Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's Sarah. Trump and Biden's presidential campaigns are ramping up,
Speaker 2: and people all around the world are watching not just
Speaker 2: to see how Trump is doing on the campaign trail,
Speaker 2: but how he's going to fare in the courtroom. Today
Speaker 2: on The Big Take, we'll learn more about Trump on
Speaker 2: trial in an episode of The Big Take DC hosted
Speaker 2: by my colleague, Senior Washington correspondent Seleia Mosen. Here's Seleia.
Speaker 3: It's been about a year since the first indictment was
Speaker 3: announced against former President Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: He's indicted.
Speaker 1: He's the first former president of the United States to
Speaker 1: be indicted on.
Speaker 3: Charges related to hush money payments paid to Stormy Daniels.
Speaker 3: It raised a ton of questions, does.
Speaker 1: He get his fingerprints?
Speaker 5: Will there be a mugshot?
Speaker 6: Is he going to be in handcuffs?
Speaker 7: And that was just the beginning breaking news on the
Speaker 7: indictment of former President Donald trumpsified.
Speaker 3: Doc aments founded his pone at.
Speaker 7: Mar Laga, rackteering, conspiracy to commit fraud to influence witnesses.
Speaker 5: Perjury, conspiracy to obstruct injustice.
Speaker 3: Several conspiracy charges relating to January sixth, with his wins
Speaker 3: on Super Tuesday. Trump is cruising toward the GOP nomination
Speaker 3: for president, but as he shifts to the general election,
Speaker 3: he faces a mountain of legal troubles. There are so
Speaker 3: many trial proceedings and dates, not to mention campaign rallies
Speaker 3: in an election year, that I often find myself pulling
Speaker 3: up charts that my colleagues have made just to keep
Speaker 3: track of it all. But the logistics are only one
Speaker 3: of the many unprecedented challenges the former president now faces
Speaker 3: as he navigates the campaign trail while on trial. From
Speaker 3: Bloomberg's Washington A Bureau, This is the Big Take DC podcast,
Speaker 3: I'm Saleijamosen. Today we sift through Bloomberg reporting, interviews with
Speaker 3: Trump voters, and election data to understand how Trump going
Speaker 3: to balance a general election campaign while facing four criminal
Speaker 3: trials and untold millions in legal bills, and will any
Speaker 3: of this affect him at the polls. Let's cover some basics.
Speaker 3: Trump is facing four criminal cases. The first indictment came
Speaker 3: about a year ago, when the state of New York
Speaker 3: charged the former president with falsifying business records to cover
Speaker 3: up hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels.
Speaker 6: It is simple. An American president has been indicted for
Speaker 6: a crime. It is original American history.
Speaker 3: Yesterday afternoon. Then came a federal case in Florida accusing
Speaker 3: Trump of refusing to return hundreds of classified documents he
Speaker 3: was keeping at his mar Alago home. And then there
Speaker 3: was arguably the most consequential case in Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: The January sixth case accusing Trump of trying to overturn
Speaker 3: in the twenty twenty election result and inciting the capital attack.
Speaker 3: And lastly there's a state case in Georgia accusing Trump
Speaker 3: of trying to overturn the results of the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 3: There there have also been three civil trials, and Trump
Speaker 3: has lost them all. A fraud case brought by New
Speaker 3: York Attorney General Letitia James over his asset valuations, and
Speaker 3: then a defamation case brought by E. G. And Carroll
Speaker 3: for comments Trump made after she accused him of sexually
Speaker 3: assaulting her in the nineties. And then another defamation case
Speaker 3: by Carol, also alleging sexual assault under a New York
Speaker 3: law that briefly lifted the statute of limitations on pass
Speaker 3: assault claims. He's appealing all three Between the four criminal trials,
Speaker 3: Trump faces a grand total of ninety one felony counts.
Speaker 3: For a while, it looked like the proceedings for many
Speaker 3: of those cases would fall on top of each other
Speaker 3: and land right in the middle of the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four campaign, but that started to shift.
Speaker 6: What we're seeing with the league calendar is that it's
Speaker 6: actually slowing down.
Speaker 3: That's my colleague, Sarah Fordon. She leads a Bloomberg team
Speaker 3: covering the legal news coming out of Washington, d C.
Speaker 6: So I think we're going to have an ebb and flow.
