Look, let's talk about the fact that the day began
before David Pecker got back on the witness stand with
the Manhattan Days office saying that there are 4 alleged
violations,
brand new ones of that expanded gag order.
The judge Marshawn setting a hearing on it for next
Thursday.
Me, Joyce, we don't have a ruling from the first
motion for contempt.
So what's the delay from Marshawn?
Because we now have 4 new violations.
We do. We have ongoing violations.
And the issue that the judge faces is either this
gag order has teeth and he will enforce it,
or it does not have teeth,
in which case Donald Trump can do anything he wants
to do with regard to this jury
or witnesses or the court families for that matter.
So this has to come to a head.
The delay likely gives the judge a little bit of
extra room to gather additional evidence,
but the statute gives some very limited options.
He can either impose a penalty of
$1000 for each violation, or he can impose up to
30 days of custody.
There's no room to maneuver between those two options.
He will have to make a decision.
He has apparently made a decision that it's best to
put it off
to hold some of his power over Donald Trump's head
for a little bit longer to see if he can
get him to conform his behavior or alternatively to prove
that the only option is for the judge to begin
to impose sanctions.
You know, Peter, one thing that stuck out to me
today was the testimony from David Pecker that
AMI paid the
$150,000 to Karen McDougal. And then they never got reimbursed,
never got paid back by Donald Trump,
even though it was for his benefit and for the
benefit of the campaign.
But then at the end,
David Pecker has to say,
I have no hard feelings for Mr.
Trump. I thought he was my mentor.
I felt like Peter. David Pecker encapsulates
Mogga World because it's like he keeps on grifting and
he completely dupes his cult followers,
right? But then they sit there and they still pay
homage to him.
Talk about whether or not you think that this trial,
Even so far, has been moving the needle in any
way in terms of public sentiment when it comes to
Donald Trump.
Yeah, you know, it reminds me of a story I
was told once by a New Yorker whose parents work
for Donald Trump as contractors.
And we all know that Donald Trump wasn't always very
good about paying the contractors.
And I said to this person,
well, did he, did he pay your parents?
He says no, he didn't.
My parents, this guy said I had to sue him
to get their money.
I said OK And they gather,
well, he got $0.50 on the dollar back.
And then the guy said,
but you know what? They voted for Trump.
I said, well, why would they vote for Trump if
they believe he cheated them on their money?
He said. Because, well, if he cheats us,
he'll cheat everybody else on on behalf of America.
I'll cheat the rest of the world on behalf of
America.
So there's a, there is a sort of interesting,
you know, view of him as somebody who is able
to,
you know, manipulate the system,
work the system, bypass the system,
whatever it is that seems to earn,
you know, respect on the part of people who who
admire him.
And it's it's kind of curious to to
in a lot of ways it wouldn't be something you
would expect.
And yet somehow he has managed,
despite all of the examples where he has in fact
tried to run around the system and and and and
cheat in various ways.
That hasn't actually hurt the base core support he has.
So I don't think that his base is going to
be all that troubled by what they're hearing.
They know most of these facts.
Most these facts have been reported before.
I think a lot of people,
even people who like him,
assume they're all more or less true and the only
question is OK,
are they illegal. Does it match the the crimes as
outlined by Alvin Bragg?
Does a guilty verdict change anybodies mind?
But the facts of the case as they're being presented
by the prosecution may or may not be enough to
change public views.
Because I think a lot of people assume
that Donald Trump has done a lot of these things.
And they either they either care a lot and they
think it's outrageous or they don't care and they think
that he's being, you know,
persecuted here. And you know,
Josh, to Peter's point, does the evidence fit the crime?
I mean, the burden of proof is always going to
be on the prosecution in a criminal case.
Do you share any concerns,
Josh, like some others have expressed that,
you know, the misdemeanor crime exists,
the falsification of the business records,
but to elevate it to the first degree felony that
it is,
the Class E felony that it is.
Are you hearing enough? Because I'm hearing the common denominator
kind of messaging from David Pecker,
which is everything that was done,
the catch and kill, et cetera,
was done to benefit at the campaign and not Donald
Trump personally,
right. I think that might have something to do,
Katie, with why we're hearing these nice comments about Pecker
from the former president.
If he can somehow get jurors to have the feeling
that
these payments took place because of
personal warmth between Pecker and Trump,
or the fact that they had been friends for a
long time,
that does start to undercut the case somewhat.
So we'll see as the cross examination continues here whether
Trump's defense tries to bring out
more of that possible motivation here.
That they've been friends for a long time and that
maybe AMI and Pecker might have done this sort of
thing to help Trump even if he wasn't running for
president. Because it sounds like based on the practices of
AMI and Pecker that this is the kind of thing
that they did for various celebrities at different times.
And you know Mark David Pecker already announcing that he's
there pursuant to a subpoena to testify.
So he's not there voluntarily
1-2. We did hear today though something that was surprising,
right. We heard that David Pecker slash AMI getting a
non prosecution agreement with the Manhattan DA's office and the
New York County DA's office.
So Mark, think talk about a little bit about what
you think the impact might have been on the jury
hearing
that AMI got one of these kind of pass get
out of free
get out of a jail free cards kind of thing
because he's giving this testimony and the cooperation he gave
to the SDNY a few years ago.
Yeah. So we know that Pecker has this non prosecution
agreement with state authorities.
We also know that the FEC had warned Pecker and
AMI that
this kind of catch and kill practice done to benefit
a political campaign could constitute a contribution in violation of
law.
Pecker has clearly been skirting the limits of what's permitted
under both state and federal law.
No surprise that he's in court under a subpoena.
A little bit of I was surprised that he has
this history in state court and that we hadn't learned
about it until today.
But, you know, I think this ties in with one
of the other really interesting exchanges that occurred in Manhattan
today,
where the prosecutors kept talking about a conspiracy that
Pecker was part of, this conspiracy that ultimately engulfed Cohen
and Trump and paying off Stormy Daniels,
the defense attorneys objected and said,
you know, you have to stop using this word.
This isn't a conspiracy. And prosecutors said we'll look at
the election statutes that we're citing and claiming Trump attempted
to violate.
They use the phrase conspiracy.
So it's perfectly legitimate for us to use it.
And Judge Marshawn agreed. And I think rightly so.
And so I think what this testimony is doing is
setting up for the jury the,
the sense of how this worked in this rather sordid
world.
So that when it comes time to drill down on
the Stormy Daniels payment,
they have a good idea of all of the moving
pieces here.
And when the prosecutors are laying out the step by
step of the Stormy Daniels payments,
they we'll see that through the lens of a similar
conspiracy.
That it's not just a kind of seedy tabloid
scheme, but rather a criminal effort to skirt campaign finance
laws and state election laws to influence an election on
behalf of a candidate that is unlawful under New York
statute. And that is what Alvin Bragg says is going
to essentially bootstrap what would be misdemeanor charges into the
felony offense that he is charging Mr.
Trump with.