Lawfare Daily: Jonah Bromwich on New York vs. Donald J. Trump

[Intro]

Jonah Bromwich: One of the things that he learned from this trial is he kind of endured to some extent the worst of what the rule of law had to offer. And of course, between that and the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, really came out of it not able to, to kind of be brought down by the rule of law.

Anna Bower: It's The Lawfare Podcast. I'm Anna Bower, Lawfare senior editor, here with New York Times reporter Jonah Bromwich.

Jonah Bromwich: Understanding both what Trump was convicted for, which is incredibly historically significant, and also understanding why that didn't enter the bloodstream of this country, why it didn't enter kind of the public conversation in a meaningful way is hugely important to understanding our environment, the rule of law.

Anna Bower: It's been nearly one year since Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts in Manhattan Criminal Court. Today we're talking about Jonah's new book on the subject called “Dragon on Centre Street,” as we look back at the trial, consider its legacy, and discuss what comes next.

[Main podcast]

Your book is out May 27. It's called “Dragon on Centre Street.” It is out almost one year to the day that you and I and a bunch of other reporters sat in a courtroom waiting on a verdict in People of New York v. Donald J. Trump. It's a really good read, and I think that Lawfare's most devoted listeners will be very pleased to know that there is at least one anecdote about Ben Wittes’s dog shirts in the book.

But I wanna start though, with the name “Dragon on Centre Street.” I, I think it's a fantastic name, and it's one of the first things when I opened the book that I was really curious to learn was what's the story behind the name of this book? So let's start there. Who is the dragon, why is he on Centre Street, and how'd you land on the name for the book?

Jonah Bromwich: Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me and thank you for, I'm really glad you liked the title. I've been really happy with the feedback I've been getting on it because I was a little concerned and, and you'll learn why in a moment.

So the dragon is Trump, and the title refers to a comment that Kanye West made back in 2018, which is famous amongst people our age, and I have no idea kind of how broadly it spread beyond that. But there was a point at which Kanye West—still kind of somewhat socially tolerable, not completely off the map as he is at this point—got on Twitter and he said that he and Donald Trump shared something that he called dragon energy. And it's a comment that's always stood out to me because it was ridiculous, but there was something that Kanye West and Donald Trump and all these other public figures of the last decade or so have had in common.

And so I've thought about it a lot, and then when I was thinking about what I should title this book, I was really thinking about this book as a story about a contest between the rule of law and everything that Trump represents. Trump is a really powerful person; I think when he was out of office, it was easier to start to think about, well, what is the nature of his power, why is he powerful, what forces does he have at his command?

And so when I thought about kind of a term to sum up all those powers, I really landed on dragon energy and his shamelessness, his combativeness, his self-promotion. And dragon was just a term that I thought could sum those all up in a nice, easy package and present them kind of in contest with the rule of law, and that's really what the book is about.

Anna Bower: Yeah, and that really comes through. I mean, I, I think of dragon energy as kind of being like chaos energy. I don't know if you see, if you see it the same way, but it sounds like maybe you do, and it was this kind of, you know, pitting institutionalism and the rule of law kind of against this chaos energy.

And I wanna come back to that a little bit later, but the book, in addition to being about the events that led to Trump being convicted on 34 felony counts for falsification of business records, is also to me, a book about journalism. It's not just about the trial, you know; it's, there's an element to it that is, here's how the sausage gets made in terms of here's how we did the process of reporting on this case and this trial.

And I think that's especially true for chapter one, which tells the story about how you and your colleagues at the New York Times scooped everyone on the news of Trump's indictment. The Times was the first outlet to report on the historic indictment of Trump. So tell us, how'd you do it? What was the secret?

Jonah Bromwich: Sure. So I think the, the biggest secret is that we had just this absolutely fantastic team. It's no secret that the New York Times has a lot of resources, and we're really lucky in that regard, and we really try to put those resources to work.

And so in this case, we had been anticipating a Trump indictment. We had done it a year before that when we thought Cy Vance might indict Trump and then Bragg in his early tenure, who was Vance's successor as the Manhattan district attorney. And so we were somewhat used to this exercise, and what we would do is that two of my colleagues, Ben Protess and Willie Rashbaum, and I spent a lot of time studying these cases, reporting on these cases, and really learning every single person who might be involved in them so that we could track them, ecause even though so much of the conversation about these cases now takes place in this kind of abstract universe of the internet and and cable news, an indictment actually takes place on the ground in real life.

And so we knew grand juries are incredibly secretive; we knew we weren't gonna be able to get in there; we probably weren't going to be able to identify or interview grand jurors—that would've been incredibly risky, both for us and for them. But we thought, okay, if we familiarize ourselves with the personnel enough to be able to track their comings and goings to the building where grand juries sit in New York, then we'll maybe be able to kind of get a sense of how these patterns work.

