someone who used to be president and currently running to be president again, is caught up in so many allegations of misconduct, of crimes. and so everything changes now. i mentioned this once earlier tonight. we will remember march 30th. it will be marked in the history books. the future is unwritten, whether it s marked at the beginning of a trial that sends someone to prison or the beginning of a process that cleared his name. we can t tell you that and anyone that tries to p prejudge that might be getting ahead of the process but is the end of a period where donald trump was not legally held to account. and today, in the rest of donald trump s life are different, as he learns, perhaps for the first time in his life, what it is to be completely out of control, to have to react to a government and propecsecutorial system whe his antics do not matter what matters is what a judge says, what a jury of his peers says not what he says or posts. so we re going forward on this tog
have said, which would have been consonant with the rule of law, is that donald trump, and this i truly think people need to remember this, is presumed innocent under the law unless and until a jury finds that he is guilty of the charges that we will see and that a jury finds that beyond a reasonable doubt, and people need to wait and trust that system. indeed, he s neither above nor below the law. he s a citizen like every other citizen. andrew weissmann, always a pleasure thank you. let s bring in nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss. always handy to have a historian around in moments like this. i would love for you to comment on that as well. michael, i think all of us who are sort of absorbing this, there s nothing to be gleeful about, about a former president, whatever his quality being indicted, there s nothing to be happy about, about that. however, it is in some ways a
is that accurate more or less it is. the way i used to look at this when i was a prosecutor is, i think a very human way of thinking about things which is there s a set of facts somebody you can prove has done a, b, c, and d and then at a lawyer, you take your sort of legal grid and say okay, what kind of laws did that violate? so there are federal laws and state laws and so the same set of facts can result in crimes such as wire fraud or mail fraud or securities fraud, and they can also result in certain state crimes it s one ball of wax in terms of what you re dealing with, but there are different trip wires you can have gone over in the course of that conduct so what you re seeing here is i think the same ball of wax where it resulted in federal crimes that michael cohen pled guilty
for the same facts and essentially the same crime, assuming this is the payment of hush money in violation of campaign finance laws and the covering up of those records illegally under new york law same facts, but remember who indicted michael cohen it was donald trump s justice department it wasn t a local democrat that ran for prosecutor it was bill barr who indicted michael cohen on these facts and i think it s so important to keep pointing that ut. if this is a made-up deal, then donald trump s own justice department ignored it and went ahead and put the man we re looking at right now in prison the other thing i think is important to point out is sure hope that donald trump is not given the opportunity that he seeks to be in handcuffs bragg s job is so hard right now, and that is he needs to
back, and possible obstruction and possibly drawing his lawyers into obstruction, and obviously, everything related to january 6th. so let s talk about some of the questions that that might bring up among folks who are looking at this being the first case to drop and we don t know that any other case will drop, i should say that as well we don t know if donald trump will face more on this case, if you could start with the question of the age of the case whether this case, because it is not new, this is something that happened, you know, years ago. and he was never prosecuted for it by the federal officials who prosecuted michael cohen what does that say to you, that this is a state prosecution based on the same facts as the federal prosecution, but he was never pursued for that, what do you make of the fact that he theoretically might be pursued for the now? yeah, it seems, joy, that donald trump s misconduct is a distraction from donald trump s