this is america s newsroom. a years long investigation. a grand jury brought an indictment to president trump. the charges are under seal for now. the counts number in the dozens. bill: that s sparking a firestorm of criticism for the manhattan d.a. alvin bragg. known as a soft on crime prosecutor. since he took office in january, he has downgraded more than 50% of felonies in new york to misdemeanors. he appears to be taking the opposite take against the former president. republicans calling it political persecution. manhattan d.a. s office is in contact with the former president s legal team. they re working to coordinate his surrender. a logistic call nightmare. one of the president s attorneys said the d.a. wanted when im to surrender today. the president pushed back on that and expected to happen on tuesday. bill: let s begin now. chad pergram on the hill. andy mccarthy with analysis. bryan llenas joins us outside the courthouse in lower manhattan, new york city.
maybe others, we don t know. a guy appreciate out of jail and on cnn last night. listen on the charges he talked about. this notion of oh, this is a weaker case than the january 6th. i acknowledge that. i always called this is capone theory. they couldn t get him on murder, extortion, racketeering, etc. they got him on tax evasion. if that crime don was enough for me to be charged, fined, convicted and sent to prison why am i any different than donald trump? bill: tie that together. does he have a point or off a deep end? he doesn t have a point. the problem is al capone did commit tax fraud. so getting him on that was legitimate. the federal prosecutors and federal election commission that actually have jurisdiction over federal campaign finance law investigated trump on this and decided not to prosecute him.
but in the justice department, we have guidance that tells prosecutors to limit the number of charges to the things that are really serious because what you are always worried about for due process purposes is the prosecutor tries to bowl over the jury with quantity when the case doesn t have quality. so to make this thing which looks like really a nonsense case which are now 34 felony counts which each carries a four-year potential prison statute. what is this guy, nicki barnes, are you kidding? interesting. they all say you have to see the indictment. we haven t seen it yet. you mentioned more than 30 counts. allegedly that s for if you made $130,000 total payments but in 34 different payments each one could be a charge. one speculation from one legal analyst from last night. we think cowen is the lead witness.