And we worked with three other reporters, Nate Schweber, Sean Piccoli, and Kate Christobek. And Kate Christobek, as I say in the book, is really our secret weapon here because she had been a former state prosecutor. She knew some of the courtroom personnel, including the grand jury warden, who we eventually learned was the grand jury warden, who was there for the Trump grand jury.

And so we began to track his movements, the movements of the prosecutors on the case, and in the course of doing that, we were able to really understand what it would look like when Trump was indicted. All the prosecutors would be there, the grand jury warden would be there. Kate told us that one of the prosecutors would probably have this big book of kind of legal statutes 'cause they would have to read the charges to the grand jury. So we waited over the course of weeks, and eventually we saw exactly the pattern we'd expected to see and we were able to break that news.

But I wanna say the other thing that I think is really important about that chapter is we were doing this work kind of without any presence of Trump. He was not engaged with the fact that he might possibly be indicted or he didn't seem to be, anyway; he had lamented the case and and talked about it as being another one of these witch hunts, but he hadn't really gotten engaged. And then I believe on Saturday, March 18, he predicted his arrest and the minute that he predicted that he was going to be arrested, the entire game changed. There were all these reporters there where there were all these cameras there. You know, anytime Trump says something is going to happen, cameras go to that spot. And so part of chapter one is not just about how we got the scoop, but how we navigated kind of as institutionalists ourselves this energy that Trump brought to the scene and how much more difficult it was once those elements associated with him were there on the ground outside of a 100 Centre Street.

Anna Bower: Yeah, I just, I just loved here. 'cause you know, I remember where I was, you know, when I got the New York Times alert that Trump had been indicted and I kind of, you know—I, I think I was maybe still in law school at the time, but I wasn't yet a legal journalist—and I kind of just assumed that you guys just had someone from Trump world call you up and say, hey, we got news that he's been indicted. And then I think I read later that actually Trump's team learned about the indictment from your reporting on it. And so that got me thinking like, man, I'd love to know the story about how they, they broke that news, and so learning through this chapter exactly how you did it.

And it, and it basically just goes to show, 'cause you, you know, you talk about how there were other reporters all around, and as you said, there were other reporters all around, but they kind of didn't know what was going on because they didn't know exactly how the process worked, they didn't know, you know, who to look for and that kind of thing, so it really is just a testament to the kind of really like detailed like process obsessive that you have to be to, to know what's going on in state court. So, it was, it was really fascinating part of the book that I personally loved as just someone who's a journalism nerd.

But, okay, so, you write in the book that this is the story of how the trial happened, why it happened, and why it matters. And I wanna get to the why it matters later on, but let's focus for a minute on the why it happened part because that's always been a big part of Trump's political and legal narrative around this case. He's claimed that this case is driven by the political weaponization of the criminal legal system, what he has unfortunate for us, referred to as lawfare.

And even, and even some people who you know are Trump critics have pointed out that the case itself has had this weird trajectory—there's been stops, there's been starts, there's been, you know, restarts. And then others were skeptical of the legal theory itself arguing that, you know, it seemed kind of novel or it seemed really overwrought and too complicated.

All of which is why when I read the book, I was very interested in your account of how and why Alvin Bragg ultimately decided to prosecute this case. And to that end, there's a lot of valuable reporting in the book about some of the debates that the prosecutors were having internally about, you know, the legal theory, whether to bring the case, all of that.

So can you talk a little bit about that and what exactly, like from your reporting on all of that, where did you land in terms of this question that's been lurking in the background about the politicization of, of the case?

Jonah Bromwich: Sure. I mean that's, that's a great question and I think it's one of the reasons that it was really important to me to write about this case in the way that I did is because I think I have a fundamentally different view of it from a lot of people who have commented on it, just because I reported on the figures at play.

Most of the time I think when someone is evaluating a case, whether they be a lawyer or a layperson, what they'll do is they will simply see the output, they'll see the charges, they'll read the indictment, and they'll think about kind of whether this makes sense, whether this looks like other cases they've seen, and they'll come to a judgment about it based on that. And for me, this case is the product of an institutional psychology and the personal psychology of the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

So Bragg comes into office with an investigation against Donald Trump already in the works, and it's a long running investigation. It's, it was opened in 2018; it's kind of restarted in 2019; it's gone up to the Supreme Court and back. And Bragg comes in with two prosecutors who are leading that investigation, Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, really eager to go forward to get an indictment of Trump, in short, for kind of criminally exaggerating his net worth.

And Bragg comes in—these guys are raring to go—he is the first new district attorney in a decade, and the second in about 50 years, he's the first black district attorney, and he is the product of a time where people are really rethinking prosecution overall. And Bragg is good at kind of straddling the line. He's a former federal prosecutor, but he is also someone who's steeped in the language of prosecutorial reform, so that just makes him a fundamentally different figure than the kind of very, very establishment style prosecutors who would run the office before him.

 And when he takes a look at this net worth case that Pomerantz and Dunne put together, he basically finds that it doesn't work for him. He doesn't think it's that strong a case. He has various worries about witnesses, about proving it and after taking a little time to review it under intense pressure from Pomerantz and Dunne, he decides not to go forward with it.

