Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: It's been about a year since the first indictment was
Speaker 2: announced against former President Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: He's indicted.
Speaker 3: He's the first former president of the United States to
Speaker 3: be indicted on.
Speaker 4: Charges related to hush money payments paid to Stormy Daniels.
Speaker 2: It raised a ton of questions, does.
Speaker 4: He get his fingerprints? Will there be a mugshot? Is
Speaker 4: he going to be in handcuffs?
Speaker 3: And that was just the beginning breaking news on the
Speaker 3: indictment of former President Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: The case in the classified documents found at his home.
Speaker 3: At marl Laga, racketeering, conspiracy to commit fraud, to influence witnesses.
Speaker 2: Perjury, conspiracy to obstruct him justice.
Speaker 4: Several conspiracy charges relating to January sixth.
Speaker 2: With his wins on Super Tuesday, Trump is cruising toward
Speaker 2: the GOP nomination for president, but as he shifts to
Speaker 2: the general election, he faces a mountain of leles. There
Speaker 2: are so many trial proceedings and dates, not to mention
Speaker 2: campaign rallies in an election year, that I often find
Speaker 2: myself pulling up charts that my colleagues have made just
Speaker 2: to keep track of it all. But the logistics are
Speaker 2: only one of the many unprecedented challenges the former president
Speaker 2: now faces as he navigates the campaign trail while on trial.
Speaker 2: From Bloomberg's Washington A Bureau. This is the Big Take
Speaker 2: DC podcast. I'm Salaiahmosen. Today we sift through Bloomberg reporting,
Speaker 2: interviews with Trump voters, and election data to understand how
Speaker 2: is Trump going to balance a general election campaign while
Speaker 2: facing four criminal trials and untold millions in legal bills,
Speaker 2: and will any of this affect him at the polls.
Speaker 2: Let's cover some basics. Trump is facing four criminal cases.
Speaker 2: The first indictment came about a year ago, when the
Speaker 2: state of New York charged the former president with falsifying
Speaker 2: business records to cover up hush money payments to the
Speaker 2: porn star Stormy Daniels.
Speaker 5: It is simple. An American president has been indicted for
Speaker 5: a crime.
Speaker 2: It is a regional American history yesterday afternoon. Then came
Speaker 2: a federal case in Florida accusing Trump of refusing to
Speaker 2: return hundreds of classified documents he was keeping at his
Speaker 2: Marlago home. And then there was arguably the most consequential
Speaker 2: case in Washington, d C. The January sixth case accusing
Speaker 2: Trump of trying to overturn the twenty twenty election results
Speaker 2: and inciting the capital attack. And lastly, there's a state
Speaker 2: case in Georgia accusing Trump of trying to overturn the
Speaker 2: results of the twenty twenty election. There there have also
Speaker 2: been three civil trials, and Trump has lost them all.
Speaker 2: A fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia
Speaker 2: James over his asset valuations, and then a defamation case
Speaker 2: brought by e Gene Carroll for comments Trump made after
Speaker 2: she accused him of sexually assaulting her in the nineties.
Speaker 2: And then another defamation case by Carol, also alleging sexual
Speaker 2: assault under a New York law that briefly lifted the
Speaker 2: statute of limitations on pass assault claims. He's appealing all three.
Speaker 2: Between the four criminal trials, Trump faces a grand total
Speaker 2: of ninety one felony counts. For a while, it looked
Speaker 2: like the proceedings for many of those cases would fall
Speaker 2: on top of each other and land right in the
Speaker 2: middle of the twenty twenty four campaign. But that started
Speaker 2: to shift.
Speaker 5: What we're seeing with the legal calendar is that it's
Speaker 5: actually slowing down.
Speaker 2: That's my colleague Sarah Fordon. She leads a Bloomberg team
Speaker 2: covering the legal news coming out of Washington.
Speaker 5: D C. So I think we're going to have an
Speaker 5: ebb and flow. The only trial that's actually scheduled to
Speaker 5: go forward right now is the hush money case in
Speaker 5: New York, which is due to start March twenty fifth.