Speaker 6: The only trial that's actually scheduled to go forward right
Speaker 6: now is the hush money case in New York, which
Speaker 6: is due to start March twenty fifth. This is the
Speaker 6: Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, and it's going to be
Speaker 6: about a month long trial. It is a criminal trial,
Speaker 6: so on criminal trials he does have to be in
Speaker 6: the courtroom, so we will expect him to be in
Speaker 6: New York day and day out for about a month,
Speaker 6: so that will certainly affect his movements.
Speaker 3: The trial dates for the other three criminal cases are
Speaker 3: still in flux and could be pushed back to after
Speaker 3: election day, so.
Speaker 6: There may be, you know, several months over the summer
Speaker 6: where there's nothing pressing on his legal calendar, and he'll
Speaker 6: have ample time to campaign.
Speaker 3: But even if Trump has time to campaign, these legal
Speaker 3: battles still come with huge price tags, both for his
Speaker 3: ca pain and his personal finances.
Speaker 6: The big one is a case brought by the New
Speaker 6: York Attorney General. It is a fraud case accusing him
Speaker 6: of inflating his assets. He has been issued a verdict
Speaker 6: in that case of over four hundred million dollars and
Speaker 6: the interest is accruing on that at a pace of
Speaker 6: about one hundred and twelve thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: A day, as in, for every day Trump doesn't pay
Speaker 3: the state's verdict against him, he owes an additional one
Speaker 3: hundred and twelve thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: That combined with a separate verdict in a defamation trial.
Speaker 6: This is a case brought by the author, Egene Carroll,
Speaker 6: So she brought two separate defamation cases against him and
Speaker 6: won both of those. And that big verdict in the
Speaker 6: second case is eighty three point three million dollars. So
Speaker 6: he's in the process of appealing those two, but he
Speaker 6: will have to put that money into escrow while the
Speaker 6: appeal process is playing out.
Speaker 3: Sarah, what does it mean that he needs to put
Speaker 3: money in escrow?
Speaker 6: If he ultimately loses these verdicts on appeal, he will
Speaker 6: have to pay that money, And the way the process works,
Speaker 6: they don't wait for him to pay until the end
Speaker 6: of the process. He has to set aside this money
Speaker 6: so that it's already in like a custodial account.
Speaker 3: So with verdicts in just two of his cases, Trump
Speaker 3: already owes over five hundred million dollars, and that number
Speaker 3: is climbing by the day. These are civil cases brought
Speaker 3: against Trump as a private citizen, so he can't use
Speaker 3: campaign funds to pay the damages.
Speaker 6: Adding up the two New York verdicts and the interest,
Speaker 6: which is occurring at a pace that would practically wipe
Speaker 6: out what he's declared as his liquidity his cash on hand.
Speaker 3: Trump says that he has just about six hundred million
Speaker 3: dollars in liquid assets, as in cash sitting in his
Speaker 3: bank account. The Bloomberg Billionaire's Index, which also factors in
Speaker 3: his real estate and business dealings, puts his net worth
Speaker 3: at over three billion dollars, but accessing that money would
Speaker 3: require liquidating those assets.
Speaker 6: He's already said in some files that he may have
Speaker 6: to sell a property in order to cover these costs.
Speaker 6: And these are costs that he cannot use campaign money
Speaker 6: to fund.
Speaker 3: The hundreds of millions of dollars in damages are only
Speaker 3: part of what Trump's court cases are costing him. He
Speaker 3: also has to pay the lawyers who are defending him.
Speaker 2: For that.
Speaker 3: He can use campaign funds, and he has, but any
Speaker 3: money he puts toward his legal fees will mean less
Speaker 3: money to spend on the campaign trail, and the possibility
Speaker 3: of running out of money part way through an election
Speaker 3: year is a huge problem for Trump.
Speaker 6: The last report he spent nearly three million dollars on
Speaker 6: legal fees over what period That was just for January.
Speaker 3: Coming up, we'll dig into how Trump is trying to
Speaker 3: offset these costs and how this is all landing with voters' back.