Now, Alvin Brag is, is is a real kind of foil to Donald Trump throughout this book, and I think in one, one of the kind of most important ways is that I don't think he has ever really gotten a great sense of how the media is going to work. So when he made that decision, for instance, not to go forward with the case, I'm not sure he ever really understood just quite how explosive that would be.

We broke the news, me and, and Willie and Ben, almost immediately it caused a real firestorm. He had already had a bumpy part of his tenure and it was really difficult for him, and ever since people have asked because he ended up bringing the hush money case, well, is it just because the political pressure, was it just because he was so irredeemable after dropping this one Trump case that he basically had to bring another in order to redeem himself, to make himself electable again, to capitalize on any ambitions he might have for his professional career.

And, and I have to say, I've never found any evidence that he suggests he did that. I think he was thrown to the office, didn't like the first case, would not, as most prosecutors, would not abandon the investigation outright. And I know that he and his, his senior aides in particular were extremely intrigued always by Michael Cohen's hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. And so the minute that the furor kind of died down from his dropping the case, they began to look at that fact pattern, they began to think of it as the potential for a new criminal case against Donald Trump.

And then most importantly, I think a lot of former federal prosecutors tend to, to really look down on state law and think of it as this kind of thicket of, of, of statutes that really don't mean much or untried or untested, and Bragg, due to a lot of different qualities in, in his psychological makeup is not like that, and I think he's more open to bringing novel cases—this was true in his career before he was district attorney—than many of his peers.

And so he found this very important state election law that made it a crime to conspire to by unlawful means to promote or prevent someone's election. And it was Bragg himself who found this law. And this law is very much at the heart of their case because even though this's called the hush money case all the time, this is a case about conspiring to win the 2016 election, and that's what was most important to Bragg and to Bragg's prosecutors. And I think Anna, for those of us who were actually at the trial, that was by far the most heightened emphasis was on that for the jury. That was kind of the crux of the case.

Anna Bower: Yeah, for sure. So let's, let's talk about the case itself then. You know, I, I think that this case is interesting because even I, you know, we talked about this a lot when we were covering the trial doing legal analysis of the legal theory, which I myself was a little bit skeptical of like how exactly would they present this case? It seemed, you know, it's very complicated; there's this cast of witnesses that, you know, some there's a, it's a, it's a wild and colorful group of, of people, some whom have some credibility issues, and then there's also, you know, the fact that it is just a very complicated legal theory.

At one point, you, you say in the book which I very much related to, that it's kind of like explaining I, I think it was like quantum physics or something like that, in that, you know, you might know it one day and then the next you forget it. And I mean, I've had that experience with trying to explain this case to people because it's just hard to communicate.

But what was surprising is that you get into the trial—at least this was my perspective of watching the trial—the way that they sequenced it, the way they put on their case, actually, I, I started becoming very convinced of it. And clearly the jurors had the same experience. But you, you walk in the book, you know, you explain all of this in a way that gives the whole case, you know, the narrative that a person who is looking at it from the outside would need, and you go through some of these like key moments and there were some highs and there were some lows for the prosecution though.

So can you walk us through that and, and what was your experience as someone who was there every day. Was, you know, was it similar to mine in that were there moments when you were kind of like, oh, the prosecution is, is has really got it here, or were there any moments when you thought the trial was gonna go off the rails?

Jonah Bromwich: I was, I was really fascinated by the trial itself, and I think one of the reasons I wanted to do this book was the massive kind of disjuncture between the experience of people who covered the trial and were in the courtroom and kind of watched it unfold and saw the legitimacy granted to it by the very process and the presence of the judge and simply kind of all those hours in the courtroom. The fact that it kind of went how it was supposed to go with relatively little disruption kind of overall, I think, gave it for attendees oh this, this was a real trial, this was a real case, and at the end of it, Trump was really convicted.

And of course, I think especially now a year out, that's a minority opinion. I mean, I don't think people feel that it was really legitimate and if they feel it was legitimate, they don't necessarily feel it was particularly significant 'cause the guy’s, the president of the United States already.

I was really, really versed in the case when I was covering the trial, and so I thought about it every day as a, how is the prosecution gonna accomplish what they're seeking to accomplish here and how is the defense gonna stymie them? And for the most part, I think I was impressed by the way the prosecution laid out their case, and what they did was they front loaded this really dazzling case about an election conspiracy.

Now, I think people who have read the news over the last decade or so, were often dismissive of kind of this case having been a series of plot points that were had already been reported here or reported there, etc. But to have the story told coherently to a jury and that story being this idea that Trump and David Pecker and Michael Cohen got together, came to an arrangement where certain damaging stories would be buried in order to help promote Trump's campaign and, and to stop him from having to deal with these sex scandals—it was really extraordinary. And so then you got testimony about that sequence of events with a lot of time kind of given over in particular to the second two hush money payments and of course to the Stormy Daniels hush money payment.