Speaker 5: This is the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin brad and it's
Speaker 5: going to be about a month long trial. It is
Speaker 5: a criminal trial, so on criminal trials, he does have
Speaker 5: to be in the courtroom, so we will expect him
Speaker 5: to be in New York day and day out for
Speaker 5: about a month, so that will certainly affect his movements.
Speaker 2: The trial dates for the other three criminal cases are
Speaker 2: still in flux and could be pushed back to after
Speaker 2: election day, so.
Speaker 5: There may be, you know, several months over the summer
Speaker 5: where there's nothing pressing on his legal calendar and he'll
Speaker 5: have ample time to campaign.
Speaker 2: But even if Trump has time to campaign, these legal
Speaker 2: battles still come with huge price tags, both for his
Speaker 2: campaign and his personal finances.
Speaker 5: The big one is a case brought by the New
Speaker 5: York Attorney General. It is a fraud case accusing him
Speaker 5: of inflating his assets he has been issued a verdict
Speaker 5: in that case of over four hundred million dollars and
Speaker 5: the interest is accruing on that at a pace of
Speaker 5: about one hundred and twelve thousand dollars a day.
Speaker 2: As and for every day Trump doesn't pay the state's
Speaker 2: verdict against him, he owes an additional one hundred and
Speaker 2: twelve thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: That combined with a separate verdict in a defamation trial.
Speaker 5: This is a case brought by the author, Egen Carroll,
Speaker 5: so she brought two separate defamation cases against him and
Speaker 5: won both of those, and that big verdict in the
Speaker 5: second case is eighty three point three million dollars. So
Speaker 5: he's in the process of appealing those two, but he
Speaker 5: will have to put that money into escrow while the
Speaker 5: appeal process is playing out.
Speaker 2: Sarah, what does it mean that he needs to put
Speaker 2: money in escro.
Speaker 5: If he ultimately loses these verdicts on appeal, he will
Speaker 5: have to pay that money, and the way the process works,
Speaker 5: they don't wait for him to pay until the end
Speaker 5: of the process. He has to set aside this money
Speaker 5: so that it's already in like a custodial account.
Speaker 2: So with verdicts in just two of his cases, Trump
Speaker 2: already owes over five hundred million dollars, and that number
Speaker 2: is climbing by the day. The civil cases brought against
Speaker 2: Trump as a private citizen, so he can't use campaign
Speaker 2: funds to pay the damages.
Speaker 5: Adding up the two New York verdicts and the interest,
Speaker 5: which is occurring at a pace that would practically wipe
Speaker 5: out what he's declared as his liquidity his cash on hand.
Speaker 2: Trump says that he has just about six hundred million
Speaker 2: dollars in liquid assets, as in cash sitting in his
Speaker 2: bank account. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which also factors in
Speaker 2: his real estate and business dealings, puts his net worth
Speaker 2: at over three billion dollars, but accessing that money would
Speaker 2: require liquidating those assets.
Speaker 5: He's already said in some files that he may have
Speaker 5: to sell a property in order to cover these costs,
Speaker 5: and these are costs that he cannot use campaign money
Speaker 5: to fund.
Speaker 2: The hundreds of millions of dollars in damages are only
Speaker 2: part of what Trump's court cases are costing him. He
Speaker 2: also has to pay the lawyers who are defending him.
Speaker 2: For that he can use campaign funds, and he has
Speaker 2: but any money he puts toward his legal fees will
Speaker 2: mean less money to spend on the campaign trail, and
Speaker 2: the possibility of running out of money part way through
Speaker 2: an election year is a huge problem for Trump.
Speaker 5: The last report, he spent nearly three million dollars on
Speaker 5: legal fees over what period That was just for January.
Speaker 2: Coming up, we'll dig into how Trump is trying to
Speaker 2: offset these costs and how this is all landing with voters.
Speaker 2: We're back so far, we've broken down the four criminal
Speaker 2: cases and three civil cases against Trump, how much they're
Speaker 2: costing him, and how he's paying for them. As my
Speaker 2: colleague Sarah Forden mentioned, one of the biggest impacts on
Speaker 2: Trump is the financial cost of covering damages and paying
Speaker 2: for his legal fees. If you're running a presidential campaign,
Speaker 2: you can't afford to run out of money midyear. If anything,
Speaker 2: you want a lot of campaign money ready to go
Speaker 2: for September and October, when voters are paying the most
Speaker 2: attention to the race. We're seeing Trump turn to creative
Speaker 2: ways to bring cash into his coffers. One of the
Speaker 2: big ones is turning every indictment into an opportunity to
Speaker 2: rally his base and then ask them for money.
