Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Coming up later in the show we will still, as planned because there is still a rest of the world out there, talk about Vice President Kamala Harris's trip to Africa this week, and have a call-in for this International Transgender Day of Visibility. But right now, we'll continue with coverage of the indictment of Donald Trump, this historic moment, with Errol Louis, New York Magazine columnist, host of Inside City Hall on Spectrum News NY1 at seven o'clock on the weeknights, and a lawyer himself.

Thanks for some time this morning, Errol. I'm sure you're slammed for your own news organizations. I didn't even mention CNN where you contribute. You were on this morning. Welcome back to WNYC.

Errol Louis: Glad to be with you, Brian. A big, big day.

Brian Lehrer: Have you been down to the courthouse personally since Trump first posted a few weeks ago that he was about to be arrested and called for protests to begin?

Errol Louis: I've passed by there a couple of times, and of course, I've done lots and lots of hits. We've had almost continuous reporting from down there, where I'm talking with one of my colleagues who's down there. I both passed through and talked with people who were there on camera and asked them what was going on as well. It seems like quite a scene.

Brian Lehrer: I see that the NYPD is calling every officer to report today in uniform, if I read the story correctly. Did you see that, and do you understand what the police commissioner is doing and why?

Errol Louis: Oh, sure. Oh yes, sure, sure. This is a very easy device that the commissioner can employ, which is asking everybody to show up, even if you're, say, a detective. Even if you're in an investigative or an anti-crime unit. Even if your only assignment was to come in and do some paperwork, the commissioner can ask you to show up in uniform. What that contributes to is something that the mayor and the police commissioner sometimes refer to as omnipresence, when you start realizing how many people actually work for the police department; 35,000 cops and another 15-odd thousand civilians.

If the cops all show up in uniform, it looks like there's just uniforms everywhere. It's a pretty easy way to send a signal to anybody who might be thinking about civil disobedience or actual violence down near the courthouse that the NYPD is going to outnumber you, out-strategize you, and ultimately outfight you if it comes to that.

Brian Lehrer: We've had calls suggesting that a lot of the NYPD might be on Trump's side and might be on pro-Trump protester side. Very different from what their relationship might be, say, with Black Lives Matter protesters or other kinds of protesters. Any thought that the NYPD might enable something bad to happen in this particular case?

Errol Louis: As you know, Brian, I come from an NYPD household. My late father was on the job for about 31 years. My sister was a detective. My first thought goes to they're pro-overtime. If they're going to get a lot of extra overtime this weekend, I think that's probably where their "political allegiance" lies more so than anything else. Look, the NYPD handles security and other issues for more than 400 parades a year, and those aren't even controversial. You start adding in the political demonstrations, you start adding in the mega events like St. Patrick's Day or the West Indian Day Parade or the Puerto Rican Day Parade, they know how to do this.

There's not really a lot of room for fine-tuning about this cause or that cause, helping these protesters or not so much those protesters. If it gets rowdy and out of hand, people are going to go to jail. If it's rowdy but not out of hand, people will get to scream and shout, and the cops will make overtime, and so to make sure they stay on the sidewalks.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned the overtime. I know you were covering on your show, as we were covering here, the recent revelation from the Comptroller of the City of New York, Brad Lander, that the NYPD exceeded its overtime budget from last year by 93%. If this circus is about to start in Lower Manhattan and go on, maybe in dribs and drabs, I realize that a long legal proceeding like this, something happens one day then nothing happens for a few weeks, but this is likely to go on for quite a long time. Do you have any thought, or is anybody at City Hall estimating the financial implications for city of New York taxpayer costs?

Errol Louis: I doubt it. I mean, look, the reality of the Comptroller's report as near as I can tell, I'm not sure what you concluded, is that basically the NYPD has a blank check for overtime.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. It's sad.

Errol Louis: 93% means the whole budget process is a game. You give them one number or a number, and they'll double it if they feel like it or if they think circumstances warrant it, let's put it that way. I think there's going to be a lot of overtime in the next few weeks and months. Look, it is a spectacle. Donald Trump has given every indication that he wants it to be a spectacle. We, the taxpayers, are going to foot the bill for that to make sure that whatever spectacle takes place, that it's done safely and with a minimum of disruption to the rest of us.