And I did, Anna, have, have a similar experience to you, because there, there was one day in the courtroom—I was so used to the narrative that I hadn't really thought about, oh, is Trump lying or not? Right, his defense had said that none of this was true, they had denied that he even had sex with Stormy Daniels, and I think maybe two thirds of the way through the trial probably—we’re, we’re exactly a year out from the week of Michael Cohen's testimony, and I think right around like the 13th, Michael Cohen's first day of testimony—I kind of turned to a colleague and I said, you know, I think Trump is lying about this stuff.

Which is not a novel idea, but the reason it was novel for me is because I had actually been persuaded by the evidence and the way it was coming in. That's, that's it. I'd been persuaded by the evidence and the way it was coming in, but that was surprising to me to even, to be persuaded, that's what a trial is for, right? It's like a long attention span based on persuasive arguments by both sides, and the prosecutors did actually manage to persuade us of a, like a tricky, a tricky argument.

Anna Bower: Yeah. And, and so let's then also talk about the defense case. 'cause you know, I, I haven't actually talked about this case really a whole lot since I, you know, went to it and covered it and I, I think, you know, a year later, it's really interesting to think about where in, in retrospect where things went well or did not go so well in the case of the defense.

And one thing you talk about in the book that is really interesting is kind of how, like Trump's public comments, statements and, and his need and desire to really refute like everything about the case actually ended up kind of hindering his defense strategy in some ways in that, you know, it seemed like the defense sometimes had these contradictory stances either within the case or between what they were saying publicly and then in the courtroom. They, obviously, credibility was a huge focus, but instead of being very, very, kind of strategically chipping away at different pieces of the case, it was more like, this is all a witch hunt was was the general vibe.

So talk a little bit about that. I mean, when you're reporting on this case and you're thinking about the defense performance, where did things go wrong and and was there a, a strategy that they could have put on that that maybe could have been a little bit more productive?

Jonah Bromwich: Yes. I, I think so. I, it's, first of all, let's talk briefly about what went right for them, both before and after the case. Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, I think, have done a really good job in terms of taking what Donald Trump really wants to see happen legally and converting that into actual legal briefs. And they've had a lot of success. I mean, two federal cases kind of left by the wayside; this case was delayed a little bit in the front, but they really worked extremely hard to get it delayed, and they delayed the sentencing in the back.

So I think there are, there are plenty of places where they have taken this extremely Trump-informed legal strategy and they have been successful by their own standards. But in the actual trial itself, I thought they had a really, really difficult time, in part, I think because Trump had such a heavy, heavy influence on their defense strategy.

So just to, this may be a mistake, but to talk about the structure of the case for a second 'cause this is where I think they went awry. So the case is kind of a three layer cake basically. And so the first, the top charge, as you know, and I'm just explaining this to our audience, but the top charge is falsifying business records. So that has to do with the disguised business records, only related to the Stormy Daniels payment, the last of these three hush money cases. One layer down though is this conspiracy, and the conspiracy, as we've already mentioned, is this idea that Trump, Pecker and Michael Cohen got together agreed to suppress stories, and then three stories were suppressed in the course of that. And they did so by unlawful means, the prosecution argued—and that's the third layer down—the idea that they kind of committed crimes along the way as they were looking to suppress these stories.

Now for me, the falsifying business records charge is the one that was by far the weakest in some ways. They had the least evidence and they had to rely on Michael Cohen, an incredibly difficult witness for that. And there was this moment in particular—so Michael Cohen has to argue for the case to work that Trump approves of the scheme to falsify business records that he knows that, that these reimbursements to Cohen are, are going to say that they were for legal work rather than for a hush money payment for something like that. And the evidence of that completely reliant on Michael Cohen and just razor thin it was these two very brief conversations, really only one conversation in Trump Tower in January, 2017.

And so I was of the mind—and I make this point pretty heavily in the book—that if the defense had really cleared away all the nonsense, conceded a lot of the points, including, you know, yes, our client slept with Stormy Daniels, es, maybe you don't like him, yes, maybe we didn't want these stories to come out, and so yes, we did suppress them—none of that would've been a problem for them, and they could have just simply focused on, all you have to do in this case is to hear Michael Cohen and no one else talking about these conversations and understand and that, that, that's just not, that won't get you beyond a reasonable doubt.

But because they were so busy denying every last little ingredient of the various hush money payments of the various kind of ins and outs of the campaign that might have been embarrassing to Trump, but really weren't all that important, they didn't focus the jury's attention, attention there, and they ultimately lost because of that. I mean, I really think this was a winnable case for them in a way, but they did not exploit it.

Anna Bower: Yeah, so I, and I'm curious too, you know, I thinking about, talking about the trial and our experiences of it and this kind of gap that there was between the people who were in the courtroom watching it and then, you know, the people who were kind of just reading the news about it—one thing that you talk about in the book is your own experience of, of becoming someone who starts going on camera doing these kind of video accounts and analysis of what happened each day. And, and you mentioned at, at one point that, you know, you were getting so much more feedback from people about the video content that you were producing as opposed to the written content.