Speaker 6: Every time there's a development in one of these cases,
Speaker 6: you see some sort of fundraising appeal go out of
Speaker 6: you know, the evil Democrats are out to get me.
Speaker 6: Chip in five dollars, fifteen dollars, twenty dollars or else,
Speaker 6: You're not going to have a country anymore type message.
Speaker 2: That's my colleague Laura Davison, she covers politics at Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: We grabbed some of the fundraising texts that she described.
Speaker 2: Here are a couple, word for word, make a contribution
Speaker 2: to evict crooked Joe Biden from the White House and
Speaker 2: save America during this dark chapter in our nation's history,
Speaker 2: we're watching our republic die before our very eyes. The
Speaker 2: Biden appointed special Council has indicted me in yet another
Speaker 2: witch hunt. How is that talk resonating with voters?
Speaker 6: We do know that his supporters see these legal woes,
Speaker 6: you know, as evidence that Trump is being persecuted. It
Speaker 6: doesn't really seem to dent their support. They don't see
Speaker 6: it as a negative, and in fact they're giving We know,
Speaker 6: indictments came down, you know, millions of dollars came into
Speaker 6: his coffers. So these things are things that are resonating.
Speaker 2: And he's used his indictments as a talking point on
Speaker 2: the campaign trail, like this speech in Iowai in January.
Speaker 4: I got in dieted more than.
Speaker 1: The late great gangster Alphage heavier about the public scarference.
Speaker 2: Our producer Julia Press spoke with Jesse Stumbaugh, an attendee
Speaker 2: at the rally, who said Trump's lawsuit didn't concern him.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's one of the reasons why I'm voting
Speaker 1: for him. If our former president, an American citizen who's
Speaker 1: a billionaire, is handcuffed by the political system and the
Speaker 1: justice system, cause a regular citizen like myself ever going
Speaker 1: to be able to stand up to the government.
Speaker 2: Over the last few weeks, my Bloomberg colleagues have fanned
Speaker 2: out across the country to talk to Trump's supporters about
Speaker 2: how they're viewing the cases against the former president. Bloomberg's
Speaker 2: Mike Sasso spoke with James Griffin. He's a sixty four
Speaker 2: year old from Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker 5: Like they say, he was then fault about them people
Speaker 5: telling up the White House.
Speaker 6: I mean, how can I tell a hundred people to.
Speaker 1: Go tell up that store over there?
Speaker 5: If they do it, it ain't on me, that's their
Speaker 5: naymind okay, And even if he.
Speaker 4: Got found guilty, that wouldn't necessarily buy still go be
Speaker 4: month Forrin.
Speaker 2: In another part of South Carolina, reporter Stephanie Lai meant
Speaker 2: Ralph Hunter he had a different perspective even.
Speaker 1: Problem that he was president. There's so yes and so
Speaker 1: one question that I have formos.
Speaker 3: If he was in jail, I was sure.
Speaker 2: He said that if Trump was convicted, he'd still vote
Speaker 2: for him.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't like him
Speaker 3: as a person. I don't think he's someone that you know,
Speaker 3: I would I'd want to be friends with or hang
Speaker 3: out and you know, he's just does seem like a
Speaker 3: nice guy.
Speaker 2: But Ralph told her he was impressed by Trump's presidency.
Speaker 2: He said he feels like Trump delivered on some of
Speaker 2: the things that had been empty promises from other politicians
Speaker 2: in the past. To Ralph, Trump is a guy who
Speaker 2: gets stuff done.
Speaker 3: If I need a plumber for my house, the pipe
Speaker 3: crap out of it. I don't necessarily need you to
Speaker 3: be a nice guy and have wonderful posts on your
Speaker 3: Facebook account. You know I've actually I don't care what
Speaker 3: you say. Just get the crap hoped out of my house.
