DA ALVIN BRAGG TO JUDGE: PRETEND TRUMP IS DEAD - 12.12.24

Countdown with Keith Olbermann

iHeartPodcasts

Politics, News, Sports

4.7 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

SERIES 3 EPISODE 78: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: How did this not generate more headlines? It's just a proposed maneuver out of the legal morass Judge Juan Merchan has helped Trump create. But New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg has suggested that one way to solve this sentencing/but he's president/but we can't dismiss the conviction is to treat Trump - in a legal sense - the way you treat a convicted defendant who DIES before he appeals or is sentence.

In short: just pretend Trump is dead.

SPEAKING OF A BROKEN LEGAL SYSTEM: I'm not advocating for that, nor for guys assassinating CEO's five blocks from my home. But our legal system is broken and it would behoove commentators, columnists, writers, those who suck up to the moneyed class, and conservatives to stop being so surprised at the idea that maybe a majority of Americans is not as outraged as the wealthy are at the actions of Luigi McDreamy. Maybe you need to wonder more about why they perceive the legal system to be broken and the corporations to be legal excuses for nobody being responsible for innocent people dying and being injured.

CHRIS WRAY OBEYS IN ADVANCE: He'll quit as FBI director before the inauguration. Maybe he can make a comeback as Trump's second pick for DNI because Tulsi Gabbard is being attacked from the left, the middle, and now from The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. Also Hegseth's been caught in another lie, about something he had said in public 48 hours earlier.

B-Block (23:46) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The World Cup goes to Saudi Arabia because everything is for sale. And an announcement of a candidacy for New York City Council suddenly made me realize that Bill DeBlasio and Eric Adams both became mayor here in part because between us one of my exes and I screwed around with the 2013 campaign. OOPS. (30:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Yes she sneaked a gold-plated gun into Australia but how else was she supposed to protect herself at clown school? Speaking of: Newsweek beats the L.A. Times to a "Fairness Meter" for its articles. And Elon Musk insists there's no homelessness because now is exactly the right time for a CEO to assert that.

C-Block (39:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My favorite Holiday story. The day, on my way to interview Mickey Mantle, I ran into somebody I mistook for just another fan - albeit a well-dressed man. Oops. Turned out he was one of the stars of the greatest movie ever made.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of IHeart Radio.
0:18.4	Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, one of only two American heroes to actually convict Trump
0:25.8	has a novel legal argument about how to handle sentencing him for his election interference,
0:31.1	hush money crimes here.
0:32.8	Since Mershahn seems to be convinced that you can't act against Trump legally while he is the sitting
0:37.9	president, and more practically, there is literally no way Trump's sentence could begin
0:43.1	before he becomes sitting president. Bragg's novel argument, pretend Trump is dead. Merry Christmas. This is in Bragg's filing to Judge Juan Mershahn,
1:01.1	who has to figure out something to do other than vacate the guilty verdict some way out of
1:06.2	this legal morass. Mershon himself helped to create. A morass, even for what has proved to be, a laughably useless American system
1:14.8	of justice.
1:15.7	The envy of the world.
1:17.9	Until it turned out, you can defeat its entire purpose if you can simply put a dozen
1:22.9	utterly corrupt Alitos and cannons and others in just the right positions within that system.
1:30.4	And the solution boils down to pretend Trump is dead. Not trying to make that happen, not wishing that
1:39.8	happens, nothing like that, just pretending Trump is dead and it's in legal papers because bureaucracy abhors a vacuum.
1:49.2	And if his conviction is not overturned or vacated or his sentence can't be pronounced or he can't be sent to Rikers Island, he's got to be something.
1:59.4	And that something would be legally pretend dead.
2:05.1	The legalese itself actually isn't much more complicated than that. This court could adopt
2:11.0	a remedy that some courts have followed in the abatement by death context to terminate proceedings without vacating the jury verdict or dismissing
2:20.9	indictment. Even if this court were to believe that the mere pendency of the criminal proceeding,
2:26.7	we're somehow inconsistent with defenders' future official duties as president, dismissal, and
2:32.3	vacating would still not be warranted.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -110 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.