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Alvin Bragg: The 12 everyday jurors vowed to make a decision based on the evidence and the law, and the evidence and the law alone. Their deliberations led them to a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Donald J. Trump is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree to conceal a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.

Brian Lehrer: Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, focusing on the jury after the 34 felony convictions of Donald Trump yesterday as Trump after the verdict, tried to focus on anything, but--

Donald Trump: Our whole country is being rigged right now. This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent or political opponent. I think it's just a disgrace and we'll keep fighting. We'll fight till the end and we'll win because our country's gone to hell.

Brian Lehrer: Donald Trump yesterday, with us now, Andrea Bernstein, who covered the trial from inside the courtroom for NPR. She was previously the host of the WNYC podcast Trump, Inc. about the intersection of Trump's business interests and the public interest, also the Will Be Wild podcast about the events leading up to January 6th. She is author of the book, American Oligarchs, The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power. Andrea has been coming on with us as some of you know on various days off from the trial, they usually took Wednesdays off from testimony. Andrea, thanks for coming on again now that it's done, and listeners--

Andrea Bernstein: Now we're really off.

Brian Lehrer: Now you're really off until the next thing. Listeners, our phones are open, comments, questions, emotions, analysis, the law of it, the politics of it, whatever, on the conviction of Donald Trump. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. To that one juror who was on the record from the jury selection form as listening to WNYC, we would love to have you tell us why you and your fellow jurors voted to convict on all counts.

Call as anonymously as you want at 212-433-WNYC. Andrea, you were inside as the verdicts were read. We know how the story ends, but can you just take us through that a little bit? Maybe start with when it became clear to you that a verdict would come down. Can you take us to that moment?

Andrea Bernstein: We were in the courtroom yesterday. The court days have been ending pretty rigorously except for the day of summations. They've been ending for the jury at 4:30, pretty much on the dot every day, and starting every day at 9:30. About 4:15 in the afternoon where basically the press are just sitting in the empty courtroom applying courtroom rules, no cell phones, no food, no talking, sitting there, being quiet, and the day before when the jury had a note, we heard this very loud buzzer go off. All of a sudden yesterday afternoon a little bit before 4:15, the DA's office team files in shortly after Trump and his entourage filing, and they all sit down.

We're not entirely sure what's going on because we haven't heard a bell. The judge comes to the bench, it's about 4:15 and he says, "I'm about to dismiss the jury for the day. We will give them 15 minutes more to work." We're all thinking, "Okay, well, no verdict today." We're trying to wonder what to make of that, plotting our next move. About 20 minutes later he comes back and he says, "I received a note from the jurors at 4:20, named the court exhibit." He said, "They have a verdict and they want a half an hour to fill out the verdict form." We're all there waiting.

A few stragglers come in from Trump team, DA Alvin Bragg comes in. It is entirely silent in this courtroom, which is, I know you've heard this, but it's really cruddy. The shades are drawn, there's no natural light. Basically, all we can hear in the courtroom is the buzz of the fluorescent lights. Just around five o'clock, the judge comes back, he summons the jury, still everything is quiet. He asks the jury foreperson, "Have you reached a verdict?" He says, "Yes, I have." Then one of the court personnel says, "What say you for count 1 guilty, what say you for count 2, all the way through the 34th count guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty extremely fast."

Trump is very quiet the whole time. Everyone is quiet. The judge, there's a little bit of business having to do with the sentencing date, with Trump's bail status. He remains released on his own recognizance. The Trump team puts in a motion to set aside the verdict. That motion is denied, and then the jury is dismissed. They walk out, the judge leaves. Trump turns around, he walks out of the courtroom. While he's walking out, and I was sitting right behind Trump and his defense team.

He walks out and he turns to grab the hand of his son, Eric and give it a pull and he's grimacing. He looked about as stricken as I have ever seen him in that moment. I have not also seen him reach out to his family in that way, especially his son, Eric, who's been in the courtroom quite a bit, was in the courtroom in a civil fraud trial. Then walks out and says, "The tape that you played at the beginning," and he is speaking now. That was how that verdict came down.

