Time for us on a breaking news night. i now want to turn to attorney maya wylie, leads the leadership conference on civil rights. she was a former civil prosecutor in the southern district of new york and a former mayoral candidate of new york. there s a lot of new york in this case. we just heard from the witness as i described him, mr. cohen. you have d.a. bragg here. he was on the ticket in the election cycle where you were talking about a lot of these same issues at the mayoral level. for folks around the nation who are keeping an eye now on new york, what does it mean to have this conviction tonight by the d.a.? well, first of all, it s a critically important conviction. it is one that demonstrates that the trump organization s guilty on all 17 counts. they didn t get acquitted on one of them. and it s because the witnesses, including mr. weisselberg, who cooperated in terms of the
Of don junior and eric trump. but weisselberg, during my time there, anything that came across his desk, he was very specific about having it documented on paper. you would sign a line, and then they would have donald sign either his initial or his name. so, yes, donald trump knew every single thing that was going on. nothing got approved without his signature. you refer to that initialing process. it may sound like this is a bit in the weeds of the paper work, but it s also where you have to go digging to get the evidence, and the closing arguments, one of the assistant d.a.s referred to what you just said. they had evidence, held it up to the jury showing donald trump s initial an exactly one of those pieces of financial misconduct, which is now tonight convicted in the state of new york. when you look at that all together and your personal knowledge, do you think they would still have a case against mr. trump personally? let me not say whether i would or would not.
From your time there, does that mean donald trump himself would be in on those things? well, one of the things i said, and i m saddened it has taken almost three years now since my house oversight committee hearing, where i had individuals like mr. clay and ocasio-cortez and jamie raskin all ask me very sub instanti questions that are similar or identical to the issues brought up by the manhattan district attorney. so, the answer, as i gave then and i ve given to 20 different organizations, whether it s congressional, law enforcement, et cetera, there was nothing that went on at the trump organization that donald trump not only did he know about but he would also sign off on. allen weisselberg was not authorized to do anything. that s of course until donald trump became president, and he became the trustee on the behalf
Allegation. there were the allegations where he had the shut down the trump foundation in new york state because the funds were being used for personal benefit, which you cannot do under the charitable laws of new york. we have currently tish james the attorney general for new york state continuing to investigate tax and insurance fraud civil but nonetheless fraud, and then we have what comes up in this case. i could go on. but i think the point is, the word fraud is attached to the name of donald trump in a whole lot of news stories and a whole lot of cases in investigations. and i want to add one other point that s important not to forget here. it is very difficult for prosecutors to prove a case without direct evidence, right? you can have circumstantial evidence, but it still has to point very directly. allen weisselberg bent over backwards to cooperate with the
Prosecutors found it credible, ace mentioned, the jurors found it credible. your response to this conviction of the company where you once worked. yeah, so one of the big concerns, new york d.a., manhattan d.a., was could we get a jury that did not have with it someone who is a trump maga supporter? and clearly the answer to that is yes. donald trump s or i should say, the trump organization s convictions, while very, very gratifying, so to speak, it doesn t hold accountable. and the fact that allen weisselberg fell on the sword, and so i guess between the assistant comptroller, again, it doesn t hold donald trump accountable. the next question that people should be asking themselves is, what s next for alvin bragg?