Speaker 2: And here's my colleague Stephanie at a Trump event in
Speaker 2: South Carolina talking to a teacher named Debbie Sides.
Speaker 1: One interesting thing that we've noticed is that every time
Speaker 1: another one of these indictments come down, more people are
Speaker 1: donating to him or getting involved in the campaign.
Speaker 6: And I'm curious, and that's something that you had done yourself,
Speaker 6: you know, other're donated after one of.
Speaker 1: These, Yes, one of the first, and I did twenty
Speaker 1: five dollars.
Speaker 4: But that's what I could do because I feel like
Speaker 4: I could go after him, I could go after anybody.
Speaker 2: Trump's single largest day of fundraising for the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four election came the week he was arraigned in Manhattan
Speaker 2: last April. Here's my colleague Laura Davison.
Speaker 6: Again, we do see spikes in giving, you know, every
Speaker 6: time there was an indictment announced, particularly the mugshot and
Speaker 6: the Georgia case that really went viral on social media
Speaker 6: because it was just this visual moment. There was a
Speaker 6: ton of giving.
Speaker 2: In addition to donations, the Trump campaign is looking at
Speaker 2: other ways of raising cash, like marketing new merchandise, a
Speaker 2: signature cologne, candles, gold sneakers with red soles. Here he
Speaker 2: is unveiling his four hundred dollars shoes, the Trump Never
Speaker 2: Surrender high tops at a sneaker convention in Philadelphia last month.
Speaker 6: Row, this country's not doing so well.
Speaker 1: We're going to turn this country around fast.
Speaker 2: We're going to turn it around fast, and we're going
Speaker 2: to remember the young people, and we're going to remember
Speaker 2: sneaker con You know that. But even Trump's shoes can't
Speaker 2: escape the possibility of litigation. People have pointed out that
Speaker 2: the red bottoms of his sneakers could open him up
Speaker 2: to a trademark lawsuit from Christian Lubitan. The year ahead
Speaker 2: for Trump could be heavily defined by the outcome of
Speaker 2: his pending criminal cases and how he navigates them financially.
Speaker 2: He's also endorsed his daughter in law, Laura Trump, to
Speaker 2: be co chair of the Republican National Committee that'll be
Speaker 2: determined at an RNC meeting tomorrow, and she said that
Speaker 2: she would put the full weight of the committee behind
Speaker 2: paying legal fees in these cases. Those court battles, coupled
Speaker 2: with his bid to voters as an overall candidate, could
Speaker 2: spell out a complicated year for the former president.
Speaker 6: The money that he has in his various accounts that
Speaker 6: is able to pay for legal fees is set to
Speaker 6: run out sometime around June July August. This is right
Speaker 6: when both his campaign, the Republican National Committee everyone is
Speaker 6: going to be in full on election mode, buying a
Speaker 6: ton of television advertisements, wanting to hold events all across
Speaker 6: the country, and Trump's going to have to make a decision.
Speaker 6: Either does he turn to donors and say, hey, can
Speaker 6: you guys give me more money for my legal fees?
Speaker 6: Does he decide to pay for it himself, or did
Speaker 6: he go to the rn C and ask them for money.
Speaker 6: And the RNC also is having their own cash troubles
Speaker 6: as well, so this is a really setting up to
Speaker 6: be a sort of midyear money fight.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. I'm Salaiah Mosen. This episode was produced by
Speaker 2: Julia Press and David Fox. It was edited by Aaron Edwards.
Speaker 2: It was mixed by Ben O'Brien. It was fact checked
Speaker 2: by Stacy Renee. Naomi Shaven is our senior producer, Michael Shepherd,
Speaker 2: Wendy Benjaminson and Elizabeth Ponso provide editorial direction. A special
Speaker 2: thanks to Hadrianna Lewencron, Stephanie Lai, and Michael Sasso. Nicole
Speaker 2: Beemsterboer is our executive producer. Stage Bowman is Bloomberg's head
Speaker 2: of podcasts. You can find The Big Take in print too,
Speaker 2: on the Terminal and Bloomberg dot Com, featuring the every
Speaker 2: best of Bloomberg's in depth original reporting around the globe.
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