Today, a judge in New York upheld President Trump's criminal conviction in the hush money trial. That is the good news. It has been upheld. The bad news is literally everything else about it, because there is seemingly going to be no penalties. [00:00:15] The conviction is upheld, but with it will come no prison time. The real, the only consequence that would have really mattered. Maybe there will be some fines, maybe there'll be some community service or something. But he's not going to be spending any time behind bars, unfortunately. And this is a decision by Judge Juan Merchan, who I heard was very conflicted [00:00:35] over and over, super conflicted, and yet not going to be sending him to to jail. The judge indicated that he favored a so-called unconditional discharge of Trump's sentence, a rare and lenient alternative to jail and probation. He set a sentencing date of January 10th and ordered Trump to appear [00:00:53] either in person or virtually. I wonder which one he'll choose. So that is, of course, just a week and a half, just ten days before the actual inauguration, which means that since it will be upheld, Donald Trump will be sworn in as president and as the first president to be a felon. [00:01:09] At the same time, I sort of have just taken that for granted, but I guess it is possible that the judge could have vacated the actual conviction as well. Now, we don't know what might be left over for the judge to do at that actual sentencing. But what we know won't happen is the roughly four years in prison [00:01:26] that Donald Trump was theoretically facing as a result of the hush money trial. And I want to give you just a little bit more details of what the judge wrote in an 18 page decision, while Marchand said, while this court is a matter of law, must not make any determination on sentencing prior to giving the parties and defendants opportunity to be heard, [00:01:44] it seems proper at this juncture to make known the court's inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration, a sentence authorized by the conviction, but one the people concede they no longer view as a practicable recommendation. A sentence of an unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution [00:02:01] to ensure finality and allow defendant to pursue his appellate options. Which look, I guess there's some sense to that, but I love that. Like the focus at the end there is that we have to make sure we do right by the defendant who did the crime. [00:02:17] We don't have to do right by, I don't know, I guess, the people who were harmed by the crime, the people who are concerned about the precedent being set. All of the other potential stakeholders in this issue, it's mostly just to make sure that he's okay. He gets to be president. He gets to do his a his appellate thing. [00:02:33] Now, look, we've talked obviously quite a bit over the last couple of years about the variety of different allegations against Donald Trump. And everyone can disagree about how they rank the charges against him. I consider the hush money stuff to be relatively low priority [00:02:48] compared to some of the others. But it's just it's funny that, like all up and down the whatever your list of priorities is, it's just one way or another lack of accountability, lack of accountability, Lack of accountability. I saw was a reaction from you. [00:03:05] What do you make of what the judge decided? I know that we'd all like to think that nobody is above the law, and the law applies equally to everyone but the practical matter, and I think that's what the judge was trying to get at, is that you can't put the president, the sitting president of the United [00:03:23] States of America, in prison for paying prostitutes with his campaign money, like it's just not practical to do so. And, you know, when you consider the crime, I honestly think if you polled every single American on this, like, do you think Donald Trump [00:03:40] should go to prison for this crime? Most people would say no. You know, you know, whatever the slap on the wrist ends up being is whatever. I do agree with you, John. This is kind of the most weak sauce of all of the charges, some of them way more serious than this one, particularly in places like Georgia. [00:03:58] But you know, I'm not. I can't pretend that I'm mad at a judge for recognizing that jailing the sitting president of America for this specifically would just be, you know, it would just be seen as very partizan. [00:04:17] And I actually think that there is accountability. I mean, thanks to the judge keeping this felony, Donald Trump will forever be the first convicted felon to be president of the United States. That will always be around him. And if you want to talk about sort of precedent and holding people accountable [00:04:33] based on the falsifying business records, felony, the lowest level of felony. And according to New York's own records, 90% of all people who are convicted on these charges, if they're a first time offender, they don't get incarceration. The reason that Allen Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump Organization, [00:04:51] and Michael Cohen got prison time is because there were other charges as well tax fraud and wire fraud. But just on this particular misdemeanor, even though it's 34 counts, in my view, Donald Trump is getting what 90% of the people in his position get. So I don't have a problem with that. [00:05:07] And I'm just thrilled that the judge kept the felonies, because now, to me, history is more important than