Brian Lehrer: Did Judge Juan Merchan address the jury or Donald Trump directly in any way after the verdicts were read?

Andrea Bernstein: He thanked the jurors after the verdicts were read. He told them that the admonitions that he's given them everyday, no social media, don't discuss it among yourselves, don't talk about it with anyone else, that those are lifted and they are free to do what they want to do, which is interestingly different, for example, from the E. Jean Carroll Defamation case where the federal judge in that case instructed the jury just a really not much more than a block away in another courtroom that said to them, "I advise you to never speak about this case."

The jurors did not get any instructions other than, "Thank you and do what you deem best." That's how Judge Merchan left it. He also said he was going to privately come into the jury room to thank them, although he said he wasn't going to be discussing the facts or anything to do with the case with them, just to thank them for their service.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned Donald Trump touching the hand of Eric Trump, who's been in the courtroom and saying your book title as I was introducing you, your book title about The Kushners and The Trumps reminds me that I don't think Ivanka ever showed up to support her father in court, and Melania had never showed up to support her husband, tell me if I'm wrong. Any thoughts on what a new chapter of The Marriage of Money and Power might look like if you were to write one about this?

Andrea Bernstein: I noticed that too, and especially so because Trump's younger daughter, Tiffany Trump showed up. She's someone that you've not seen in these families groupings and was not part of the Trump business. Melania Trump has told friends per reporting that Donald Trump got himself into this mess and she was going to leave him on his own to get himself out. It was a noticeable omission. I've seen many trials where wives show up to support their husbands who are defendants. That happens a lot.

The interesting thing about Ivanka Trump is when all of this was happening in real-time, when there were moments during the campaign where Trump would be attacked for behaving badly towards women, where Ivanka Trump would be put forward by the campaign as someone to speak and she would say, "Look at me, I'm an executive and I'm powerful, and I'm a woman, and there are many women who work at the Trump organization. How could you possibly think all these things about my father?" It was noticeable that she was not there. Now, she did say when Trump announced his presidency that she would continue to support her father, but would not work on his campaign.

The complication for her family is that her husband, Jared Kushner has a great deal of business with Saudi Arabia and continues to cultivate his relationships with his father-in-law so far as we can tell. For example, while Ivanka did not show up at the announcement of his candidacy, Jared Kushner did. That was interesting. She showed up in the civil fraud trial to testify, but her lawyers worked very, very hard to get her out of it. They ultimately could not. Don Junior and Eric had shown up during that trial, particularly Eric Trump on many occasions.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a question for you from listener, and this is going to ask you to put on your political reporter or political analyst hat. Listener writes, "Does Ms. Bernstein think there is any chance that the really big money conservative donors to the Republican Party, Charles Koch at all, feel Trump is losing proposition and are willing to back another candidate at the convention this summer?"

Andrea Bernstein: I haven't really seen any evidence of that. In fact, many of the donors that seem to be sitting on the sideline, some of them are moving towards Trump as the party coalesces around him. Of course, I haven't paid all that close attention to the fundraising numbers, but certainly there was a period this spring where Trump was obviously in some fundraising trouble. It doesn't seem like there's going to be a big break. I think as we've seen, many political figures have come out and defended Trump. I think what is troubling is a lot of times after trials you hear, "The jury has spoken." We're hearing the opposite.

We're hearing, "The jury has spoken and we don't care." That obviously shades of 2020 election where it's the voters have spoken and there's a campaign to undermine what has happened in one of our last remaining institutions that upholds the rule of law, which is a court of law.