Speaker 3: So far, we've broken down the four criminal cases and
Speaker 3: three civil cases against Trump, how much they're costing him,
Speaker 3: and how he's paying for them. As my colleague Sarah
Speaker 3: Forden mentioned, one of the biggest impacts on Trump is
Speaker 3: the financial cost of covering damages and paying for his
Speaker 3: legal fees. If you're running a presidential campaign. You can't
Speaker 3: afford to run out of money midyear. If anything, you
Speaker 3: want a lot of campaign money ready to go for
Speaker 3: September and October, when voters are paying the most attention
Speaker 3: to the race. We're seeing Trump turn to creative ways
Speaker 3: to bring cash into his coffers. One of the big
Speaker 3: ones is turning every indictment into an opportunity to rally
Speaker 3: his base and then ask them for money.
Speaker 5: Every time there's a development in one of these cases,
Speaker 5: you see some sort of fundraising appeal go out of
Speaker 5: You know, the evil Democrats are out to get me.
Speaker 5: Chip in five dollars, fifteen dollars, twenty dollars or else,
Speaker 5: You're not going to have a country anymore type message.
Speaker 3: That's my colleague Laura Davison, she covers Politics of Bloomberg.
Speaker 3: We grabbed some of the fundraising texts that you described.
Speaker 3: Here are a couple, word for word. Make a contribution
Speaker 3: to evict crooked Joe Biden from the White House and
Speaker 3: save America. During this dark chapter in our nation's history,
Speaker 3: we're watching our republic die before our very eyes. The
Speaker 3: Biden appointed Special Council has indicted me, and yet another
Speaker 3: witch hunt how is that talk resonating with voters.
Speaker 5: We do know that his supporters see these legal woes,
Speaker 5: you know, as evidence that Trump is being persecuted. It
Speaker 5: doesn't really seem to dent their support. They don't see
Speaker 5: it as a negative, and in fact they're giving We know,
Speaker 5: indictments came down, you know, millions of dollars came into
Speaker 5: his coffers. So these things are things that are resonating.
Speaker 3: And he's used his indictments as a talking point on
Speaker 3: the campaign trail, like this speech in IOI in January,
Speaker 3: I got.
Speaker 6: Indicted more than the late great gangster al Vos cap
Speaker 6: Ere You are about the publish co effriends.
Speaker 3: Our producer Julia Press spoke with Jesse Stumbaugh and attending
Speaker 3: at the rally, who said Trump's lawsuit didn't concern him.
Speaker 8: In fact, that's one of the reasons why I'm voting
Speaker 8: for him. If our former president and an American citizen who's
Speaker 8: a billionaire is handcuffed by the political system and the
Speaker 8: justice system, haw's a regular citizen like myself ever going
Speaker 8: to be able to stand up to the government.
Speaker 3: Over the last few weeks, my Bloomberg colleagues have fanned
Speaker 3: out across the country to talk to Trump's supporters about
Speaker 3: how they're viewing the cases against the former president. Bloomberg's
Speaker 3: Mike Sasso spoke with James Griffin. He's a sixty four
Speaker 3: year old from Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker 4: They say he was in fault about them people telling
Speaker 4: up the White House. I mean, how can I tell
Speaker 4: a hundred people to go tell up their store over there.
Speaker 4: If they do it, it ain't on me. That's the namind. Okay,
Speaker 4: even if he got found guilty, either wouldn't necessarily buy
Speaker 4: he still go be month for rent.
Speaker 3: In another part of South Carolina, reporter Stephanie Lyai met
Speaker 3: Ralph Hunter. He had a different perspective.
Speaker 6: The problem that we see with.
Speaker 7: There's so and so one question that I have if
Speaker 7: he was in jail, I was sure with both.
Speaker 3: He said that if Trump was convicted, he'd still vote
Speaker 3: for him.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't like him
Speaker 7: as a person. I don't think he's someone that you know,
Speaker 7: I would i'd want to be friends with or hang out.
Speaker 7: You know, He's just seem like a nice guy.
Speaker 3: But Ralph told her he was impressed by Trump's presidency.
Speaker 3: He said he feels like Trump delivered on some of
Speaker 3: the things that had been empty promises from other politicians
Speaker 3: in the past. To Ralph, Trump is a guy who
Speaker 3: gets stuff done.
Speaker 7: If I need a plumber from my house, the pipe,
Speaker 7: the crap out of it, I don't necessarily need you
Speaker 7: to be a nice guy and have wonderful post on
Speaker 7: your Facebook account. You know, I've actually I don't care
Speaker 7: what you say, just get the hooped out of my house.
