new york as a criminal defendant facing 34 felony charges in connection with an alleged scheme to cover up extra marital encounters, one with a porn star , one with a former playboy playmate of the year. we ran the comments from district attorney alvin bragg earlier, so too, will we bring trump to you and jake, whichever donald trump shows up whether he s angry to find defensive, mocking or all of the above, it will be a far different donald trump. from the one earlier today on the 15th floor, the manhattan criminal court building with no one holding the door for him on the way into his arraignment, or the donald trump, who sat stone faced at the defense table for the first what could be many such appearances to come. we don t yet know what the former president makes of this. we could learn shortly, and as we wait for him to speak, we have, as only cnn can a team of correspondents. legal and political analysts help make sense of what happened today and what happens next. let
in layman s terms, if you could walk us through what the indictment is, and also why the other crimes were not named. so this is all about hush money, and, more specifically, it s all about hush money paid to stormy daniels. the statement of facts mentions karen macdougal and the dormant they re not part of the actual indictment. they re there for overall background and color. how do we get to 34 counts? the crime here is not paying hush money. the crime here is falsifying documents and what the prosecutors doing this indictment as they charge every check every ledger every invoice as its own count as its own false document. that s a misdemeanor, low level offense. the only way this gets bumped up each of these counts gets bumped up to a felony is if you can show that they falsified the records. to commit some second crime. and here s what we re going to run into legal problems because the indictment does not say what that second crime is, which is completely inexplicable . to me. the
obvious reasons. the other thing is to see if he does continue with his attacks on ellen bragged the district attorney here, because if you read the court transcript today with the judge was saying is this is something that the investigators brought up these attacks that he has continued to put out there. the judge did say that people need to watch their language, but they said it to both by the way to the prosecution and the defense which really stood out to me. that s what i just underlined, he said. such restraints of the most serious at least intolerable and first amendment rights, saying he wasn t even considering or close to imposing a gag order on trump here, but he did. i would encourage council both sides, including the people, meaning the investigators here to please speak to your witnesses because trump s attorneys were arguing about michael cohen going out and talking publicly about what he has said, want to play something that alvin bragg, the district attorney, said at hi
as you said, what trump are we going to get? i spoke to someone who was very close to the former president, who said they were concerned about him that after seeing him in that courthouse, that was not the trump that they expected, however, i also talked to another source who believes that trump s messaging is going to remain political and that he is going to continue to beat down what we have heard time and time again since 2015 from donald trump, which is they are not coming for me coming from you, and i am just standing in the way so forth. wait to see what donald trump we are going to get in just a few moments. we expect him any minute now. alright christian homes. thanks very much was waiting for former president to respond to the day s events. when i check in with cnn s paula reid was outside the courthouse in lower manhattan. so can you just walk us through the charges that were instilled today, paul right through this indictment, anderson and he s being charged with 34 counts o
new york statute and john, do you think um there s any case. to be made here. that what district attorney brag, assuming there isn t some rabbit that he s going to pull out of the hand that the critics of his who say he is now just severely lowered the threshold for the kinds of charges that a local district attorney even in the places largest manhattan can bring against a major political figure. for what, at least as of now, all we know are misdemeanor business fraud. um that that is something that that s a lie that he has now crossed that will be used against democrats and others. i think that is a huge risk in the long term again to andrew s point to give him the benefit of the doubt he gets to make his case in court. but he says he had no legal requirement to explain the underpinnings that make it a felony. he may not have a legal requirement. did he have a public