Brian Lehrer: Also, with respect to the politics, we're just going to have to wait and see how it really turns out, what kind of an impact this has. Presumably, this is going to be the only verdict in any of the Trump trials that comes before the election, but there's an NPR poll out, NPR/PBS/Marist, and I'm looking at a New York Post version of it because that's what has come up. Assuming this is accurate, not many voters said in advance of the verdict that they would be moved by a verdict. It says, "More than three-quarters, 76% of registered voters and 78% of people who describe themselves as definite voters said Trump's perspective acquittal would make no difference to their vote.

Another 12% of the latter group said they would be more likely to vote for Trump if he was found not guilty, and 8% said they would be less likely to vote for Trump if he was acquitted, that's on an acquittal. Then on a conviction, 67% of registered voters said that a guilty verdict will make no difference to their vote. The percentage ticked up to 69% no difference among those who said they would definitely go to the polls on November 5th, with 15% of that cohort saying they would be more likely to vote for Trump, more likely, and the same percentage saying they would be less likely to vote for him."

The headline on that story as The Post told it was most say Trump conviction in New York hush money case won't change their presidential vote, but to me, the telling number in that poll is there are 15% of people who call themselves definite voters, who say they would be less likely to vote for him if he's convicted. Now he's been convicted. When you look at the swing states, Wisconsin, Michigan, and the others, they were so close in 2020 that if 15% of voters swing because of a conviction, it could be really, really bad for him.

Andrea Bernstein: There's a lot of stuff to say about that. I think certainly in 2016 and even in 2020, we're talking about a couple of football stadiums may be full of people that are making the difference, which is a big amount of people if you're in the stadium, but a tiny amount of people if you're talking about the whole country. I think it really depends on how you slice that. I just feel like, Brian, I haven't asked a pollster this, and I hope the next time you have a pollster on, you can ask them this question. I'm always very confused by this question because I don't know how somebody can say something where there's absolutely no prior.

How would you feel if the president is convicted when it hasn't happened yet? It's such a hypothetical that I just actually feel like we don't know, we don't understand the territory we're working in. It's uncharted, it's never happened before. It's never happened in this way before. I certainly think it's possible that voters are unmoved and I don't dismiss that. We live in a very tribal era where, as I just mentioned, people are piling on, and defending Trump, and saying that the verdict was unfair. That is a possibility, but I just want to say I don't think we know, and this is one of those cases where we just have to see what happens.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Absolutely. I think what the voters who responded to the poll couldn't know was what kind of an emotional impact the moment would have on them when it actually came. I was outdoors at the time yesterday. I heard that the verdict was going to come down so I started listening on headphones to a TV feed. To hear the anchor say, "Count one, guilty," that moment of the first guilty verdict was like a shock, even though we knew a verdict was coming and guilty was fairly likely, and then to hear it 34 times.

Granted I'm someone who works in the media paying close attention to the case for my job as well as because I personally follow these kinds of things, I don't know if everybody is going to react like that, but even sometimes when you know something big is coming and then it actually comes, emotionally it lands like a rock.

Andrea Bernstein: I've been, and this is the fifth trial that I've covered in the past less than two years, about a year and a half of [unintelligible 00:15:52] company. This is a criminal case and it is qualitatively different from the criminal charges against just company and all the other cases which were civil. This is a case where Donald Trump is going to have to go through a process. I'm not exactly sure how the logistics will work in his case, but typically what happens is you're interviewed by a probation officer and it's your chance to show what a good person you are and why your sentence should be less.

He has to do that. He has to show up and be sentenced on July 11th. He is someone whose movements will be monitored in some way, even while he's running for president. This is an extraordinary thing. I also just think that from what I saw in the courtroom yesterday, it is affecting him. This as a matter of fact for the whole seven weeks of the trial, the fact that he was unable to leave. He said in all the other trials, "Oh, I should be in Georgia, I should be in Iowa," et cetera.

You've heard this so many times him saying this, but he in this case, really had to be there. I think that that is something different. Being criminally convicted, this is beyond a reasonable doubt. This is not preponderance of the evidence, it's not any other standard, it is beyond a reasonable doubt. It is something different. We are going to have to see how it filters down through the electorate.