Brian Lehrer: In a very short run, how do you see the security challenges for all involved, Trump himself included, and general public safety for the period from now just through his arraignment, which seems to be scheduled for Tuesday?

Errol Louis: For me right now, honestly, Brian, the most serious security issue is the protection of Alvin Bragg and his family. Because this is a president who has made a lot of statements and social media posts that are openly hostile, and some of the images are arguably an incitement to violence. Alvin Bragg doesn't deserve that, didn't sign up for that. This is how Trump tries to win his political arguments as we saw on January 6th. Through violence and intimidation and incitement. So far, there don't seem to be very many takers, but it doesn't take a lot of people to cause a lot of trouble.

I think over the next few days we're going to see who is responding to Donald Trump when he says everyone should protest. Well, is anybody coming up? The few protests that I've seen seem to be people who are anti-Trump, who wanted to come out, in one case, take a selfie giving a finger to Trump Tower or something like that. It may not be the protest that he expected or wanted, but there is this question of him posing with a baseball bat next to a picture of Alvin Bragg's head, that kind of a thing, or calling him an animal, that sort of a thing.

That has really no place. He's not going to win his election or his lawsuit by threatening the prosecutor, but there still could be problems that come from that kind of incitement.

Brian Lehrer: Well, I think Hugh in Manhattan has a question relevant to that. Hugh, you're on WNYC with Errol Louis. Hi, there.

Hugh: Oh, hi. I can't believe I got on. Thank you. I was wondering if the judge would have any power to limit the kinds of things he could say. They've just been absolutely on the right-wing radio and everything, outrageous about Bragg being bought by George Soros. They're claiming he didn't actually pose with those pictures with a baseball bat. Is there any limitation that can be put on what he can say once he's been arraigned and all that? Because it's just outrageous.

Errol Louis: That's a great question, Hugh. The judge's discretion and power to control what people say really stops on the courthouse steps. Meaning you can say whatever you want on the steps. You have a First Amendment right to make any kind of accusation. However, once you come in that courtroom it gets really, really different. When outrageous remarks that are made on the courthouse steps find their way into motion papers - we saw a little bit of this in some of the election cases that the Trump campaign or its remnants had been involved in - the judges, the courts get very, very stern.

You can accuse Alvin Bragg of taking money from George Soros or whatever, but you start putting that in motion papers, they get very, very strict about not having the record polluted with those kind of statements. Beyond that, if the counsel or the defendant himself, Donald Trump, wants to characterize or even mischaracterize what went on in the courtroom, the judge can give a warning to the lawyers if it's really outrageous or very far off the mark, but beyond that, there's quite a lot of latitude.

What I tell my journalism students all the time is that what people say on the courthouse steps could be anything. How many times have we heard people say, "We're going to appeal this. We're going to appeal this to the Supreme Court," and then they never even file the papers? That's true of Donald Trump himself as a matter of fact. There's going to be a lot of noise and there's not a lot we can do about it, nor the judge.

Brian Lehrer: Speaking of what might be an idle threat, you probably saw that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted that he would not assist in the prosecution of Donald Trump. Does that set up a scenario where Trump could refuse to appear in court for an arraignment this Tuesday, and DeSantis could refuse to extradite him?

Errol Louis: Yes. They might want to play out some of that comedy verbally. One of the beautiful things about our constitution, Brian, is that you can always learn something new about it. I didn't realize that there was a provision, Article IV of the United States Constitution, that speaks directly to this issue. That if somebody is charged with a felony in one state, and that person happens to be in another state, the governor of that second state shall - and shall means it's mandatory. There's not a lot of wiggle room there - produce him.

The governor of Florida can feed his followers all kinds of lies and misrepresentations, but in the end, to the extent that, let's say, there is a challenge to the extradition of Donald Trump from Florida to New York, he will have to produce him. It's like you have to check a piece of paper, and that's as far as it goes. If he wants to pretend he's going to try and hide out in Mar-a-Lago, and the governor's going to send Florida State Troopers there to protect the compound or anything like that, that's fantasy land. That's just not going to happen, barring an outbreak of madness that would lead the governor of Florida to openly defy the US Constitution, but I don't think that's going to happen.

