Speaker 1: Already and this this is the Daily This is the
Speaker 1: Daily OS.
Speaker 2: Oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday,
Speaker 3: the thirty first of May.
Speaker 2: I'm Zara, I'm Sam.
Speaker 3: It's been a big couple of weeks for Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: whose first criminal case has just wrapped up after a
Speaker 3: five week trial. The trial centered on Trump's alleged cover
Speaker 3: up of a hush money payment to adult film star
Speaker 3: Stormy Daniels in the run up to the twenty sixteen election.
Speaker 3: In today's part that we are going to cover off
Speaker 3: on the trial itself, how it came to be, and
Speaker 3: what it means for the presidential hopeful. But first, Sam,
Speaker 3: what's making headlines.
Speaker 2: A parliamentary committee has recommended the federal government establish Australia's
Speaker 2: first ever Human Rights Act. Committee chair Labour MP Josh
Speaker 2: Burns said it would require Parliament to expressly consider human
Speaker 2: rights when making laws. The Australian Human Rights Commission welcomes
Speaker 2: the recommendations, saying people's rights and well being should be
Speaker 2: front of mind when laws are formulated. The President of
Speaker 2: the AHRC described Australia's current framework as quote outdated, ineffective
Speaker 2: and in desperate need of reform.
Speaker 3: Fourteen pro democracy advocates in Hong Kong have been found
Speaker 3: guilty of what's called subversion, which is risking national security
Speaker 3: under a China imposed security law. There is an Australian
Speaker 3: dual citizen who is among those who was found guilty.
Speaker 3: Sentencing is expected to come at a later date, where
Speaker 3: those found guilty could face between three years and a
Speaker 3: lifetime in prison. The guilty rulings come after forty seven
Speaker 3: people were arrested in Hong Kong in twenty twenty one
Speaker 3: due to the security law imposed by China. Two people
Speaker 3: have been cleared of charges, but local authorities are expected
Speaker 3: to appeal that decision.
Speaker 2: Victoria police have arrested four men for allegedly recruiting children
Speaker 2: as young as twelve to steal more than two million
Speaker 2: dollars in cash and cigarettes from service stations. More than
Speaker 2: twenty children were allegedly involved in over one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty cigarette thefts and armed robberies across the eastern suburbs
Speaker 2: of Melbourne. Police also seized over two hundred cannabis plants,
Speaker 2: nearly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash, luxury
Speaker 2: items and weapons enacting inspector said, quote concerningly, a significant
Speaker 2: proportion of these children were already known to Victoria Police.
Speaker 3: In today's good news, Vahine Fierro has become the first
Speaker 3: Tahitian woman to win a famous surfing competition in Tahiti.
Speaker 3: She was awarded the title of twenty twenty four Tahiti Pro.
Speaker 3: The World Surf League said that this will quote go
Speaker 3: down as one of the most culturally important days in
Speaker 3: competitive surfing history. The twenty four year old will compete
Speaker 3: at the Paris Olympics, where as surfing events will be
Speaker 3: held on the French island. Donald Trump has been found
Speaker 3: guilty by a jury after a crimminal trial that lasted
Speaker 3: five weeks. Hearings in former US president Donald Trump's first
Speaker 3: criminal trial have finally wrapped up after five weeks in
Speaker 3: a US court.
Speaker 2: Let's get into it now.
Speaker 3: The trial did center on Trump's alleged cover up of
Speaker 3: a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels,
Speaker 3: and that was in the lead up to the twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen presidential election. Now, over the course of the trial,
Speaker 3: we heard from more than twenty witnesses, or rather the
Speaker 3: jury had from more than twenty witnesses, and this is
Speaker 3: the first criminal trial, as I said, that the former
Speaker 3: president has faced, so it's a fairly big one.