Brian Lehrer: We know that some of his faithful or even more behind him than they ever were thinking him more of a victim than they ever did. Listener writes, "Small donors are standing behind Trump. They crashed his website when the verdict was announced." I did see that reported that his campaign website did crash from the traffic that was going to it making donations. I guess it just proves that as Trump always said, he could falsify records on 5th Avenue and his supporters would still support him, but that doesn't ultimately say anything about swing voters. Juan in Plainfield, New Jersey, you're on WNYC with Andrea Bernstein. Hi, Juan.

Juan: Oh, thank you. I have a burning question. He's a convicted felon, felons cannot get a security clearance. How can he have access to classified documents if he does win the election, much less the nuclear code with no security clearance?

Andrea Bernstein: We don't know how that's going to be handled, big question mark. Typically, presidential candidates, even during transitions get access to classified documents. It is really, again, just one of those things that we don't know how it's going to work out. My suspicion is that he won't have no access, but this is just another of the questions that we'll have to be watching. He is, of course, also at this time indicted separately in Florida for having mishandled classified documents and hiding them in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago and other such things.

He has pleaded not guilty in that case, but the special counsel in that case has released a lot of evidence. I don't think we know many of these things. As we were in the courthouse, many things felt like they were being improvised and figured out in the moment. We just didn't know how things were going to work until they actually happened. I suspect it's going to feel like that for the whole country going forward.

Brian Lehrer: Is it really a rule that somebody who's been convicted of something like this, falsifying business records, still a low-level crime in the scheme of things, certainly in the scheme of the other things Trump has been charged with, would be barred from seeing classified information?

Andrea Bernstein: [chuckles] I think there's a lot of gray area and you're going to have to get an expert on security clearances. I do know that if you've had a conviction in the past, it is something that is a flag in a security clearance. Now, if you are the president or the presidential candidate, are you in a different area? Perhaps. Obviously, again, this is something that's never been tested with so many things Trump, it is happening for the first time before us.

Brian Lehrer: To this point, here's a clip of Trump from just a few minutes ago. He did hold a news conference this morning and he addressed this question of what he's been convicted of, falsifying business records.

Donald Trump: You know what falsifying business records is in the first degree? They say falsifying business records sounds so good. It means that legal expense, I paid a lawyer, totally legal, I paid a lawyer a legal expense and a bookkeeper without any knowledge from me correctly marked it down in the books. A very professional woman, highly respected, she testified, marked it down in the books as a legal expense. A legal expense, paid a lawyer is a legal expense in the books. It's not a sheetrock, construction, or any other thing, it's a legal expense. Think of that. This is what the falsification of business records was. I said, "What else are you going to call it?"

Brian Lehrer: Donald Trump from his news conference, which is actually still going on. It's not sheetrock defense, I haven't heard that one before. Andrea, this is exactly what the defense was claiming all along, that it was in fact a legal expense. The jury looked at that claim and they looked at the prosecution's claim that it was something else, that it was a reimbursement of Donald Cohen for paying Stormy Daniels and then they covered it up as a legal expense. These 12 jurors examined that fact and came to the opposite conclusion.

Andrea Bernstein: Correct. The jurors decided that that was not true what the former president just said that this was not a legal expense. In fact, let me just talk about the evidence. Perhaps your listeners all paid very close attention to the evidence as I did, but just in case they didn't, a quick recap. The evidence in this case was really overwhelming. As you know, I have covered Michael Cohen for a very long time, the hush money saga, what happened, and I found myself learning new things every day because the prosecutors have the ability to get records, to compel testimony, to do things that we as journalists cannot do.

The case that they presented from beginning to end was clear and it was corroborated. In the closing arguments, prosecutor Josh Steinglass said, "We have a mountain of corroborating evidence." He presented just so many phone records that came exactly at the time that bank drafts were sent and documents were signed, and you could see records of phone calls, so many that at one point he asked the jury, "Are you still with me," because he was going through them so quickly. Then there were these two pieces of evidence which Steinglass called the smoking guns.