And one thing that I, I've always wondered about this case is you know, just how different would the public perception be if there were cameras in the courtroom and people weren't, you know, just relying on people like you and I to, you know, tell them what is happening. You know, what's your take on that, and like, how did that experience kind of change, if at all, when you were writing this book, like what it is that you wanted to accomplish? Like the way that you wrote it, knowing that, you know, people just had you to be the kind of person who is, you know, telling the story as opposed to having audio or video of it.

Jonah Bromwich: Yeah, I mean I think that this absolutely should have been filmed. I think it was, you know, it was the first ever trial of a former American president. It was, it was an event of huge significance for the campaign, but also historically speaking. And I think the fact that so few people had access to it is a huge problem.

I don't know that that necessarily kind of changes people's opinions of it overall, particularly given the way that that kind of long video would then be kind of spliced to kind of show the, the best argument for each side. I mean, I think that we have a media environment that is very good at taking even kind of primary source video and manipulating it to whichever end that the, the manipulator likes, but that being said, I mean, this is an event of immense public interest, complicated case. Why, why was it not filmed? I just don't, I don't understand it.

And I think it's really bad for both public understanding of this case, but more importantly understanding public faith in the rule of law. Trump blasted this case so intensely and I think so successfully. I mean, he is just remarkably good at staying on message, keeping the message very simple, having his allies in the Republican party and elsewhere spread that message, and so this case just really did not get any kind of hearing from people who may have been skeptical of it, but then could have had a chance to, to look in.

And, and the book, I mean, ironically to some extent because a, a book is a book and not, you know, not that many people are ultimately going to read a whole book, but Trump is so successful, let's say, in this incoherent media environment—I don't know if you remember this, Anna, 'cause now it's been. about a decade—but I remember after the 2016 election, people around me would talk about how kind of time had become funny, like their experience of time had beco-, become a little strange, and that accelerated, I think during the pandemic. And I think Trump, there's, it's not a coincidence that Trump is the dominant figure of that time. I think Trump's gift for incoherence and, and thriving in chaos kind of accords with what social media has done to our experience of time.

And so with the book, I wanted to really explain this case as well as I could. I wanted it to be extremely readable, and I hope it is, because I wanted people who cared a lot or didn't care at all. People like me. When I, before I was a, a courts reporter, I would pay attention here and there to Robert Mueller's investigation or Cy Vance's investigation, but I didn't understand it very well. I didn't know the players, and I realized once I started covering this stuff. It was incredibly insular, and people inside it expected you kind of to know every little thing about it, who these people were, what these charges were in this case, and if you were outside of it, it was just impossible.

So with the book, I wanted to create a, like a very coherent, understandable, single narrative of a single case so people could evaluate it for themselves and really understand it in a way that I think has been very hard to do in our media environment.

Anna Bower: And I, and I absolutely think you did that and included a lot of the really fun details as well that are the kind of behind the scenes thing. As I mentioned, there is a, a fun Ben Wittes’ dog shirt anecdote in the book, which I will leave to everyone to go read the book to find out exactly what it is.

But so you mentioned when you were talking that and we were talking before about how this is really about a kind of clash between the rule of law and this, you know, dragon energy that you've described, and in in the end of course—you know, despite what we've been talking about, how there's this gap between the public perception and you know, what was happening in the courtroom—in the end, it seems like to some extent the rule of law won in that Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts. And of course then there were, there, the election happened, he was elected he was sentenced, but with essentially no penalty.

And, you know, thinking about this kind of clash between the institutionalist Alvin Bragg, as you, you know, have kind of portrayed him in the book and then the Trump chaos energy and how kind of publicly, and then in terms of consequences, it really does seem like maybe Alvin Bragg and the rule of law kind of won the battle, but, but kind of lost the war. Would you say that that is kind of how you think about it or, or what's your take on, on this tension between the rule of law and the, and the dragon energy as you've described it?

Jonah Bromwich: Yeah. That, that's exact, that's exactly how I think about it. And I, I think one of the things that's really interesting, and I, and I think is very much in the book, is that inside the courtroom there's this kind of pre-21st century vibe about it in the sense that the jurors have to pay very close attention. The press is of course back, they're paying close attention. Trump is rendered all but mute and is certainly not the center of attention. And so within that space—the kind of like home turf of the rule of law is the courtroom of course—the rule of law won out. And it won out in this case that was much derided, but of course that was only kind of a brief moment in time.

And I say this in the book, but the kind of moment that that Trump gets out of court and the trial is over—despite the fact that he's been convicted—he's, he's immediately more powerful. He gets an, an enormous amount of donations right after his conviction and the, the kind of pace of the game reverts to him. You'll remember that those were the chaotic months—you know, very shortly thereafter, there was the debate in, in which Biden showed himself to, to seemingly be just kind of not up to the task of, of holding a basic debate, month after that, there was the assassination attempt. And so these kind of moments in time that are incredibly chaotic, unprecedented, set off, huge kind of flurries of news, and that that's Trump's natural environment. And I think he, he really thrived in it.

