Dana Milbank: Anyone who says they know what the impact of this is is lying, because no convicted felon has ever run for president as the top candidate of a major party.
Karen TumultyMany people questioned whether this case should even be brought. Some even called it a “horrible case.” Ruth, you didn’t like the prosecution’s case very much. Have you changed your mind?
Marcus: Well, I’ve been on the side of skepticism, but I want to put this trial in a broader context. And I think that’s a point the Biden campaign might make, which is, “It’s unfortunate that the weakest and in some ways the least important of these cases has become the first, and now the only, case to go to trial before the election. If this process had played out in a more fair way, Donald Trump would not have been a once-convicted felon in a New York state court. He would probably have been a thrice-convicted felon by the time of the election, convicted in a Florida federal court for obstruction of justice and mishandling of classified documents, and convicted in a Washington, D.C., district court for attempting to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in the 2020 election.”
I thought this was the weakest case legally because of the really tedious complexity of New York law. But that doesn’t mean the underlying facts weren’t really disturbing. He conspired with Michael Cohen and others to conceal salient, important, potentially crucial information from voters in the form of concealing his relationship with Stormy Daniels. He gave her hush money. And he did that at the exact time he was most politically exposed. Voters didn’t have the information they should have had to determine whether he was fit to be president in 2016. This is really egregious and corrupt conduct. So the fact that we shoved this into a New York false business records case may be somewhat legally disturbing, but it’s not morally disturbing.
Listen to Complete conversation here:
