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the repayment to cohen was disguised as the payment for legal services rendered on a monthly basis pursuant to a retainer agreement. except there was no retainer agreement and no services rendered andd 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 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 justan 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
to approach this case and what charges he wanted to bring so there is an argument against him on the substance but also just this utfree-floating lawyer fur out there f over his decision t publish anything about the case at all. and i can tell you that is gladitorial combat that i am interested in watching but not interested in joining that. i'm not oneed of those gladiato. i'm not even a lawyer. what i'm interested in, we the public and wed the press for better or worse, we do now get the benefit of what mark pomerantz can describe to us as the strength of the evidence against trump, its potential weaknesses, potential charges against trump and the wherewithal of the prosecutors who in new york at least appear to have trump in their sights. from mr. pomerantz's book, for example, we learn that there were at least nine -- he lists nine different areas of criminal
been sworn in february '21, left in february '22. by the time he left, there had been no criminal charges brought against donald trump by that office. and mr. pomerantz once again made national headline news when he quit because he quit in loud protest of the fact that trump had not yet been charged. his resignation letter appeared in "the new york times." in it he said he and his investigative team determined there was no doubt that trump was guilty of numerous felony violations. he described it as a grave failure of justice. that there hadn't been charged levied against trump and he left. like i said, the man is a bit of a backfiring motorcycle. whether he intends it or not loudt noises follow him closel wherever he goes. but now to carry the metaphor forward it is starting to feel like the full on fourth of july because now mr. pomerantz is out
inquiry intocr trump by the d.as office when mr. pomerantz came on board in late 2020, nine. he tells us that serious consideration was u given in 20 to charging trump with money laundering in m conjunction wit his hush money payments to a porn star in 2016. he tells us that serious consideration was given in 2021 to charging trump with enterprise corruption, meaning they considered a state rico indictment against him as if he were a mob boss. and mr. pomerantz tells us that in conjunction with the d.a. telling prosecutors in his office that they could go ahead with theirld plans to charge trump, mark pomerantz says they did, in k fact, draw up draft charging languages -- excuse me, draft charging language for potential charges against trump. so that's all new. we didn't know any of that. and, again, there is wild free-flowing lawyer rage, rage in lawyer circles about mark
criminal areas of inquiry about potential criminality that the d.a.'s office was looking into at the time you joined. you say one of them was the hush money payment to stormy daniels. another one was taxes, potential improper business expense deductions, deductions of consulting feesio in his relationship with deutsche bank could he have defrauded deutsche bank by getting financing through overstated financial statements, whether he had engaged in money laundering using overseas bank accounts. the accuracy of materials he provided to the gsa about the old post office and a host of other things including insurance fraud, the restructuring of his loan on his chicago skyscraper. you go on and on and on. when you describe that litany of areas of potential criminal inquiry for trump and when you describe your reasoning and the debates between you and your team about the hush money thing, are you giving a potential life line to donald trump's defense lawyers that if they do end up
this book is making everybody lose their minds. it's making everybody very angry. people really are losing their damnlo mines over this book, an it is full of red hot allegations and information. i mean, mr. pomerantz is criticizing thera d.a. for a decision not to go ahead a year ago with potential charges against trump, but the d.a. does now appear to be pursuing something along those lines, and we're going to talk about that in detail, the difference between what the d.a. is pursuing versus what mr. pomerantz wanted to charge trump with a couple of years ago, but people are also mad because here's mark pomerantz who was involved in this investigation now talking and writing about how the investigation worked and what they thought and what they found and what they argued about behind the scenes and because of that very unusual circumstance from a -- somebody working in a prosecutor's office, there is right now sort of a furious counterargument against mr. pomerantz and how he wanted
this is from page 113 of mark pomerantz's new book, which is called "people vs. donald trump." it comes out tonight at midnight. we were looking at instance after instance of suspected illegal conduct. of course, they had to be provable, but if they were proved their collective weight left no doubt in my mind that trump deserved to be prosecuted. measures short of criminal prosecution had been used against trump, and he had dismissed them as trivial. looking at the totality of trump's conduct over the years i thought it was crystal clear that measures short of criminal prosecution meant nothing to him and would not deter him in the slightest from engaging in other anti-social behavior. indeed, the more successful he became, the more brazen was his behavior, he'd stiffed many contractors and small business owners who decided to advance services or products to the trump organization because, after all, donald trump was so
intent to n 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 not be worth bringing against trump. reasonable people could take issue with that. when we first looked at the falsified business records and saw the legal problem and there was a legal problem, because it's not clear whether the other crime that a defendant has to intend to conceal or commit, whether federal crimes count. michael cohen pled guilty to a federal tocrime, a federal election law a violation but it not clear from the language of thefr statute that this -- anotr crime that raises the misdemeanor to aat felony can ba federal offense. it may be that that works. it may not be that that works. it's an undecided issue under new york law sode when we first looked at it, we saw, gee, there's a real risk here, a
retired lawyer, but thank you for having me. >> well, i'm happy to have you. you are a man who knows of what you speak and who has been there and done that in terms of the law both asms a federal prosecur and somebody in private practice involved in a lot of complex cases. let me ask you first of all about something i alluded to in the introduction which is that since thetr book was completed, know from sort of a close reading to the use of tense and the way you were describing it, since the book was completed we have seen these moves by the new york d.a. to make a presentment of evidence of some kind to a grand jury in new york athat would lead to asking that grand jury to indict mr. trump. from what we know before the grand jury right now, describing it as hearing witness testimony and reviewing other evidence about those hush money payments, how does that differ from what you thought that the d.a. should charge? >> well, when we were looking at
asme of midnight tonight with ts new book called "people vs. donald trump," an inside account and in this slim book, he starts off with a bombshell revelation, he explains early on in the book that it wasn't just that he wanted to bring charges against former president donald trump, he says the district attorney, the new york d.a. who brought him into the office and hired him to work on the case, he wanted charges too. mark pomerantz says that in december 2021 just over a year after trump lost re-election, on december 13th, 2021 he says the then serving prosecutor in the manhattan r d.a.'s office cy vae authorized criminal charges againstth former president trum related to alleged financial crimes, allegedly submitting fake valuations of his properties and his assets in order to get banks to loan him money. december 13th, 2021, mark pomerantz says the d.a. in new york gave the okay to pursue criminal charges along those lines against trump.