And I think one of the things that he learned from this trial is he kind of endured to some extent the worst of what the rule of law had to offer. And of course, between that and the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity really came out of it not able to, to kind of be brought down by the rule of law.

And I, I think that's a really, really important point to emphasize because one of the things that I've always seen, I saw before I covered this Trump investigation, and while I covered it and, and after I covered it, that people had thought, people who, who really didn't like Trump would think one of the most power instruments we have is the rule of law. Particularly kind of the punishment, right? So if Trump can be convicted and punished imprisoned, then he will no longer be a, a political threat. And I always thought that was kind of a fallacy. Like I think that that instrumentalizing the rule of law in that way was not good for the rule of law.

To be clear, I don't think the prosecutors who led those cases were thinking that way; I think they genuinely thought, or at least in the case that I know the best that, that Alvin Bragg genuinely thought that Trump had committed crimes that, that he should be prosecuted for. But I think the kind of fervor around these cases and this idea that if only we can get Trump convicted and show the world that he's a felon and then perhaps put him in prison, that was really wrongheaded because of the way that he, he was able to use his political ability to combat it.

And I think now when we're seeing this kind of direct combat between, between President Trump and his administration and the rule of law, it's really important to kind of keep in mind what the rule of law can do, which is kind of preserve these guardrails and these kind of rights, depending on how judges rule in these various cases, but not trying to instrumentalize it, right. Not trying, oh, the rule of law can be used to accomplish these political goals. I think one of the big lessons of, of Trump one and, and the Trump era is to see that it doesn't make sense to, to think of the rule of law is this kind of instrument of punishment.

Anna Bower: Yeah. And so I I, and this all kind of gets to, I think the why it matters question. I think that a lot of people when they think about this case and they are, if they're contextualizing it kind of in this way of like, oh, well yeah, there were these convictions, but I think many people—particularly of course, people who are critics of Trump—think, but you know, why does it matter? Because there, there was no, there weren't really any consequences. It didn't result in any kind of, you know, accountability for these crimes of which he was convicted.

And then of course, I think also a lot of of people think about it in the context of, this ended up being the only case that went to trial, and it is the case that to some people they consider to be maybe not the weakest, but the kind of least morally culpable. Maybe I would, I would describe it as, as that.

Jonah Bromwich: Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Anna Bower:  So I—like, to you thinking about this case, like why, like why does it matter? Like what, what's the case for the idea that, yeah, we like really should still care about this case and, and what happened during it?

Jonah Bromwich: Oh, I, I have so many answers to that.

Well, for one I'll go back to kind of pick up where I was at the previous question. The, the way that the fervor for Trump prosecutions functioned was to put an enormous amount of pressure, I think, on, on various parts of society to, to think that these cases were important, to have them covered in the news.

And one of the things I think we saw with this case, but also even with the Smith cases—which I think people felt, felt in many instances were, including Alvin, Bragg himself, were more significant or more important, ought to be tried—I think people, instead of thinking about what was going to be decided by these cases, which is to say whether or not Trump was guilty or innocent of the particular crime he was accused of, we're thinking about the political consequence of these cases. Once you start to think about that, you're already kind of outside the bounds of how we are assessing why these cases matter.

And so in this particular case, I think it's, it's, it's remarkable how misunderstood it is because the result of the case was that the jury found that Trump had corrupted the 2016 election, that they were convinced by this group that that Trump had never won a legitimate election. And I had expected, to some extent, Democrats to take that argument up, Alvin Bragg himself, to kind of explain to the American public what had happened.

And I think that in and of itself, that jury finding of the corruption of the 2016 election, which is something that Democrats had talked about for years, was remarkably significant. But that framing what this case was actually about, what Trump was actually convicted of, never really made it into the public conversation, and instead, you saw this kind of jeering about Trump being a convicted felon, as if it were just a kind of another slur like that one could heap onto you know, the other, the other kind of resistance minded slurs that, that Trump had.

So I think understanding both what Trump was convicted for, which is incredibly historically significant, and also understanding why that didn't enter the bloodstream of this country, why it didn't enter kind of the public conversation in a meaningful way is hugely important to understanding our environment, the rule of law, etc. I mean, I, this is like a, a side point, but it's something I've been, I'm thinking a lot about a lot in the fall of 2024.

As I was writing this book, there were two cases in the Manhattan District Attorney's office that got huge attention. One was the case of of Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny—Daniel Penny having applied a chokehold to Jordan Neely, ultimately killing him—and of Luigi Mangione, of course, which I don't even think I need to explain. And there were hugely outsized reactions to both.

