america s most famou presidential statements. today, wow they are going to arrest me. can t believe this i happening. president trump, will you come speak to us the ex president surrenders he is arrested but. fingerprinted. criminally charged with 34 felonies in a manhattan courthouse. these are felony crimes i new york state no matter who you are. prosecutors say he ran a criminal scheme to conceal damaging information, unlawful activity from american voter before the 2016 election former president trump plead not guilty he is frustrated. he is upset. tonight the substance of the case. the people versus donald trump joy reid, already melbourne, alex wagner stephanie bowl all here for msnbc special coverage of the first ever criminal indictment of a forme president of the united states good evening and thank you for being with us here tonight i am rachel maddow here at msnbc headquarters in new york along with lawrence o donnel and joy reid, and nicole wallace
ask not what your country ca do for you mr. gorbachev teared down this wall states criminal indictment of former president of the united states good evening and thank you for being with us here tonight i am rachel maddow here at msnbc headquarters in new york along with lawrence o donnel and joy reid, and nicole wallace, and chris hayes we are going to be joined by more of our closest colleagues over the course of this evenin tonight, as part of the specia coverage we know that you have ever choice in the world tonight as to where to get your news abou this historic event. that makes us all the more grateful that you are here together with us tonight. so, here is how it works just got the transcripts we know exactly how it went. the clerk. calendar number one, indictmen 71543 of 2023, people of the state of new york versus donal j trump. appearances. prosecutor, christophe conwright for the people, your honor. and judge, with me are kathryn mccaw, matthew cullen julio, steve
Records and tax records, e cetera, so this is something that would happen to anyone. you want to talk about thi what happened this would happen to anyone as the bread and brother of a white collar crimes. i would say though, we keep coming, you end up coming back to this philosophical bedroc of what the law is what is the law? what is equal justice under law? this is the betting story of the entire trump era i think when you read this indictment, right, i think either - is defensive it is a bubble case. it is not a slam dunk, i don t think. they are going to have - it feel so much more soli to me today than it did before i saw this indictment, though. i mean, again on, the facts but on the - it is tricky you need to be able to prov that there were deliberately falsified business records falsified with intent fo corrupt purposes, and that the were falsified in order to conceal or facilitate whit collar crime today we got the recitation of the crime and the i didn t expec
Weisselberg and from pecker. there s an argument to be made that the district attorne bag has a better prosecution o the facts then the feds do because he alone has the business records crime that is not a federal crime. that is not something that the would be able to bring in th southern district. so, it is tricky if michael cohen was a full an open, total disclosure cooperator in the southern district - still decided not to go forward, i don t get to, but i do understand why we are where we are now with bragg can we also make the note that this office, this da office, prosecute this - all the time there s one sense in which the goose news about this is thi is a mundane business record crime that is not uncommon and it is not uncommon from this prosecutor so, his most recent victor against trump llc s make up the trum corporation was about business records and tax records, e cetera, so this is something that would happen to anyone. you want to talk about thi what happened thi