Speaker 3: And here's my colleague Stephanie at a Trump event in
Speaker 3: South Carolina talking to a teacher named Debbie Sides.
Speaker 1: One interesting thing that we've noticed is every time another
Speaker 1: one of these indictments comes down, more people are donating
Speaker 1: to him or getting involved in the campaign. And I'm
Speaker 1: curious that that's something that you had done yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: either donated after one of these Yes, one of the
Speaker 1: first indictments that I did, I mean twenty five dollars.
Speaker 4: But that's what I could do, because I feel like
Speaker 4: I could go after him, that could go after anybody.
Speaker 3: Trump's single largest day of fundraising for the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four election came the week he was arraigned in Manhattan
Speaker 3: last April. Here's my colleague Laura Davison. Again, we do
Speaker 3: see spikes in giving.
Speaker 5: You know, every time there was an indictment announced, particularly
Speaker 5: the mugshot and the Georgia case that really went viral
Speaker 5: on social media because it was a just this visual moment,
Speaker 5: there was a ton of giving.
Speaker 3: In addition to donations, the Trump campaign is looking at
Speaker 3: other ways of raising cash, like marketing new merchandise, a
Speaker 3: signature cologne, candles, gold sneakers with red souls. Here he
Speaker 3: is unveiling his four hundred dollars shoes that Trump never
Speaker 3: surrender high tops at a sneaker convention in Philadelphia last month.
Speaker 4: Now, this country's not doing so well. We're going to
Speaker 4: turn this country around fast.
Speaker 6: We're going to turn it around fast, and we're going
Speaker 6: to remember the young people, and we're going to remember
Speaker 6: sneaker Cohn.
Speaker 1: You know that.
Speaker 3: But even Trump's shoes can't escape the possibility of litigation.
Speaker 3: People have pointed out that the red bottoms of his
Speaker 3: sneakers could open him up to a trademark lawsuit from
Speaker 3: Christian Lubitan. The year ahead for Trump could be heavily
Speaker 3: defined by the outcome of his pending criminal cases and
Speaker 3: how he navigates them financially. He's also endorsed his daughter
Speaker 3: in law, Laura Trump, to be co chair of the
Speaker 3: Republican National Committee. That'll be determined at an RNC meeting tomorrow,
Speaker 3: and she said that she would put the full weight
Speaker 3: of the committee behind paying legal fees in these cases.
Speaker 3: Those court battles, coupled with his bid to voters as
Speaker 3: an overall candidate, could spell out a complicated year for
Speaker 3: the former president.
Speaker 5: The money that he has in his various accounts that
Speaker 5: it is able to pay for legal fees is set
Speaker 5: to run out sometime around June July August. This is
Speaker 5: right when both his campaign, the Republican National Committee everyone
Speaker 5: is going to be in full on election mode, buying
Speaker 5: a ton of television advertisements, wanting to hold events all
Speaker 5: across the country, and Trump's going to have to make
Speaker 5: a decision either does he turn to his donors and say, hey,
Speaker 5: can you guys give me more money for my illegal fees.
Speaker 5: Does he decide to pay for it himself, or does
Speaker 5: he go to the RNC and ask them for money.
Speaker 5: And the RNC also is having their own cash troubles
Speaker 5: as well, so this is a really setting up to
Speaker 5: be a sort of midyear money fight.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Speaker 3: Bloemberg News. I'm Saliah Mosen. This episode was produced by
Speaker 3: Julia Press and David Fox. It was edited by Aaron Edwards.
Speaker 3: It was mixed by Ben O'Brien. It was fact checked
Speaker 3: by Stacey Renee. Naomi Shaven is our senior producer. Michael Shepherd,
Speaker 3: Wendy Benjaminson and Elizabeth Ponso provide editorial direction. A special
Speaker 3: thanks to Hadrianna Lowencron, Stephanie Lai, and Michael Sasso. Nicole
Speaker 3: Beemsterboer is our executive producer. Stage Bauman is Bloomberg's head
Speaker 3: of podcasts. You can find The Big Take in print too,
Speaker 3: on the Terminal and bloomberg dot Com, featuring the very
Speaker 3: best of Bloomberg's in depth original reporting around the globe.
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