whether we actually get the real picture of Donald Trump in an orange jumpsuit. Yeah, you're right. And we're actually going to go in a moment to the argument that the judge made [00:05:24] for why that should be maintained, because obviously Donald Trump would have preferred to get rid of that as well. But I want to say, like, because we're talking about how he's making history, he's going to be the first felon and everything. And, and I remember something that several months ago, I think Mondale [00:05:39] said on the show, and he pointed out that he doesn't like that people are doing a lot of what he sees as like, you know, demonizing someone for having been through, you know, they committed a crime, you know, and all of that. We shouldn't necessarily be demonizing people just for being felons. And as a general matter, I certainly agree with that. [00:05:56] I've, you know, I've advocated for people to have their ability to vote restored after or even still while they're serving. I think the thing for me that makes it something to be pointed out in this case is this isn't a matter of like, a person who committed a crime, paid their, [00:06:13] you know, their dues to society, made amends, turned their life around, and, you know, like they committed a crime when they were younger or something. Or maybe we could have someone that, like, they committed some sort of felony doing an environmental protest or something. Like, it's not one of those situations. [00:06:29] Donald Trump has never taken accountability for this or any of the other crimes that he committed. This is a thing that he didn't do 50 years ago. He a lot of this crime was committed while he was president. It was in the aftermath of him being elected the first time around. He's never admitted to it. He's never taken responsibility for it. [00:06:46] That's the thing that really bothers me. And in addition to never personally taking responsibility, theoretically some of the penalties or fines might still go through in the. In the case of the E, Jean Carroll, we had an update on that recently. So that's the thing that really bothers me. But but I want to lay out the argument for why the label of A felon should [00:07:03] stick around as provided by the judge. Mershon said to dismiss the indictment and set aside the jury verdict would not serve the concerns set forth by the Supreme Court in its handful of cases addressing presidential immunity. Nor would it serve the rule of law. On the contrary, such decision would undermine the rule of law [00:07:20] in immeasurable ways. And so he rejected the Trump legal argument that the case should be dismissed on the grounds of presidential immunity, saying he called those claims a novel theory of presidential immunity that would amount to abuse of his legal discretion. Quote, the defendant has presented no valid argument [00:07:37] to convince this court otherwise. And it almost seems sort of unfair that you'd expect Donald Trump or his legal team to do that, like the impression they've been given by their own personal experience throughout all of these cases and by what the Supreme Court has said is, look, whatever it is, whether it's a crime you committed before you became president, [00:07:55] once you were president, that had to do with the official duties of being president. That didn't we're going to come up with something that protects you, something that covers you. And so, of course, Donald Trump thinks that he doesn't have to make a good case. Everything else just gets set aside. Why shouldn't this too? And so frustrating. [00:08:11] But David, I want to give you a chance to jump in on this. Well, he's cornered, right. Because these are actions that happened during the campaign in 2016, just a couple of weeks before the November election, in 2016, he made these payments. He allegedly falsified the business records so that the money could get to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star. [00:08:28] And so, you know, I think it's I think it's great that our system is holding somebody accountable in the sense that yet maybe it's okay to pay off porn stars if you're a if you're a candidate, but you better do it in terms of on the up and up in terms of your own finances. It better be money out of your pocket and not money that should go [00:08:44] to the taxpayers because it's some sort of business expense. So I do think that look, Donald Trump yeah, he's going to get he's going to get off for everything else because of actions while he was president. And he's not being charged with lying about this, even though everybody believes that he lied when he said he didn't pay her, but he made those statements [00:09:01] while he was president. So maybe he's immune for making, you know, false statements while he's president. But in my view, he is being held accountable for actions that are important to our not only our judicial system, but also our campaign system. Yeah. You know, in a lot of ways, when the court put that immunity ruling out there, to me [00:09:21] it just felt like they were codifying something that was actually true. Meaning that a president kind of can't commit crimes in his capacity as president. Like, what do I mean by that? Take Barack Obama, for instance, who, you know, made the unprecedented decision [00:09:38] to drone strike an American citizen. And then a few weeks later, drone strike the guy's son. No court, no court date, no arrest, no warrant was read, no anything. It was just basically an extrajudicial killing of an American