morning joe starts right now trump indicted the first ever criminal indictment of a former president of the united states came down yesterday when a new york city grand jury convened by the manhattan district attorney s office took the unprecedented step of voting to charge donald trump. because the indictment is under seal, the exact charges are unknown, but we do know they center around that $130,000 payment trump allegedly made to porn star stormy daniels just days before the 2016 election, to keep her silent about an affair she claims the two had a decade earlier according to the star witness in the case, trump s own former lawyer, michael cohen, the trump organization tried to cover up the payment, falsely claiming it was a legal expense. good morning and welcome to morning joe. it is friday, march 31st along with joe, willie and me, we have the host of way too ea early, white house bureau chief at politico, jonathan lemire the host of politics nation, presid
yet happened. the lead starts are right now. republican officials rushing to defend trump with a variety of claims and chexcuses as the forr president faces a possible indictment. i think in your heart of hearts you know too that this you can this is just political. is this all firing up the maga base? we ll talk to two former trump insiders. plus, meeting with a menacing message, leaders of russia and china coming out of their second day of talks and offering deliberate prolposals about a future collaboration. and a colorado dentist accused of killing his wife by lacing her protein shakes with arsenic, how his internet searches became evidence. welcome to the lead, i m jake tapper. we start with our politics lead and a high alert day for new york city police bracing for possible unrest if donald trump is indicted. an internal memo shared with cnn shows that all nypd officers are expected to be in uniform and ready for deployment today, although law enforcement
you can see a scenario, and hopefully we re not in this scenario, of course, mika, but where if there is violence, if there are people gathering that seems violent, the president could call for calm. maybe ask for republicans to do that with him. maybe that s wishful thinking, but there are people like senator mcconnell who has been quiet to date. maybe others will have a moment of stiffening their spine. we ll see. but that would be the moment he would go out and speak publicly. otherwise, if i were advising them, i would advise them to stick in the same frame as leader schumer and speaker pelosi, which is just reit reiterating the value and respect for the rule of law in our country. the importance of letting the legal process play itself out. that is defending and respecting that fundamental baseline of our democracy. that s where they need to really stay if they can reverend al, we would love for you to tell us more about alvin bragg, the d.a. who has been the target of death
how mature we are as a democracy that believes in liberty under law. i don t know how we re going to do. yeah. fair enough. reverend al, maybe you can provide some insight on the prosecutor alvin bragg, this is a man who, to the consternation of people who voted for him, to the consternation of his own prosecutors, refused earlier to charge trump because he didn t believe they had enough on trump. his prosecutors were so angry, they went to the times and talked about how they had trump dead to center, but he just didn t have the counsrage, the power, the strength to go after donald trump even went out a wrote a book about it yet, here we are with alvin bragg being, well, threatened,
there are multiple issues with this prosecution i think d.a. bragg has a long road ahead of him. you know, at a base level, you have to prove knowledge and intent and, you know, intent to defraud, not just to tie the payment. legal scholars are asking, well, who was, you know, he intended to defraud with the addition of weisselberg, we re hearing it could be new york state tax authorities. there could be tax violations involved here. there are a myriad of sort of avenues through which bragg could move this prosecution. and adding to that whole myriad of things that bragg would be facing, would he not also know that the trump attorneys would be going to some level of appeals courts to try to overturn the indictment or stop it? therefore, you would assume that they have various parts of the indictment that they feel would