special assistant district os attorney in the new york d.a. s office, working there specifically on the investigation of former president donald j. trump.do thank you for being here. thank you for inviting me, and i appreciate it.ou i appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. i don t think that i am creating more free-flowing rage about you by letting the hi audience know that there is a w lot of it, but i have to ask is there anything you want to take issue with or if there s anything i described wrongly. no, the only thing i might ed take issue with is describing me as such a big deal and my family. it doesn t feel that way to me. i m writing the book as a 70 almost 72-year-old not quite retired lawyer, but thank you wy for having me. well, i m happy to have you. you are a man who knows of what you speak and who has been ther and done that in terms of the law both as a federal prosecutor and somebody in private practice involved in a lot of complex cases.
agreement and no services rendered and was just being repaid for the money paid on donald trump s behalf to stormy daniels, and some other money as well. so in order to disguise the manner, the mechanism for the e repayment, false business records were created and that was the crime that we were looking at. now, in technical terps you described there s a problem with that because unless those false business records were created to conceal another crime, that would just be a misdemeanor, sort of wouldn t be worth bringing against trump. in order for it to be a felony there had to be some effort to conceal some other crime. is that right? did i understand that correctly? it certainly you need the intent to commit or conceal another crime to raise the offense of a falsified business record to a felony from a misdemeanor. now, you say a misdemeanor would
hook particularly on the hush money issue. sure. while trump was president. now he s no longer president. do you believe that sdny will ever do anything with this? i haven t seen any reporting to indicate that there s an active investigation. and as i mentioned in the book, this was a case that cried out for federal investigation. for all the reasons i talk about there and have alluded to here. i don t know why there was never an intensive federal investigation of donald trump s finances. when the new york times did their big expose in october of 2020 of trump s tax returns, i recall reading that and thinking to myself, well, this is going to start the feds on a substantial investigation, maybe it did and we never found out about it, but as i say, there s nothing to indicate that that investigation happened and one of the enduring mysteries which i can t answer is why it didn t happen.
in doing some additional reporting preparing to talk to you tonight, we were able to learn from sources that the team working right now at the new york d.a. s office is about 20, about 20 lawyers and investigators at the d.a. s office and we don t know again what they are bringing before the grand jury and we don t know if any charges will arise or what they will be, but i m also struck by your complimentary words about the new york attorney general s office and the investigation that was led by tish james there and that quarter billion dollar civil suit on the basis of trump s financial statements that you described earlier. now, one thing that happened when tish james revealed the factual basis for thaticism suit is she referred it to sdny suggesting that there s federal prosecution to be done there given that fact pattern. we have seen through public reporting and public revelations how much pressure main justice put on sdny to let trump off the
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