This is what they were. Michael Cohen testified that he brought the bank statement in to see Allen Weisselberg, who is the former chief financial officer. That statement was introduced. The actual bank statement that chose the wire transfer to Stormy Daniel's lawyer and scrawled on it by Allen Weisselberg is this notation that we're going to pay him 130,000 plus another 50,000 for another expense, that's 180,000. We're going to gross it up, which meant double it to cover taxes. Then we're going to add on a bonus and we're going to get to $420,000, and we are going to pay it out over the course of a year, 12 installments.

There's another document that backs us up from Trump's former controller, Jeff McConney. You have the whole plan written out. In addition, in two legal documents, Trump has called this a reimbursement. He called it a reimbursement in a tweet. It's pretty clear that he understood what this was about. Then there was also testimony from Michael Cohen. Also, very interestingly, and we heard this back in the courtroom yesterday, we heard it read back to the jury, the testimony of the former National Enquirer publisher, David Pecker.

He reminded me of somebody's [unintelligible 00:24:25] salesman talking about something that nobody really wants to talk about, which is hush money payments and buying stories, and selling them, and keeping these stories from women off the market, but very matter of fact. He's talking about how from August of 2015, he very clearly understood that he had a plan with Trump and Michael Cohen, he was going to look out for stories from women that were negative. He understood that Cohen acting on Trump's behalf, was going to purchase them in some way to take them off the marketplace.

That was his clear understanding from nearly the beginning of the campaign. When we heard that yesterday after everything else we've heard, I thought, "Wow, that is not Michael Cohen, it's not a convicted perjure. It's someone who was 40 years a friend of Donald Trump, Donald Trump his mentor. This is somebody who really has no ill will towards the former president saying this." When he said this, I thought that is pretty compelling evidence for the jury. Then it was just a few hours later that they came back with their guilty verdict.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Andrea Bernstein who's been covering the Trump trial for NPR, give you a little preview of what we're going to do when we come back, Andrea. We have a number of listeners asking versions of the question, "Aren't convicted felons not allowed to vote?" We're going to take that on. Of course, he's registered in Florida, the conviction was in New York. I'm not sure how that applies. There also may be this weird paradox of if he's in prison in New York, he can't vote, but he can be elected president. We'll talk about that in more with Andrea when we continue in a minute on WNYC.

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Alvin Bragg: While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors by following the facts and the law, and doing so without fear or favor.

Brian Lehrer: One more time, DA Alvin Bragg, after the verdicts came down yesterday. One more clip of Trump from the news conference that he was just holding, he commented for the first time on why he didn't take the stand in his own defense.

Donald Trump: Now, I would have testified, I wanted to testify. The theory is you never testify because as soon as you testify, anybody if it were George Washington, don't testify because they'll get you on something that you said slightly wrong, and then they sue you for perjury.

Brian Lehrer: Who believes that, Andrea?

Andrea Bernstein: I think that one of the difficulties for Mr. Trump is that he has lied many, many, many times, and his defense spent quite a lot of time trying to show Michael Cohen was a liar. I would say the main pillar of the defense is undermined if the jury starts thinking about Trump lying instead of Cohen lying. He could have testified, but just in a pure criminal defense law, it's generally thought of as a bad idea.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Here's that question that I previewed before the break. One version of it comes from a listener who writes, "Aren't convicted felons not allowed to vote in Florida? Will he commit voter fraud in front of our eyes in November? Never mind the snarky second part of that. Do you know the technicalities here?" I think the-- Go ahead. You tell us.

Andrea Bernstein: My understanding is that the controlling laws in the state where you are convicted, so that's New York law, and he would be allowed to vote in New York so therefore, allowed to vote in Florida. That's how I understand the law works.

