When you were looking at that jury,
did you have a hunch ever.
I noticed one day they came in.
They didn't look at you.
You know, we don't want to.
But did you have a sense of them?
Well, I knew from the
location. I mean, we asked for a venue change as
soon as we heard this was the venue
because Republicans get virtually, you know,
very little vote. I never saw a glimmer of a
smile from the jury.
No.
What? What? What was the jury supposed to smile about?
They're not. They're not an audience at The Daily Show.
But perhaps, you know, Donald Trump never saw a glimmer
of a smile from the jury because his eyes were
closed for most of the trial.
That or the jury wasn't there to have a good
time.
They were there to fulfill their civic duty and take
the trial seriously.
Now, all this would be funny if not for the
fact that Trump and his party are insinuating revenge is
coming against all of those involved in holding Trump accountable
for his crimes. I am joined now by California Democratic
Congressman Eric Swalwell,
2021 impeachment manager and member of the House Judiciary and
Homeland Security committees,
and Paul Butler, MSNBC legal analyst,
professor at Georgetown Law School and former federal prosecutor.
I will do congressional. I have to go to the
congressman first.
I have to go to you first,
Sir.
You were a prosecutor before you were a congressman.
Would have loved to have gone up against Paul
or a pretty smart guy,
right? But I mean, were was it?
Were you looking for smiles?
Was is this something Donald Trump should have expected?
Yeah. This wasn't a birthday party.
This was a jury trial with people who didn't want
to be there,
by the way. Right. Like,
they didn't want to be there.
Their lives were going to be changed
forever. They were scared to be there.
Yeah. But you know what?
Donald Trump made all these choices.
He chose to live in New York.
He chose to commit his crimes in New York.
He actually was afforded a jury of his neighbors and
chose that jury.
So this is a result of his decisions.
And that jury, by the way,
you know, we say 34
felony convictions. The real number is 400 and
812 people made 34 decisions
and 408 straight times they said guilty.
Yeah. And and they. And.
And look, the, the reality is this was a jury,
Paul of people, one of whom said he gets a
lot of his news from Tooth Social.
These were people, there were people who were lawyers.
There were people who were speech therapists.
They're they're from all different walks of life.
It was a majority white jury.
So that's what he want.
It was a majority male jury.
It was an overwhelmingly white male jury.
And it still didn't work for him.
And this is one of the things,
and Trump had a jury consultant.
So that means that he helped pick the jury literally,
as the congressman said. Here's a Rolling Stone magazine reported
some on his legal team,
and Trump himself convinced themselves that one of the jurors
might actually have been on their side,
according to two people familiar with the matter,
Trump's faith in the amateur body language analysis of the
supposedly MAGA curious jury juror was so pronounced that at
times he took to calling the person my juror.
In discussions with close allies.
My juror found him guilty 34 times.
He wasn't Trump's juror. He wasn't Alvin Bragg's juror.
He was an officer of the court in the sense
that he was doing what he was supposed to do.
So this is an instance which the jury system worked,
the criminal legal system worked.
Trump finally experienced equal justice under the law,
and that's blocking his world.
And the evidence that the system worked isn't that he
was convicted,
but rather that these 12 people made these over
400 decisions. They deliberated and they unanimously came to a
verdict.
Trump, he had the chance to
dismiss some jurors for any reason he wanted.
So the whole system is designed for lie in from
the person who is convicted if the process is fair.
And it's the fairness of the process that Trump can't
accept.
Right? And I literally got the chance to sit in
that jury room and observe this jury.
These were the most serious people.
Yes. They weren't smiling because they were serious.
They were taking notes. They were diligent.
They were watching the judge.
They seemed to deeply respect the judge.
This was a set of people who clearly were like
deep into their civic duty.
I'm telling you, I saw them with my own eyes.
They were not in their playing.
They were in their working.
And I want to stay with you for a second,
Paul, because this is what Jesse Watters had to say
about this other jury.
Now, this is the jury hearing Hunter Biden,
who apparently Joe Biden has weaponized the Justice Department against
Hunter
because Hunter's getting prosecuted right now.
He's in. He's in court.
He's literally in a trial.
This is what Jesse Watters from the Fox that I
don't say the news part said about that jury.
Take a look.
This might seem like an open and shut case,
but Jonathan Turley points out Hunter's legal team might have
an ace up their sleeve.
It's called jury nullification. It's when you pick a jury
that will give you a not guilty verdict.
They know you're guilty, but they just disagree with the
law.
The strategy plays on the racial makeup of the jury,
which is mostly black, as well as the Biden's influence
in Delaware.
The hope is this jury won't convict for a drug
related crime.
Someone, someone told Byron Donald,
it's the blacks yet again.
Yeah, again, this isn't the kind of case in what
you'd expect to see during nullification.
That's when jurors say that the person is not guilty
even though the evidence suggests the opposite.
They have that power under the Constitution.
It's what Trump was hoping for in New York.
Exactly. That's the only way that he could have been
acquitted given the evidence.
He didn't get that. Now,
I doubt that Hunter Biden will get it either.
When you think about the way that these people weaponize
the
the prosecution system, just look at the way that they
use their pardon power.
So again, what the president has said is that he
will pardon the January,
the former president will pardon the January 6th
defendants. He pardon Steve Bannon,
Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, the difference.
Joe Biden says that if his son is convicted,
he will disagree with that verdict,
but he will not use his power to pardon his
own.
It's also absurd to put
Donald Trump in the same category as Hunter Biden,
who raised his hand and said I want to accept
responsibility,
didn't have the plea accepted.
He's come and testified to Congress.
Trump promises a lot that he's going to testify,
has never done that and again,
has acknowledged that if the verdict goes against him,
he's not going to trash the jury.
He's going to respect it.
You know, I still think though,
we are a country where we prefer violent,
we prefer voting over violence and verdicts over vengeance,
and we're going to reject where Trump is trying to
take us.
And meanwhile, what Donald Trump is doing,
he's begged the Supreme Court to try to help him.
He's now got your colleagues in the Republican Party.
Here's some of the retaliation that your colleagues,
including the speaker of the House,
are vowing. 8 Senate Republicans now vow to oppose all
Biden nominees,
Democratic legislation. Mike Lee, JD Vance,
Tommy Tuberville, of course, Eric Schmidt,
Marsha Blackburn, Rick Scott Marshall,
Roger Marshall and Marco Rubio.
You've got the Hill Speaker Johnson
announces he's going to take
take on the justice system following Trump conviction.
I don't know how his plan includes using the appropriations
process,
legislation brought to the floor
and Congress's oversight authority to take on the Justice Department
and do I don't know what to them.
And now you've got the speaker,
your speaker
now announcing that the two new people he's going to
add to the Intelligence Committee that you are kicked off
of,
Sir. He's going to add Scott Perry,
who was begged for pardon because of his January 6th
participation.
And Ronnie Jackson, the man who a lot of people
think God did not have to actually touch
the former President Barack Obama when he was the White
House surgeon.
They're not serious. They are Donald Trump's law firm and
they're a part of a cult.
That's their right in America.
You can be in a cult,
but your constituents would argue
that's probably not your responsibility.
And So what we just have to show is seriousness.
As I said, a country that prefers,
you know, voting over violence and verdicts
over vengeance, and that's going
to win at the end of the day.
I don't buy that any American thinks that this is
what we should be focused
on. And the other piece of it,
Paul, is the real fears that a lot of people
have for this jury in New York because they didn't
do what MAGA told them to do.
And you do have people on that side trying to
dox them,
trying to find out who they are.
Those people could get hurt because we've seen what these
MAGA people are willing to do to members of Congress,
to police officers. They're willing to harm people for this
cult worship.
The jury was elected finally on a Friday.
The Monday of the trial was supposed to start.
One of the jurors said she thought about it over
the weekend and she just was scared.
She didn't think that she could go through with it.
The judge said we will make sure that you are
OK.
We're going to do everything in our power to take
care of you.
God willing.
There is the chance that these people can be protected.
We know that Trump and his supporters,
Trump supporters are doxing people who are against them.
And it's, you know, it's really frightening in terms of
the rule of law. We had Republicans who,
as you say, have adopted this Trump weaponization of the
Justice Department.
Last week, the governor of Maryland Republic,
former Republican former governor of Maryland said that he thought
that the verdict should be respected and the legal process
allowed to play itself out.
Laura Trump, the Co chair of the RNC,
said Hogan, the governor said that doesn't have a place
in
the The hero of this story continues to be
the American citizen. Yeah, at the ballot box and in
the courtroom.
Absolutely. And by the way,
in order to be on a jury if registered to
vote.
That's right. It's another reason to register to vote so
that you can be a part of the process.
Representative Eric Swalwell and Paul Butler,
thank you, gentlemen very much.