One is the kind of support for Luigi Mangione, which was really, really surprising to people, and another was right wing support for Daniel Penny before he was acquitted and after he was acquitted, and I saw those just as the sequel to the attitudes about this case and everything else. When faith in the rule of law is where it is and is where it was after this case and what Trump was so, skillfully able to do in terms of manipulating public understanding of this case, that's when you get reactions to Luigi Mangione or Daniel Penney like you saw, and I, I thought that was really remarkable.

And one can only imagine that it continues, given that Trump is, is kind of in court every day, or his administration is in court every day tangling with judges—I can't imagine that people are seeing their faith in the rule of law rebuilt. So I think it, it's a really tricky time and this case is the kind of epicenter of that to me.

Anna Bower: Yeah. And I, you know, and, and to me, because I went from covering the criminal trials against, or the criminal prosecutions of Trump to now covering litigation related to the Trump administration—and again, I'm dealing with scenarios where, you know, there's no camera, there's no audio in the courtroom, so you're doing as best you can to explain to people what is going on in court.

So I, and I'm curious like what, like we're talking so much here about, again, this gap of public understanding, public reactions to this case and the kind of lack of understanding, and I just, and I am interested if you have thoughts or if you've reflected on kind of is there a need to change the way that court reporters are reporting news from courtrooms so that people can connect with it more? I mean, I think you, the book you've done a fantastic job of, of explaining this case that's so complicated, but is that something you've been thinking about, and as you wrote the book, did you, were you kind of thinking about exactly like what it means for you as a reporter that it seems like people just really didn't seem to grasp this, this case?

Jonah Bromwich: Yeah, I think every American institution has to grapple with this reality. I think it's really, really important that the media, the courts, prosecutors, kind of any institution, particularly those that feel under fire, think about the lessons of this book and of this moment. And to me, the kind of primary lesson is transparency and kind of explanation of the task of the institution.

So I'll give you an example. One of Trump's great arguments and I think really successful arguments was that he was being persecuted by a kind of a grand coordinated witch hunt. And because I cover prosecution and have spoken to prosecutors, I understand how prosecutors kind of choose what they do. I understand the idea of, of prosecuting a case against a very high profile defendant in terms of kind of why that's important as a deterrent effect, how it can help the public understand what is criminal, how white collar crime works in particular—but I think none of that stuff ever gets explained to the public. Prosecutors don't talk about it. Prosecutors are barred from talking about specifics of cases, but there's an institutional culture of not talking much about their cases at all, other than a splashy press conference maybe at an indictment, a splashy press conference after a conviction. And that's about it.

I think that prosecutors need to explain what the theory is under which they're bringing in case, why they think it's of public importance, of public interest, and I think they need to do that all the time. I think courts need to talk about how those decisions are made. I think all court documents should be public, even PACER, which is a better situation than we have in state court, you know, is is obviously prohibitively expensive. It's difficult to access, you don't understand how it works unless you're really in the, in the thick of legal reporting.

These are all enormous problems for people who care about these institutions that all this stuff is under so many layers of, of kind of obtuse, difficult to, to, to parse, paperwork and other things. And, and none of that has changed in years and years and years. I mean, these, a lot of these institutions are, are really kind of aging and decrepit, and I think it's one of the reasons that they find themselves so vulnerable in this moment.

Anna Bower: So, and, and one thing too on just the topic of reporting on this book and on this case, something I was curious about as I was reading it 'cause you, you got so much detail and that, like I said, especially about, you know, between the prosecutors' internal deliberations, there's so much new detail there that I, I wasn't aware of.

But I'm curious about like, what obstacles you faced in reporting this book because when I think about the sequence of events, it's like, you know, the trial happens, the convictions come down. And typically you would think in a kind of normal reporting on a trial type situation, you know, you'd already face some obstacles to getting people to talk to you about what exactly was happening during the trial because there's a, an appeal, of course prosecutors are often reluctant to talk about a case.

But in this situation it's like you've not only got all the normal kind of situations that might hinder, you know, getting the inside story, but you also have the fact that the, for example, the defense attorneys are all now kind of joined the administration. You, you have like all of these different kind of reasons why it might be difficult to get information, and of course I, I understand that you have to be sensitive to not revealing sources and all of that kind of thing.

So, but I'm just curious, you know, as you were reporting, what were some of the challenges about like feeling like you got not only what was the public record, but also kind of the backstory as well?

Jonah Bromwich: It was just really challenging. I mean, I, I think that for all the reasons you mentioned and more, I think there's a, there's just a, a tendency kind of in the broad cultures that I was reporting on towards silence. This case is active. There are all kinds of reasons why many people wouldn't have wanted to talk about it, and it was a, it was tremendously difficult.

I was lucky in the sense that, that I had been reporting on the DA's office for a few years and I had a lot in my notebook and that that came in handy, but just generally, I think reporting this book out, and particularly trying to make for a reader to make it feel new and to not make it feel as if, ugh, you know, stormy Daniels again, ugh, Michael Cohen again, these names that, that have become almost barriers it, it seems like that to the idea that you're going to learn anything new. It was just a real challenge.