Brian Lehrer: Except I think if you're currently incarcerated in New York for a crime you've been convicted of, you cannot vote. You can vote when you complete your sentence. If he winds up in prison, sentenced to prison and actually in prison, then he couldn't vote for himself for president, but he could still be elected president. Is that your understanding too?

Andrea Bernstein: Let me just say and just to manage expectations on this hypothetical, the judge has already signaled that jail time may not be in the card. There was a place during his closing arguments where Trump's defense attorney, Todd Blanche, who was a longtime federal prosecutor and knows this is a big no, no, said to the jurors, "Don't send this man to jail for this," what you're not allowed to say because the jury is not supposed to be involved in any decisions involving punishment.

This caused the judge to say from the bench during summations, which is a big deal that they should disregard that comment, that they're not to consider punishment, and that in fact there may not be jail time, which he signaled to the jurors and to us. There may not be, this is an E felony in New York. Trump is a first-time offender, it's a white-collar crime. There may not be any jail time. I don't want people to think too much about what that would mean. We will find out on July 11th.

Brian Lehrer: Kevin in Manhattan has a question about the instructions that the judge gave the jury just before they started deliberations. Hi, Kevin.

Kevin: Hello. Thank you for taking my call, Brian, and question. I had a question about the instructions given to the jurors. Why were they given multiple options for a guilty verdict as opposed to just one unanimous decision?

Andrea Bernstein: I know this is really something that I think has been misunderstood. They had to find two things beyond a reasonable doubt in order to determine that Trump was guilty of felony, falsifying business direct records in the first degree versus in the second degree, which is a misdemeanor. For it to be a felony, they had to find, A, that the business records were falsified beyond a reasonable doubt unanimously and B, that they were done in furtherance of another crime, and that second crime is conspiring to, this is a paraphrase, but conspiring to alter the outcome of an election by unlawful means.

They had to find both of those things beyond a reasonable doubt. What are the unlawful means? The unlawful means could be any one of three theories. The unlawful means could be violating the Federal Election Campaign Act, which limits how much someone can contribute or a corporation can contribute to a federal campaign, B, falsifying other business records or, C, excuse me, I'm forgetting what the C is there. There are three other different scenarios. Those unlawful means can include any one of those three. If they find that if he did, if he violated the Federal Campaign Act, or he violated other federal election laws.

There were several things that they brought up on summations. For example, that Michael Cohen had falsified his bank records to get the hush money payment approved because you can't go to a bank and you say, "I want to open an account for the purpose of a hush money." You have to say, "I'm doing some legitimate business purpose." Oh, I know what it was. The third thing was inducing AMI, American Media, the owner of the National Enquirer to falsify their business records. David Packer, the former publisher, testified how he did so, how he created a contract with Karen McDougal to cover up the fact that it was a hush money payment and to make it look legitimate, was how he testified.

The jury just had to find that the New York law about unlawfully influencing the outcome of an election was violated, and then they could choose the means by which they were violated. That was how the law is structured. It's not that the jury did not have to come to a unanimous conclusion. I think there's been a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of talk that I've heard about that. That is how the law is written in New York.

Brian Lehrer: Desiree in Park Slope, you're on WNYC with Andrea Bernstein who covered the Trump trial inside the courtroom. Hi, Desiree.

Desiree: Hi. Nice to meet you, Andrea. I just had a question about the reporting with regard to Stormy Daniels. It takes me aback that whenever she is mentioned, she's mentioned that adult film star Stormy Daniels. If she were a carpenter, she would not be called carpenter Stormy Daniels. Her job is legal. She's not done anything illegal that we know of and she's not been accused of a crime, but there's definitely an implied something with the way that she is always reported on.

It only struck me today because I hadn't been listening to the reporting for most of the week that that is something-- it's like her permanent moniker no matter what she does in life. She could be a librarian now and she'd still be called an adult film star or something.

Andrea Bernstein: Let me say a few things. I think, for example, E. Jean Carroll, we identified her as a writer, E. Jean Carroll, Michael Cohen, former Trump personal attorney. We do identify them by their roles, but more than that, when she took the stand, that is how she identified herself as someone who wrote, directed, and acted in porn movies or in adult film movies. She said both of those things in her testimony.

