality here.
If you had done it, you'd have gone to prison five years ago.
How do I know Michael Cohen, relatively regular guy went to prison five years ago.
Right, there's no question about it.
They cover for the elites and Trump is part of the elites.
But now that the elites have turned on Trump, they're saying, okay,
you can prosecute him like a regular person.
>> Yeah exactly.
The difference here is that for the first time, in my opinion, I think in your
opinion as well, you have the Republican establishment playing along with it,
even though you might see on media, in the news, whatever Twitter,
social media, they're pretending like they're so outraged by this.
But it's really important to understand the Republican establishment always hated
Donald Trump, but they were terrified of his base.
Now they think they can manufacture a situation in which and, and
I think in their minds, they genuinely think like, no, no, Trump is losing it.
He's losing support among his base.
Now is the time that we try to finish him.
I think that's really behind it.
And if you watch the reporting on this, on whether it's cable news, network news,
if you read the reporting on it, all the reporters are like,
we don't know where this came from.
We're trying to figure that out, we're still trying to crack that nut,
trying to figure out why Alvin Bragg has decided to really aggressively pursue
this all of a sudden.
The political landscape has changed a little bit in regard to Donald Trump and
the way the Republican establishment feels about him.
Now, remember, people have already faced some pretty serious consequences for
the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
And of course, the argument is that the $130,000 was essentially
a campaign contribution in violation of campaign finance laws.
Now in August of 2018, Michael Cohen Trump's personal lawyer at the time,
pleaded guilty to eight charges of tax evasion, fraud, and campaign
finance violations in connection to his payments to Daniels and Karen McDougal.
She was another woman who had sexual relations with Trump and
they killed her story before it could be published in the National Enquirer.
And during his guilty plea, Michael Cohen says in Federal Court,
he was directed to violate campaign law at the direction of an unnamed candidate,
I wonder who that was.
That same candidate directed him to pay $130,000 in hush money which
the candidate later reimbursed.
He is sentenced to three years in prison after he was found guilty and
after he pleaded guilty.
Now let's get to Trump because he's encouraging people to protest.
So in his first Truth Social post, he wrote this now illegal leaks from
a corrupt and highly political Manhattan District Attorney's office
which has allowed new records to be set in violent crime and whose leader
is funded by George Soros indicate that with no crime being able to be proven and
based on an old and fully debunked by numerous other prosecuted.
None of this history by the way.
Fairytale the far and away leading Republican candidate and former president
of the United States of America will be arrested on Tuesday of next week,
meeting Tuesday of this week, protest take our nation back.
In subsequent true social post he said something similar basically protest
protest take to the streets and that's a call to his supporters to do something
similar to what they did on January six.
Let's keep it real, right?
>> So look on the Trump protest angle.
First of all, there's nothing wrong with protesting.
And if he was just asking people to go and peacefully protest,
there'd be no problem at all.
Number one, the context is we already know that the last time he asked people
to protest, they broke down the doors, somebody got shot, cops got killed.
He knows that context as well as we do.
And remember during that time he was very happy that they were doing it
including chanting about murdering his vice president.
His own chief of staff said he was totally fine with it.
So that's an important piece of context.
The other thing is as you read those deranged posts on Truth Social a it
to me and I know like when we get into race, everybody catches feelings, right?
But it kind of red like a call to the clan.
And the reason why I say that in this context is because he's constantly like,
and then other people get to do anything they want in the streets and they ride and
they do this and there's no retribution and he's calling for
retribution against the others.
And it's interesting because he's not just talking about his case,
he's constantly referring to how the others are going to ruin America,
how that you got to do something and
you got to give them retribution before they touch their beloved leader, etcetera.
And when you read it in that context, you're like, yeah,
he's barely even talking about his own case.
He's mainly trying to attack the Libs.
>> Because he's incredibly, I know you're gonna hate to hear this and
everyone's gonna get upset because they think I'm in favor of what he's doing.
I'm not, but this is what he does and it's actually pretty smart messaging, right?
Because what he's doing is exploiting the frustrations that people might
be feeling in Manhattan or other big cities as a result of increasing crime.
And he's saying like, look at them coming after me over this old thing that
didn't go anywhere years ago when it was first reported, but
they're letting all this other crime happen, right?
He's doing it yes to stir up hatred, to stir up anger.
That's what he does and he does it well.
>> Yeah and so part of what he's referring to is when there was
a Black Lives Matter protests and some buildings got burned, etcetera for
those for white Republicans that was an enormously triggering event.
They wanted massive retribution for what happened there.
And so that was, I think it's also related January 6th.
But bottom line here is, look, he's getting to use the establishment not
getting permission to prosecute a member of the elite for five years against them.
You say, why did they wait five years where there's all this crime and
now all of a sudden they do it five years later because they were waiting for
goddamn permission to prosecute someone who's clearly a criminal because they
didn't give him, look, guys, look, think about what Anna said about the reporters.
What the reporters should have been asking all along is for
the Manhattan DA's office and screaming it.
You just put away his co conspirator.
We all know that we've got you.
No one denies that.
So why aren't you going after the co conspirator Donald Trump?
It's a massive and obvious violation of the law.
The reason they don't is because he was untouchable because he was part of
the establishment and the elites never ever, ever face justice, right?
So anyway, this is all a charade.
Look here just real quick to give you a sense of what I keep saying that it's so
obvious Michael Cohen gives the money to the National Enquirer who gave the money
to Stormy Daniels and the other lady, okay?
Karen MacDougal.
And then he goes back to the Trump organization and goes, okay,
now give me the money.
>> Reimburse me. >> Yeah, and so
he gave them 130,000 other expenses got to about 180,000, right?
So, they're like, okay,
we gotta take into affect the taxes because Michael Cohen's illegally paying
her with his money and then when he gets income he has to pay taxes on it.
So they double it and then they give us $60,000 bonus on top for
a crime well done.
This is a Trump organization, okay?
Apparently not.
So then he got $420,000 to reimburse him for the payment, right?
So the Trump organization is then clearly giving an illegal campaign donation to
Donald Trump and lying about it saying that it was a retainer for
you for Michael Cohen and Michael Cohen,
the person who received it now says, yeah, we were definitely lying.
It was not for a retainer.
It was to cover up this problem on the campaign.
And so there's no question he did it.
And that's what's so frustrating about the establishment and the,
and their love for the elites and that how they're above the law.
And that's why at the end of the day,
they're gonna try to hurt him in this election, but he's still among the elites.
They're never gonna put a person who's in the elites in jail.
>> That's never gonna happen.
>> But Cenk It's so obvious to everyone with a pulse that this is politically
motivated at this point at this late juncture.
Like it's obvious that it's political and so
you have all these different people coming out.
Senator Lindsey Graham can't believe, I agree with him, but I do agree with him.
I think this is gonna help Trump.
I don't think it's going to hurt him politically.
Yeah, I don't care what it does politically.
The reason I'm in favor of it, even though it's this late and
it's obviously political and blah, blah, blah and all the things that we've said is
I want somebody to enforce the law equally for the first time in my life in America.
The only rich people who ever get convicted are people who stole from
other rich people.
You try to defraud or steal money from Goldman Sachs and you're going to jail,
you're going to jail for a long time.
You rob regular Americans, you're celebrated.
So this is a 100% violation of the law.
I want them to get arrested.
I want them to face justice.
And maybe once that goes to the jury, maybe there's nothing they could do.
But that's really wishful thinking.