Speaker 2: But he does have a couple of cases on the
Speaker 2: go here, and it can get a bit confusing to
Speaker 2: remember which one is which and in which jurisdiction he's
Speaker 2: facing what charges. This one is really significant because of
Speaker 2: that criminal element. Run me through the basics of the case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, during his twenty sixteen presidential election campaign, Donald
Speaker 3: Trump arranged for an one hundred and thirty thousand US
Speaker 3: dollar payment to be made to adult film star Stormy Daniels,
Speaker 3: that's about two hundred K, who claims to have had
Speaker 3: sex with him a decade earlier. Now, Trump instructed his
Speaker 3: then lawyer, Michael Cohen, and we'll speak about him a
Speaker 3: bit later, to facilitate the payment to Daniels in exchange
Speaker 3: for her silence. It's then alleged that Trump falsified multiple
Speaker 3: business records to hide that payment, and that is a
Speaker 3: criminal offense in the US state of New York. He
Speaker 3: pleaded not guilty to thirty four charges in New York's
Speaker 3: Supreme Court. Here's how the former president saw the case himself.
Speaker 2: This is all.
Speaker 3: Election hunting, elected interfering.
Speaker 1: It's going after Joe Biden's political opponent because he can't
Speaker 1: do it himself, and they're helping out. And we have
Speaker 1: a jog who's highly conflicted. He happens to be corrupt.
Speaker 1: Ye stars confliction. It st worst than anybody's seen. Nobody
Speaker 1: don't have seen anything like it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So unsurprisingly, Donald Trump has quite a clear and
Speaker 2: strong sense of how he feels about this case. Talk
Speaker 2: me through what actually happens though through the trial.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, as with any trial, there are ups
Speaker 3: and downs, there are witnesses, but very rarely in a
Speaker 3: trial do we hear about one of the key people
Speaker 3: actually being fined. So during this trial, Trump violated a
Speaker 3: court order the banned him from making public statements about
Speaker 3: jurors and witnesses outside of court. So the court found
Speaker 3: Trump also posted about the trial on his social media
Speaker 3: platform truth Social, which he also wasn't allowed to do,
Speaker 3: and this led him being found in contempt of court twice.
Speaker 3: So he was find a total of ten thousand US
Speaker 3: dollars and that was not even related to the case itself,
Speaker 3: that was what was just happening in the court. So
Speaker 3: a fairly expensive experience for Donald Trump when we haven't
Speaker 3: even considered the charges at hand here.
Speaker 2: And I want to turn nowt to who we heard
Speaker 2: from during the trial, and one of those people was
Speaker 2: Stormy Daniels herself. She's at the center of this story, right.
Speaker 3: She is so. Stormy Daniels herself appeared in the witness
Speaker 3: box where she detailed an alleged sexual encounter with Donald
Speaker 3: Trump at a US resort back in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: It is important to note here that Trump denies ever
Speaker 3: having had sex with Daniels after Daniels's testimony, and I'm
Speaker 3: not really going to go into it. It's fairly sallacious,
Speaker 3: and you've told me things that I want to unhear
Speaker 3: fair enough, but the justice in the case said that
Speaker 3: some of the evidence that she gave would have probably
Speaker 3: been quote better left unsaid, which is a fairly remarkable
Speaker 3: thing to say about evidence, and that was in response
Speaker 3: to Trump's lawyers trying to get the case itself thrown
Speaker 3: out as a mistrial.
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to the Netflix series about this case.
Speaker 2: Who else did we hear from, though.
Speaker 3: Well, the other star witness was Trump's ex lawyer Michael Cohen,
Speaker 3: who I mentioned earlier, who admitted to organizing the payments
Speaker 3: to Stormy Daniels on Donald Trump's behalf. He also admitted
Speaker 3: to suppressing negative stories about Trump to avoid them being
Speaker 3: reported on in the media. He also claimed that Trump
Speaker 3: reimbursed him for the payment, but attempted to disguise the
Speaker 3: funds as legitimate legal expenses.