Desiree: Sure. That was her job, but it's not relevant to the reporting. I think we know that-

Andrea Bernstein: I would beg to differ.

Desiree: -that title has a different connotation.

Andrea Bernstein: I do think that her job had everything to do with the motive for keeping her story hushed up in the days before the election, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape, and the Access Hollywood tape played a big role in this trial. Really, they showed from both inside and outside the campaign, through the testimony of former Trump at the time press secretary, Hope Hicks, and others how the campaign was so thrown off balance and so worried about how women, in particular, would react.

I think one of the other interesting things about the testimony as it came forward is that Stormy Daniels testified that when she encountered Trump in the hotel room when he was lying on the hotel bed in her underwear, she described it, and this is something that wasn't proven in the trial, he still denies it. The jury did not have to decide if that was true or not, but she said she felt a power imbalance. I think one of the things that's interesting is that it goes to the motive of why Trump would have been so concerned about keeping this story out of the public eye in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape when he was running against a woman to be president of the United States in a very, very tight election.

Brian Lehrer: Desiree, thanks for the question. Here's a question from a listener who may or may not know that you did the podcast series Will Be Wild, which was about the whole period leading up to January 6th after the election, but it's certainly relevant to your reporting on that. Listener writes, "I had feared violence if Trump were to be found guilty. The quiet that has prevailed so far makes me wonder if his followers have received some kind of signal to stand back and stand by. Does Ms. Bernstein's reporting shed any light on this matter?"

Andrea Bernstein: Obviously, I don't know the answer to that. I think that people that I have spoken to in general, I haven't spoken to anybody since their verdict yesterday about this in particular, but have expressed concern about Trump's intemperate language because there is certainly an understanding among security professionals that trump's language leads people to behave in certain ways. There's a real anxiety that things he said could trigger somebody to do something. For example, after the Mar-a-Lago was searched, there was someone who tried to attack an FBI office in Ohio.

These things raise concern. I think we should just hope that calmer heads prevail, but I do know this is a concern. I also know that one of the things that's different between now and January 6 is I am aware that the Biden administration has undertaken certain steps to discourage this kind of gathering. One of the things, as you mentioned in our podcast, Will Be Wild that we looked at is all the ways that didn't happen while Trump was president and the security professionals did not discourage people from gathering on the Capitol with violent intent.

Brian Lehrer: We have about a minute, Andrea. Let me ask you the general closing question that may be cliché, but what happens next?

Andrea Bernstein: [laughs] What happens next is that Trump is sentenced July 11th. We, as a nation, work out together what this means because we have just never been in this place before. I do want to say one thing. I feel grateful as a citizen that so much truth has emerged in this trial, so many records, so much testimony about what really happened. No matter what happens going forward, we have that.

Brian Lehrer: Andrea, thanks for coming on with us multiple times during this trial. Regular listeners know that they took Wednesdays off most weeks. Even though you were reporting for NPR, the Mothership, the National Network every day from inside the courtroom, you did take those Wednesdays off to come on with us multiple times and again, today after I'm sure this has been a whirlwind of reporting activity for you since this verdict came down last evening. Thanks a lot. I look forward to the next time, whatever the context is.

Andrea Bernstein: Thank you, Brian. Thanks to your listeners.

Brian Lehrer: Andrea Bernstein, who covered the trial from inside the courtroom for NPR. She was previously the host of the WNYC podcast, Trump, Inc. about the intersection of Trump's business interests and the public interest, also, the Will Be Wild podcast about the events leading up to January 6th. She is author of the book, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power.

That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen edits our National Politics podcast. Our intern this term is Ethlyn Daniel-Scherz. Megan Ryan is the head of live radio. Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz at the audio controls. Have a great weekend, everyone. Stay tuned for All Of It.

 

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