'Accountability is here': Preet Bharara on 'extraordinary' first day of Trump trial

Starting tonight is PR Barara, he's the former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. It's great to be

here

with you. You've been in these courtrooms. You know what it's like to have a strategy from time to time, so from time to time. So let's start with your big takeaway from today's events. Look, I think it's important to take a moment, as you did in your introduction, to consider what an

extraordinary

situation this is after all the delays, after all the complaining, after all the movement. practice with three of the four cases delayed mhm some due to the Supreme Court others due to an ethics issue in Georgia um you have an actual criminal case that is moving forward um you could say you finally have the peaceful transition to

accountability

, which is no small thing, you literally have a defendant with Secret Service agents to protect him in a Manhattan courtroom in a state court in front of the music and also finding him supposedly so worldly or maybe he's so tired of the preparation that he closed his eyes and apparently maybe fell asleep, that's a big deal, you know, because people have been worried about t

here

being no

accountability

, he's here and you know he was the former president of the commander in chief. of the United States, he may be again, he aspires to that again, but he couldn't hide in some oligarch cabin somewhere, um, he doesn't have his own army and the fact that he could be brought to justice the United States of America despite its past position and its potential future position, I think it says something good and right about the rule of law, yes, the slow wheels of justice, but they started today and we can feel good about that.

I went through some of this and I think a lot of us are trying to figure out what to do with it, I mean, because there's a lot of discussion about what evidence was admissible and what evidence was not, so I want to go over some of that and see how you feel. hit the Access Hollywood tape I mentioned, so they can't play the tape but they can use the transcript. why and what does that mean, that's a good question and I have the same question, it's a bit peculiar. I mean, one thing you have to realize is that in every case, but certainly in a case where the whole world is watching and scrutinizing and will be especially scrutinized by an appeal in court if there is a conviction here it is that the judge wants act carefully and make sure that your rulings are sound and within your discretion and you are never found to have abused your discretion and you know one could have argued I don't think, um bad, that the whole Hollywood business shouldn't have gone in absolutely.

You could argue that the Trump team made the argument, uh, although it's probative for the idea that they were so scared by this tape that came out that they wanted to. to stifle, you know, the disclosure of this relationship, so they made the payment. I think a judge might have decided not to allow that for fear that it would be reversible on appeal. What I don't understand and believe. Both laymen and lawyers do not fully understand if they know what the harmful difference is between allowing the transcription and every word that was spoken versus the tape and, in fact, because the tape itself does not have, it is not a videotape of Donald.

Trump is an audio tape, so they have one but not the other. I'm not sure why that makes much sense. I guess I can feel better because there is no clarity in the answer. There he was taking a look. I was giving one. to the defense and the record will show that and we'll go over some of the other things that I might wonder about in a second when a record shows that a judge seems to be going down the middle and finding um at his discretion for the prosecution sometimes for the defense. sometimes that sets a record on appeal by showing that this person was not determinedly trying to ruin the defense or ruin the prosecution or vice versa, so I think it's a reasonably good record so far, the other piece and it was the Michael Cohen of all this what it seems like the Michael Cohen of everything could be a topic of the next few weeks where some testimony and pleas were allowed, but he can't imply, but they can't imply Trump as guilty just because Cohen was, of course new to a layman and a non-lawyer, you're thinking, wait, Michael Cohen went to jail for this, um, that Trump actually participated in how that's not the case and how it's not admissible in court.

Well, the fact of guilt play is admissible for other reasons, but for a long time there has been a black letter law that says that just because someone else in a conspiracy has pleaded guilty to something, you don't want that to be held against them. to the person who is in the right to

trial

, has to prove separately in a separate proceeding, with separate

trial

evidence and separate witnesses, that the person who is at trial is guilty, knows it, but could be said to have some indirect effect because the jurors, although you cannot argue with them, the jury will say, well, wait a minute, you have a core of facts for which this other person was convicted and found guilty in some other court, that means that a crime was committed crime and you might think this might apply to Trump, but I think there's going to be instructions to the jury that they can't consider that for that purpose and the judge correctly determined under the law that you can't consider that for that purpose, but it's A double-edged sword, right?

On one hand maybe it's useful for prosecutors because a guy was convicted of a crime which maybe proves there was a crime, on the other hand there's a witness who was convicted of a crime and among the crimes he was convicted of was lying and who they are. Now you're going to believe this lying witness that he was convicted, so I think it's a big question about how much Cohen will be perceived. I mean, Donald Trump had hush money sex like your average non-lawyer, as I read it, but let's see how this all plays out. I want to ask you about jury selection, which was obviously a big part of the factor today.

You have been an important part of jury selection in the past. There is a lot of strategy involved. Here are a couple. things that happened that stood out, I mean, half of the

first

panel of 96 jurors were dismissed after they said they couldn't be fair and impartial, they could have lied, maybe they're being honest, of course, that's good, There is also a questionnaire for the jury. It was long and asked a lot of questions about people's media consumption. Did anything stand out to you about the questionnaire or the number of people who recused themselves today? I think it is an intermediate questionnaire.

I think you know most of the questions out of the 42 were agreed upon by consensus by both the prosecution and the defense, there is a subset of questions that there was no agreement on and I think the judge made a good determination on what those questions should be. and how they should be formulated. I usually see dozens of people in the

first

round say they can't be fair. And you know, a second ago you said something that I think is worthy of more comment. You know, presumably, there are dozens of people in the jury pool. group that doesn't like Donald Trump doesn't want him to become president could have decided Well, I'm going to fake my way to the jury, I say I'm going to be fair and be part of the process that convicts Donald Trump because maybe it will hurt him somehow politically or otherwise and they didn't do that and the fact that there are such a significant number of people who decided that I'm not going to be a part of something that's not roate, I'm just going to know, absent, I think that's a good sign about the possible fairness of the trial, yeah, that's interesting and a very interesting take, so I want to talk to you about that.

There will be a ruling next week on the gag order and I think the gag order is the big question of like $1,000 dollars for each tweet if he's not going to be jailed, which seems unlikely, that will really stop him from attacking the people, in this case you shouldn't. attack like the judge, the judge's family, yes, people, what do you think? I think the gag order is a little bit secondary, um, there's not a lot of teeth in the gag order, you know, Donald Trump, it would be a big deal for the judge to put Donald Trump in jail for a day or two or three days to get to the edge cross a little sip a toe um I think the real main show is the evidence that's going to be presented at trial, um, and I think you know it's hard to be a juror in this case, um, so if Donald Trump goes overboard on juries, which I don't think he will, he's not that stupid, then you.

I'll see, I think it's a setup, but when he does this kind of, you know, stopping and mocking people around the circle of judges or the court, which he's specifically allowed to do, I think he'll get away with it. Hello everyone, MSNBC has a new and improved app, you will get real-time alerts and analysis, live blogs, in-depth essays, video highlights and the best 2024 election coverage, download the new MSNBC app, here's how, tap the App Store on your phone, press search on In the bottom right corner you type MSNBC, click on the MSNBC app, click Get or the cloud icon and enjoy.