And so one of the reasons I started with the, the kind of indictment reporting section that we described at the top was A) to kind of get the reader into the book and to help them understand that they were in good hands, that they were going to learn things that they hadn't learned before. They were going to see the kind of physical layout of Centre Street and the courtroom, and these moments that they hadn't seen before. I just wanted people to feel like, okay, like if you are ready to learn about this case, if you're ready to learn about why it matters. Like, you're gonna learn a lot. And I, I, I, I do think I was able to do that. I hope I was able to do that.

Anna Bower: No, you absolutely did. I mean, I, I loved seeing—like, it, it was, it was such a weird experience reading this book 'cause like I know these people that you're talk, like when you talk about Izzy, the courtroom sketch artist, and you, you know, talk about all the various people who are kind of in the line and I'm like, oh I was there, I know this, and, but even I had, there were so many new details in it that, that I, it was really just such a fun read.

Jonah Bromwich: Thank you.

Anna Bower: So last thing before we go, Jonah, this story, even though it is kind of over, it's not really over, the reason being that, you know, there's appellate action you know, it's, it's something that is still kind of continuing on, even though Trump is in office, he's been sentenced. So what kind of, what's the update there? What's next in this story?

Jonah Bromwich: Sure.

Anna Bower: There's also potentially investigation, you know, there's been all kinds of talk about investigations into the prosecution, so, you know, what can we expect for the next chapter of, of this story regarding the New York Trump trial?

Jonah Bromwich: Yeah, I don't, I don't think the story is over by any means. It's very interesting. I think a lot of people were hoping that Trump would, would go to prison and they never have to think or hear about him again were really disappointed.

Trump himself, it was very clear from the actions of his lawyers, hated being called as a convicted felon. He hated it. He fought against it at every chance he could, they went to the Supreme Court simply to try and delay the sentencing so that it would never happen, and the only thing that was going to happen at that sentencing was going to be that it kind of formalized his status as a felon.

So we know that Donald Trump does not like being a felon, does not want to be a felon, and I think broadly there's kind of two tracks on which this fight will continue. One is, as you mentioned in the appellate courts; he's got a great team from Sullivan & Cromwell handling his appeal. It was really kind of one of the examples of the way that big law has shifted in favor of Trump, when we saw that Sullivan and Cromwell was going to handle it. And I expect them to have extremely strong kind of interesting arguments, it's actually somewhat exciting to me just as someone who's, who's really into the nuts and bolts of this case to see how they argue for its illegitimacy in try and convince judges, and I think those arguments will, will kind of start to kick off next month.

But then I think we've already seen the way that Trump has been willing to use his office to, to seem seemingly to pursue revenges against his enemies. And so Tish James, who was not involved in this case but was involved in the Mark Pomerantz investigation, is already kind of been under the gun. And we know there's a weaponization working group at the Justice Department, that that group is explicitly tasked with looking at, looking at this investigation, federal involvement in this investigation, which in Trump world is kind of a euphemism often for Matthew Colangelo, who was one of the lead prosecutors on this case, who was a, a high ranking official at, at DOJ before that.

So I think it's not over, and I think we don't really know kind of what happens next. The, the kind of appellate lanes are clear, but I think one of the reasons you don't see, Alvin Bragg talk about this case in public at all, which he almost never does, one of the reasons you don't really see Juan Merchan reflect in this, on this case in public at all is the, the potential for threats to, to those men from the White House, not just the kind of appellate process, but all the other stuff that, that could go down. So I, I completely agree. I don't think this story is over.

Anna Bower: And in that appellate process, you mentioned some potential interesting arguments. Can you just remind people, you know, what maybe some of those arguments might be?

Jonah Bromwich: Sure. I think people are going, I think that the Sullivan Cromwell lawyers are probably going to attack the structure of this case. So the, the case is, regardless of what you think about it, complex. It has these three layers and I think there's a very good chance that they will say that there were due process violations in terms of Trump just not being able to know what he was charged with.

I also think presidential immunity may play an interesting role in this case. It's not clear to me that it will be a successful argument—this this case just has so little to do with immunity—but I do think that the judges are likely to make new law on immunity as they assess this case and assess defense arguments. So we'll actually probably get a, a, a refinement, I think, of of the Trump immunity law in a way that will actually be useful in terms of understanding you know, what, what he has total free reign to do and, and where he's actually a little more hemmed in.

One of the advantages to, to Trump and his administration, I think so far has been that there was that ruling and there hasn't been all that much refinement. You know, we haven't gotten subsequent laws made that may kind of tailor the Supreme Court ruling on immunity a little bit more, help us understand what's fair game and what's not. So I, I think that's a good chance that this case could result in further tailoring that.

Anna Bower: Well, we'll certainly be watching to see what happens and reading your reporting. Jonah, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.

Jonah Bromwich: Oh, of course. Thanks so much for having me. This was a blast.

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