Darren Samuelsohn: Untangling Trump’s Trials

The self-proclaimed "greatest country on earth" is in an unfathomable position. Heavily favored to win the Republican Party's nomination for president is a man found guilty of rape and fraud in civil courts and facing nearly 100 felony counts in criminal proceedings. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Darren Samuelsohn, a longtime Washington reporter from The Messenger who will give us a useful overview of the 44th President's various and sundry legal wranglings. We sort through the labyrinthian timelines of the cases, discuss how these trials paradoxically seem to solidify Trump's support among Republicans, and look at how the complex web of a former president's criminality has stretched all three branches of the United States Government paper thin. Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise. Darren Samuelsohn (DS) | 00:14 - Where do these criminal trials factor into people's attentions? The political discourse in the, in the general election campaign, I mean, we never experienced anything like this as a country before. Narrator | 00:27 - The self-proclaimed “greatest country on earth” is in an unfathomable position. Heavily favored to win the Republican Party’s nomination for president is a man found guilty of rape and fraud in civil courts and facing nearly 100 felony counts in criminal proceedings. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Darren Samuelsohn, a longtime Washington reporter from The Messenger who will give us a useful overview of the 44th President’s various and sundry legal wranglings. We sort through the labyrinthian timelines of the cases, discuss how these trials paradoxically seem to solidify Trump’s support among Republicans, and look at how the complex web of a former president’s criminality has stretched all three branches of the United States Government paper thin. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:25 I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Darren Samuelsohn. He is a senior editor at The Messenger. Darren, welcome to Sea Change Radio. Darren Samuelsohn (DS) | 01:37 - Thanks for having me. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:38 - It's a pleasure to have you covering the 44th President's legal machinations as a political junkie. I'm sure you didn't see yourself 10, 15 years ago being up in the weeds trying to understand many, many legal terms, and that's an expert like yourself. You can imagine how consumers of media are confused. And so that's why I wanted to have you on to try to break down some of Trump's legal troubles right now. And just trying to track the Trump criminal cases. We have the federal election interference case. We have the Georgia election interference case. We have the classified documents case, and then the hush money case. These are the criminal cases. And then there's also the civil case with E. Jean Carroll. And is there another one that I'm forgetting? Darren Samuelsohn (DS) | 02:29 - There's definitely one other big one. That's the civil trial in New York City, uh, where Trump's company is on the line, right? Uh, with, uh, you know, a trial that took place, basically the last quarter of 2023 was occupied by Donald Trump showing up in court, day in and day out in, in Manhattan. Uh, where soon gonna have that case kicked to the judge where he'll be issuing his ruling. Uh, there are appeals ongoing as well, so this is not gonna be over anytime soon. Alex Wise (AW) | 02:54 -So that's six cases, right? DS | 02:56 - That's at least six. And there's, there, there are other civil cases also, uh, that are happening. And then myriad tangential things to everything that we just discussed, because now the United States Supreme Court is involved on a ton of really big, high profile, big questions that connect directly to everything that you just laid out there. So, I mean, to your original point, Donald Trump, yeah, he's testing the system to no end, and it's happening every day. It's been that way ever since. He, you know,