The two men are political rivals in the end, so I think they're both just making noises about what might or might not happen. Trump's not going to let-- Politically speaking, he's not going to let DeSantis become his protector, and DeSantis, in any event, does not have the power. It's specifically denied him under the US Constitution to become Trump's protector when it comes to extradition. I think we're going to see him here on Tuesday or some other day.

Brian Lehrer: DeSantis, as I understand it, is a Harvard-trained lawyer. You went to Harvard. Maybe the Alumni Association should get together and send Ron DeSantis a copy of Article IV.

Errol Louis: You know what? Let me just say something, because Mike Pence is a lawyer too. There are a lot of people who are attorneys, who have legal training, who know better, and they go out and they make the most outrageous statements. It's been hard to swallow, I got to be honest with you, to see Mike Pence acting as if, "Oh, this is an abusive authority." I heard the vice president was on television last night saying, "Oh, this is just a campaign finance case." It very much is not a campaign finance case.

It is the tail end of a long-running series of civil and criminal cases against the Trump Organization, the leaders of the Trump Organization, and now Donald Trump himself. A jury found them guilty, the Trump Organization, of criminal tax fraud going back 15 years. This is really in some ways just a step beyond that. They have falsified records repeatedly. It's been found in court over and over and over again at Trump University, at the now-dissolved Trump Foundation. It's really outrageous to try and imagine that this is just about one payment to a porn star right before the 2016 election. It's about much, much more than that.

Brian Lehrer: Well, I asked Zachary Carter this earlier. It sounds like your take is a little more aggressive, if that's the right word, on the question of whether the charges, once they're revealed on Tuesday, will be just about the hush money coverup, or if they'll also have something to do with the tax evasion case that the Trump Organization and CFO Allen Weisselberg were convicted of.

Errol Louis: At a minimum, I think that some of what they may have turned up in the course of that criminal conviction of the Trump Organization is going to be relevant. You got to keep in mind Alvin Bragg was-- he worked in the US Attorney's Office in the Criminal Division. He focused on money laundering, bank fraud, witness tampering, fraud relating to government contracts. He knows white-collar crime really, really well, and has sent a lot of people to prison for violating our very strict laws. Again, I think it's important, Brian, that we not define DVMC down, or just get used to the idea that "Oh, sure. Of course, Donald Trump for decades committed criminal and civil fraud, and everybody knew that."

Yes, we knew that. When you have to settle to the tune of $25 billion in the Trump University case, or you have to dissolve your charitable foundation because of rampant fraud, or you've been found guilty for behavior going back 15 years of criminal tax fraud, there's this quarter of a billion dollar suit that's going on now. It's scheduled to go to trial. The one that the State Attorney General has going against the Trump Organization, Donald Trump himself, and his three oldest children, that's supposed to go to trial in January, right around the time of the Iowa caucuses.

It's kind of crazy to act as if people think that this one payment, which is the latest in a long, long, long line of both proven and suspected and alleged misconduct by this man and his company, this is not an outlier. I think we've got a pattern here, Brian. I think we've got a pattern of bad behavior here. I think the jury's going to hear about it, and I think it's going to be very hard for him to win that case.

Brian Lehrer: With Errol Louis, host of Insight City Hall on Spectrum News NY1, a New York Magazine columnist, and CNN contributor. Though he's a journalist, he can't unlearn what he learned in law school. Steven in Harlem, you're on WNYC with Errol Louis. Hi.

Steven: Hello. Thank you for taking my call. I just want to acknowledge the historic nature of yesterday. I feel that is a date which will be etched, and it's a culmination. A few years ago, I called and said-- when Trump was doing all kinds of crazy stuff. I said, "This is the beginning of the end of democracy." I still think it's a possibility. Your guest is awesome. You are awesome. That's all I had to say. The historic nature. I think he can skate, like Teflon Don. He can get away with it again, but it's in the record now for eternity.

Brian Lehrer: Steven, I'm glad you called up with this because, in fairness, we've been focusing on what you could call legal minutia and political environment of what's about to take place. It is such a historic moment. Errol, I'm curious. What kinds of feelings are you having about the importance of this first for the United States? A first indictment of a president or a former president for anything, for better or worse?

