indictment of donald trump on thursday donald trump became the first former commander in chief in history to face a criminal indictment. that s after a grand jury in new york voted to indict the former president as part of manhattan district attorney s alvin bragg s investigation into a hush money payment made into adult film star stormy daniels back in 2016 now that indictment is currently sealed, and that means we and a whole lot of people do not know the specific charges or charge that have been levied against donald trump we do know bragg has been focused on a felony charge of falsifying business records which carries a maximum prison sentence of four years donald trump denies any wrongdoing, denies having an affair with stormy daniels, and he is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in a court of law that trial has not yet occurred. bragg s investigation is one of many against the ex-president. back in 2018 cohen, trump s former lawyer and fixer, was ntenced t
Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. Knowing that was illegal. Cnn chief National Security correspondent jim sciutto is covering the trial. He joins us. Now what more did gates say on the stand . Anderson, you had the deputy there sitting within ten feet of his former his longtime boss, documenting by his accounts numerous crimes, alleged crimes by his boss, Paul Manafort. And the list started with them setting up 15 Foreign Bank Accounts which they did not report to the government for the purposes of hiding taxes. He said that they filed false income tax returns. He said they failed to file as foreign agents even though they were working as agents for a Foreign Government, in this case the prorussian Government Of Ukraine at the time. And rick gates said he did all of this, his words, all of this at the direction of Paul Manafort, saying these are crimes we did together, in
and that certainly holds true for rick gates. I should
anti-semitic trope of course we re talking about donald trump here so everything is at a magnified level. we re talking about someone who doesn t mind leaning into racisttropes, anti-semitism. so these things are escalated at a level truly unprecedented. i can tell you when you re prosecuting criminals, there s always the danger someone is going to target you instead of trying to deal with the court and the justice system as is that s only to say it is not something that is new. there s always the danger you may need heightened security because you are on the prosecutor on a very high profile case of course i ve seen that before but at this level you re talking about someone who has a huge bull horn and shown himself unafraid and unabashed and without any sort of shame. donald trump denies the charges. we don t know what the charges are but he denies them
some people have interpreted it as racist calling alvin bragg an animal amongst other things. there s also this george soros line that keeps coming up, which is code. when someone talks about george soros backed, the implication is jews controlling stuff correct you go back to well, i would say an obvious code of anti-semitism. why do we have to bring that in here jews don t control the media, and they don t control the criminal process in new york state or in america. and so to-do that is to somehow degrade the to use soros name is an effort to degrade the process and to bring up terrible associations we have too much hatred and bigotry in this country. we need to have a process that s fair and honest and that s what s going to happen in new york state, and donald trump will be given his rights
that s just how the president was when he was a private citizen, a candidate and now the president. the real focus should be on the president supporting things like charter schools and school choice and parental choice and trying to figure out ways how we can improve school systems across the country, not just in akron, ohio, which i think is a positive thing. but i think and hope that lebron james and others will come to the table with the federal government, with the trump administration and try to find ways to make this solution more of a national solution, not just singly focus on akron, ohio, which is still a very good thing. but of course none of that was said by the president of the united states, dr. west. what he did say and has said before about congresswoman waters is one of the oldest kind of racisttropes, you know, racist attacks on african-americans in this country, questioning the intelligence of it. it was an obsession among racists for centuries.