Speaker 2: So it seems like Michael Cohen is another one of
Speaker 2: those kind of Trump insiders who was a strong ally
Speaker 2: of the former president and is now a key witness
Speaker 2: against him. But it feels like every day with this case,
Speaker 2: there was just more salacious detail. When the two sides
Speaker 2: had to bring everything together, how did they summarize and
Speaker 2: close their arguments?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Trump, who in this case is the defendant,
Speaker 3: didn't give evidence during the trial.
Speaker 2: He didn't have to, right, No.
Speaker 3: So his lawyers called just two witnesses to the stand
Speaker 3: throughout the whole trial. The prosecutions lawyers, on the other hand,
Speaker 3: they summoned more than twenty witnesses that included, as I said,
Speaker 3: Daniels and Michael Cohen. In closing arguments from the defense,
Speaker 3: Trump's lawyers tried to discredit Michael Cohen. They called him
Speaker 3: the gloat which is the greatest.
Speaker 2: Liar of all time, might borrow that one honestly love it,
Speaker 2: might use it.
Speaker 3: The prosecution's closing argument lasted over five hours and saw
Speaker 3: me Daniels's lawyers accused Trump of overseeing a conspiracy and
Speaker 3: a cover up to help him win the twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: presidential election.
Speaker 2: And I'm keen to talk about the impact of all
Speaker 2: of this on the upcoming presidential election, where Trump is
Speaker 2: likely the Republican candidate. Before that, I saw heaps of
Speaker 2: videos online of Robert de Niro. The aptor outside court
Speaker 2: was he wasn't involved directly with the case, right, No, So.
Speaker 3: This is one of those interesting things where we're trying
Speaker 3: to make sense of a news story and you might
Speaker 3: have seen this. I mean, I know it was all
Speaker 3: over my TikTok for example. So Robert de Niro and
Speaker 3: members of Joe Biden's reelection campaign made an appearance outside
Speaker 3: the courthouse at the end of the trial. De Niro,
Speaker 3: fair to say, doesn't think very highly of Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: called him a tyrant and a danger to the lives
Speaker 3: of Americans. He said, and I quote here, if Trump
Speaker 3: returns to the White House, you can kiss your freedoms goodbye.
Speaker 3: He got into a bit of a tussle with some
Speaker 3: of the Trump supporters who tried to interrupt his press conference.
Speaker 3: I would play a bit of it here, but there
Speaker 3: is a fair bit of bleeping on both sides.
Speaker 2: Theresider is still a family show.
Speaker 3: They don't see Ada Ei though, that is for sure.
Speaker 3: And yeah, that's why Robert de Niro is somehow involved
Speaker 3: with this story.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's the case. And now obviously overnight we've
Speaker 2: received this guilty verdict. What happens now, Well.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the most important thing to say
Speaker 3: from the outset is that this does not hamper Donald
Speaker 3: Trump's ability to run for president.
Speaker 2: Even though he's been found guilty in the criminal trial.
Speaker 3: Correct, legally, nothing has changed logistically. If he then is imprisoned,
Speaker 3: if that is what the sentence is, that will be
Speaker 3: difficult for him. You know, he would much prefer to
Speaker 3: be out on the campaign trail then to be in prison.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't actually legally impact his right to run
Speaker 3: for president.
Speaker 2: This remarkable story of the US twin twenty four presidential
Speaker 2: election continues for now with the same two main characters
Speaker 2: seemingly in front. Zara Will have to kind of track
Speaker 2: this one day by day because I think there's going
Speaker 2: to be a few twists and turns we will.
Speaker 3: I will not be the person tracking that day by
Speaker 3: day because I am off for a couple of weeks
Speaker 3: on my honeymoon. So I will be back on the
Speaker 3: pod in July, but until then, thank you for supporting
Speaker 3: the Daily Ods each and every day, and Billy and
Speaker 3: Sam will be back next week.
Speaker 2: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 2: Bungelung Kalguton woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily os acknowledges
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 2: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 2: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 2: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.