Errol Louis: Two thoughts, Brian. The first is that it really is remarkable because there's a certain amount of misconduct that you and I have seen in our adult lifetimes where-- Look, Richard Nixon was never really criminally charged. He was not even impeached. Bill Clinton was impeached but he was never criminally charged. This is new territory. This has never happened before. Donald Trump was impeached twice, but even he had not been criminally charged until now. That's one thought.

The second thought is that there were so many firsts, and not all of them were negative firsts with Donald Trump. We never elected anyone to the presidency who had never run for office before, had never served in government before, had never served in the military. I'm thinking today, among other things, it's like maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe there's a reason you don't want somebody to start at the top when it comes to governing this country.

Maybe we need people to show their stuff in a different kind of way so that what are commercial standards in this case and suspect commercial standards, or even perhaps even criminal commercial standards, are not imported wholesale into the government at the top of the government. Because what you'll get is what we've seen, which is a lot of chaos. Now the spectacle of a former president being booked and arraigned in Manhattan. Nobody should want that. We couldn't have expected it because, again, we're breaking new ground, but I think it's a warning for the future and something for everybody to really reflect on.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. About this taking place in Manhattan, the defense may well bring a motion to move the case out of Manhattan, I would imagine. Can Trump get a fair trial in a county where he only got 12% of the vote in 2020?

Errol Louis: [laughs] That's a great question. I don't know if-- Look, we've seen Donald Trump use delaying tactic. That's partly why this particular incident, which happened in 2016-2017, is only being addressed now years later. He might well think that he could get maybe a better hearing or a different outcome by going to a different jurisdiction. I'm not so sure about that, to be honest with you. We'll know for sure when the indictment is unsealed, but the facts as we believe they're going to be presented, are not going to fall easily on the ears of an upstate juror or jurors, urban, rural, upstate, downstate.

I don't think anybody is going to be real happy about the idea of a powerful leader paying essentially hush money and then lying about it. All of these things that we've gotten used to or inured to or calloused about here in New York City, I think people are going to maybe be freaked out elsewhere in the state if Donald Trump tries-- Look, essentially a part of his defense could be, "I'm just doing what business people do." I don't know. In Syracuse or in Buffalo or in Rochester or up in the north country of the Southern Tier, I think people are going to say, "Really? This is the norm?" I wouldn't advise it. But I've never been in Donald Trump's shoes, so I'm not sure.

Brian Lehrer: It's a great thought experiment that I don't think we'll have a chance to see play out in reality. How would this go for Donald Trump up in at least the [unintelligible 00:21:51] country? In my beloved Adirondacks, [laughs] maybe not so well with the conservative family values as defined by conservatives are.

Errol Louis: Only in New York City can a transaction like, "Oh yes. So then I had my lawyer write $130,000 check to keep my mistress quiet." In New York that can come and go, but out in the real world, including a lot of New York State, I think that's going to be considered a very unusual transaction.

Brian Lehrer: Well, whether it's in Manhattan or anywhere else, how would you expect jury selection to go in that regard? What kinds of questions will the lawyers ask in a context where everybody already has a preformed opinion about Donald Trump in some way?

Errol Louis: Well, it's interesting. I think we saw some of this down in Fulton County, Georgia. One of the things that we in the media have to acknowledge from time to time in jury selection is one of those times when you have to recognize it, is that a lot of people are really not following these things that we talk about every day. I think it would probably be dismayingly easy to find 12 jurors in New York State who have no opinion or particular knowledge about any of this. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Interesting.

Errol Louis: It's a big wide world and people have other concerns.

Brian Lehrer: Errol, before you go, some breaking news this morning, relevant to the politics of this. This surprises me. That Alvin Bragg even issued any kind of public response to the Republican pro-Trump politics. I'm reading from Politico now, "Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg defended his office's decision to indict Donald Trump. In a letter to Republican lawmakers today rejecting GOP accusations of political persecution as, 'Baseless and inflammatory.'" Here's a little more of the quote. "That conclusion is misleading and meritless. It's uncharted territory for the legal system." Let's see if this is all the quote.

Well, the parts that I read are a quote. It says, "A letter was sent a day after Bragg's office acknowledged it had issued the first-ever indictment of a former president." I guess for all that we and a lot of other people are saying, we have to separate the law from the politics here. Why do you think Bragg is even bothering to respond to Republican politicians? Let's face it, or calling him all kinds of things. Donald Trump Jr. Compared him to Pol Pot yesterday.

