How to talk to your Family, Neighbor, or Coworker about the Manhattan Verdict

Don't listen to Susan Collins

News junkies like me jumped the moment it was announced that the Manhattan jury had reached a verdict. I quickly turned on MSNBC to hear the news of the verdict in real time. While I had been persuaded by some smart people that there might be some counts where a verdict wasn’t reached, that wasn’t what happened.

One of the interesting dynamics of this election cycle is the separation between high information voters who regular go to the polls and low information voters who rarely do. Recent polling shows that Biden defeats Trump handily among the first group and loses among the second.

Dan Pfeiffer, former Obama comms person and Pod Save America cohost, has regularly written in his Message Box SubStack that the key to political influence is not clever memes on social media or big ad buys on cable television. What matters is talking to people you know.

Ever since the Manhattan indictment was announced, there has been a constant drumbeat on the right about how the case is novel, is aimed at Trump personally¹, is the result of Biden administration weaponization², and was all about a long-ago sexual encounter that nobody cares about³. It was hard to push back against all these claims because the prosecutors (unlike the defense) were not going to try the case in the court of public opinion. That’s why Susan Collins (and many others) made claims like this yesterday:

It is fundamental to our American system of justice that the government prosecutes cases because of alleged criminal conduct regardless of who the defendant happens to be. In this case the opposite has happened. The district attorney, who campaigned on a promise to prosecute Donald Trump, brought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was rather than because of any specified criminal conduct. The political underpinnings of this case further blur the lines between the judicial system and the electoral system, and this verdict likely will be the subject of a protracted appeals process.

And finally we got to the trial. Things changed, even for political junkies like me. Because it wasn’t televised, we were left with X or Threads shaped snippets of what was occurring in the courtroom. Even at that, there was enough information available to you to share with your friends, family, and coworkers. Perhaps you can simply ask them to reflect on the following questions (with explanation).

1. Why would anyone think there was bias because the case was tried in Manhattan? Ignore all the distractions about voting patterns in Manhattan. The answer is simple. The case was in Manhattan because the offenses were in Manhattan.⁴ Judge Merchan drew the case in the same way judges are assigned cases everywhere. It is true that he gave $35 to Democrats and that his daughter worked for a firm that sometimes had Democratic clients. But he asked the ethics board if he was conflicted and they said no. Trump even appealed his decision not to recuse and that was rejected by the appellate court. The first thing Merchan did with the jury pool as to allow anyone who thought they couldn’t be fair to leave. Half the pool did so. The remainder of the pool went through voir dire, where the lawyers ask jurors questions and dismiss those with conflicts (or for any reason). Trump’s lawyers did not use all of their challenges. So the twelve people who finally served had been through multiple screens and had pledged to only rely on the evidence. The judge did limit testimony to keep out unsubstantiated political claims (like those of Susan Collins) and to keep focus on the necessary evidence. Things that would be prejudicial to the defense were kept out to a great extent. So ask your family, what should he have done differently from this?

2. What was important about David Pecker and the National Enquirer? This was bombshell testimony. We learned that Pecker, Michael Cohen, and Trump held a meeting in 2015 in which Pecker agreed that the National Enquirer would run stories favorable to Trump and negative about his 2016 primary opponents. That’s where the Ted Cruz’ father helped Lee Harvey Oswald or Ben Carlson leaving a sponge in child’s brain stories came from. The point was to have supermarket lines overwhelmed with pro-Trump and anti-others stories. And then there were the “catch and kill” payments to the doorman and Karen McDougal.⁵ Pecker entered into a non-prosecution agreement to avoid campaign finance charges for those in-kind contributions to the Trump campaign. Ask your friends, does this feel like an above-board relationship?

3. Were those legal fees paid to Michael Cohen legitimate? The 34 financial documents central to the case authorized payments to Cohen of $35,000 each for a total of $420,000. What did he do to earn that money? As the prosecution offered in closing, Cohen spent more time on the witness stand than he did as Trump’s attorney in 2017. The “smoking gun” document in the case was the wire transfer receipt for the $130,000 Cohen paid as the “hush money” payment, which was then grossed up to $420,000 and had handwriting of Cohen and Trump Org CFO Weisselberg. If these were legitimate legal expenses, there would have been billing records associated with them. Ask your coworker, wouldn’t you like to be paid four times the amount you were actually due?

4. What was the defense’s argument? If you strip away the political witch hunt argument and focus on the trial, it was difficult to see how the defense addressed the claims above. They simply asserted that those were legal expenses, argued that Cohen was the Greatest Liar of All Time, the nothing happened with Stormy Daniels. They had one key defense witness, Costello, intended to show that Cohen was lying and inadvertently made clear that he was attempting to create a backchannel to Gulliani and Trump so that Cohen wouldn’t cooperate. Trump could have been a witness, but he would have been asked under oath about a variety of problematic issues. He wasn’t required to testify. And the defense didn’t need to provide an alternative theory and could just argue that the prosecution hadn’t proven their case. Ask your family, why didn’t they address the key accusations of the case presented?

5. What’s the best process from here? Trump’s team has already said that they will appeal. There may be some question about how the law was applied to up-charge to a felony. There may be challenges to decisions Merchan made along the way or the nature of the jury instructions (which both sides agreed to). We do know that sentencing is scheduled for mid-June, but any imposition of sentence is likely to be suspended pending appeal. In spite of Trump’s statements this morning or Jim Jordan telling Bragg to appear before the House Judiciary committee, there is nothing to be gained by repeating the same “election interference” claims for the next six weeks. Not only will it not improve the sentencing decision, it might well make it worse. Ask your friend, isn’t it better to simply let the process play out and see where it leads?

This is what I’d want you to talk to friends, family, and co-workers about. There were things about this case that upon deeper consideration were highly troubling. That’s what best explains the verdicts that came down yesterday. And my listing of these troublesome matters doesn’t even rely on anyone trusting Michael Cohen or Stormy Daniels or Kevin Davidson. Those voices added context for the crime but weren’t the central issue.

Finally, in spite of what the former President argues, most respected legal analysts read the case as I’ve laid it out here. Those close to you are free to dislike the outcome and even vote for Trump in spite of the conviction, but they should admit that some bad things actually happened back in 2016 and may well have influenced the outcome of a very close election.

1. Philip Bump had an interesting history in today’s Washington Post. Not only did Bragg NOT campaign on prosecuting Trump, but his Republican challenger did. The concern was about treating white collar crime as a serious matter.

2. Due to federalism, local jurisdictions are independent of other national entities. Those making this claim are left arguing that one of the assistant prosecutors formerly worked for the department of justice for awhile. That guilt by association is a standard attempt to confuse things.

3. That is was called “the hush money case” didn’t help.

4. It’s why the Mar-a-Lago case is tried in Florida and not D.C.

5. Trump had a sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels and an alleged affair with McDougal.