citizen. [00:09:54] And like in any other context, like that would be seen as a crime that would be seen as somebody acting outside the means of the law. But like what the court is saying is like, no, when you're president, you're afforded special protections so that you can go out and freely be president. [00:10:12] I think the problem with Donald Trump is that, like, he's kind of a unique figure in how nakedly and transparently corrupt the guy is. And so it kind of just flies in the face of this as an idea. I think even somebody like Richard Nixon, who we know [00:10:28] committed crimes while in office. Like in public, he had this presentation of this, like, really like, you know, buttoned up guy and, like, law abiding citizen and like, you know, hyper law abiding citizen. Donald Trump doesn't he, like, dispenses with all of those, like, pretenses. [00:10:46] And I think that's the difficulty we're facing here, where it's like most presidents seem like, you know, law abiding citizens on the outside, and therefore they should be able to freely flout every single international law and even American law while they're in office. [00:11:03] Donald Trump seems to be doing it in the reverse. That's a good point. Yeah, I think look, as a general rule, I think it would be great to at least try, like as an experiment. What would it be like if our politicians were at least a little bit concerned about being locked up? If they commit crimes, whether they're a Republican or a Democrat? [00:11:20] We've gone a couple hundred years with them, never worrying about it. Let's try. Maybe if they were at least at least look, in the case of these other presidents, they at least tried to link it in some way to their official duties. Donald Trump's running around stealing documents and sending mobs [00:11:35] at the white House and everything, like there's no case to be made there. And and on this particular crime, while I maintain that, I put it below, you know, the fake electors on January 6th and, and probably the classified documents as well for me, like the fact that he's doing the affair or whatever, I don't particularly care about that. [00:11:52] Even if you if you argue that this is in some way money for sex, I personally think that basically all sex work should be legalized and regulated or whatever. It is still worthwhile pointing out that even if you believe that Donald Trump and Matt Gaetz, it wasn't when they committed these crimes. But for me, it's if we're going to have a political system [00:12:11] where the only people that have a chance of being notable political figures are millionaires and billionaires, and they're just going to buy every election or whatever. At the very least. Can we find out what they did? Could we know that if we make it totally legal for them to flout campaign finance laws by just paying off everyone to hide all of the skeletons in their closet, [00:12:30] then we don't even get disclosure on their various weird crimes and pasts and everything. And and I think that we are owed at least that. It bothers me, I understand it, but it bothers me that the MAGA movement, the people in it, don't care that they're the ones he was trying to pull, [00:12:49] like the wool over the head of. It's not like, oh no, if the Democrats find out I had an affair, they won't vote for me. They never were going to. He was paying money to make sure that people who trusted him never found out that he wasn't the guy they had been, that they'd been claimed that he was, [00:13:06] and so that should bother them more. Like, I don't know what crime Bernie like in a similar version would have to cover up. But I like to think that if he paid someone off so that I never found out what he did, that would bother me. But it doesn't seem to bother them, which also bothers me. I think the system worked though, because we are finding out these things. [00:13:23] We are finding out about Matt Gaetz through the congressional report. We are finding out what happened with Donald Trump, in part because of whistleblowers like Michael Cohen and the media. What we're just not getting is we're not getting them going off to prison. And I would argue it's more important that we actually get the information so the public can decide whether Donald Trump is a laughing stock, which I think he is. [00:13:42] Does he need to go to prison? I mean, sure, it might it might might feel great to us, but to me, it's more important for the information to be in front of the American people, whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's Bernie Sanders, anybody else. We're going to get the information. And in that sense, I think the system has worked. Yeah. And to just to, end off on John's point there about Trump's fans [00:14:01] and why they might not care about this, I think there's just a general sense that all these other guys who came before, who were allegedly squeaky clean, you know, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W Bush before he got in office, of course, some people would say, [00:14:18] well, those guys didn't get the job done. It's not as if being squeaky clean is a prerequisite to actually delivering the goods for people. And I can understand not that I agree with them. I can understand why people might be willing to make an exception for somebody who they think, I think quite mistakenly, but they think is going to make [00:14:37] a difference for them while in office. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. 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