Errol Louis: Oh boy.

Brian Lehrer: Why does Alvin Bragg dignify any of that with a response?

Errol Louis: Well, because in this case it's coming from Congress, and they're asking for documents. When Congress starts asking for documents, what comes right behind that is a subpoena. Those subpoenas can be delivered in a circus-like fashion, where they try and serve papers on him and otherwise just really disrupt the entire proceedings. I think of this in part as Alvin Bragg doing what he should do, which is protecting the integrity of the state courts from outside interference by federal politicians, federal legislators.

The other part of it I think could be attributed to or described as the education of Alvin Bragg. This is the first office he's ever run for. You and I have talked about this, Brian. He certainly got caught on the back foot, and was, I think, taken by surprise by the political response to his day one memo when he was just--

Brian Lehrer: On crime.

Errol Louis: From his point of view, they're on-

Brian Lehrer: Crime in Manhattan.

Errol Louis: -crime and prosecuting misdemeanors. He talked about it on the campaign trail. He said he was going to do it, and then he naively walks into office and starts doing it. There was this enormous national political outcry. I think he now realizes, or the people around him have convinced him that you can't wait for this to happen. You've got to push back. You've got to fight back. I read the letter that you're describing. He's got the facts and the law on his side easily. What they are trying to do out of these congressional committees is just make political hay out of the situation. Probably raise some money for their campaign accounts on the side, and otherwise just disrupt the proceedings.

The letter also says, which I think is very telling and quite true, that some of these members of Congress, these Republican members, are acting more like defense counsel. They're asking for confidential papers. They're trying to get inside the investigation, clearly so that they can convey it to Donald Trump. It's utterly improper, and Bragg is absolutely right to push back.

Brian Lehrer: One final thing before I let you go. You and I have both interviewed Alvin Bragg any number of times. He has previously had, I think it's fair to say, and people should remember this, a reputation as a cautious prosecutor with respect to Donald Trump. Remember he even had assistant district attorneys resign last year because he seemed to be dropping a Trump investigation that they were working on. One of them, Mark Pomerantz, even wrote a book about that. Would you say Bragg has been cautious when it comes to deciding to prosecute Donald Trump, and that's an important thing to keep in mind as context here?

Errol Louis: You know what? For the word cautious, I would substitute the word methodical. He's dogged. He's determined. I think of it as more like in football there are people who do flashy plays and try and throw 80-yard passes. Then you have people who do three yards in a cloud of dust. Alvin Bragg is taking the ball. He's running at three yards. Then you wait, then you run at another three yards, and then you wait. I think over time, that has proven to be the right way to deal with this unusual intersection between commercial criminal activity and an elected official.

Going back to Bragg's resume, since we're talking about him, he also prosecuted misconduct by elected officials. He was in the public integrity unit in the Attorney General's Office. He actually understands this stuff a lot better, certainly than Mark Pomerantz. Better than a lot of I think the pundits who are criticizing him, he knows how you do a public integrity prosecution and he knows a whole lot about white-collar crime, and you lay them next to each other and you just methodically assemble the pieces. Once you've done that and you put it in front of a jury, he's managed to do something nobody else has done. Lots of people who've come after the Trump Organization. Only one person has gotten a criminal conviction, as far as I know and that's Alvin Bragg.

Brian Lehrer: You mean an indictment?

Errol Louis: Well, I'm not--

Brian Lehrer: Oh, the Trump Organization. The company.

Errol Louis: He really does know what he's doing. I know there's something out there where people somehow think that-- I don't know where people get this idea that Harvard law graduates are a bunch of bumbling incompetence. He is not that he's a very good methodical lawyer. I think if he has the facts on the law on his side, it's going to be really quite a case.

Brian Lehrer: Well, if anybody thinks Harvard Law isn't politically diverse, we've established in this segment that they produce both Alvin Bragg and Ron DeSantis. We will leave that as a final thought with Errol Lewis, New York Magazine, columnist, and host of Inside City Hall, weeknights at 7:00 on Spectrum News NY1. Errol, thanks so much for the time today.

Errol Louis: Thank you, Brian.

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