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Geoff Bennett: History was made in New York City this week when for the first time in our nation's history a former American president was indicted, arrested and arraigned on criminal charges. Former President Donald Trump was charged in a Manhattan courtroom with 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in a hush money scheme during the 2016 election. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

After Mr. Trump's arraignment, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg emphasized the seriousness of the charges.

Alvin Bragg: True and accurate business records are important everywhere. To be sure, they are all the more important in Manhattan, the financial center of the world.

Geoff Bennett: At that night, Mr. Trump responded in a defiant and embittered speech at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, criticizing the case and its presiding judge, Juan Merchan.

Donald Trump: This fake case was brought to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election. I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family.

Geoff Bennett: Judge Merchan and his family have received dozens of violent threats since the arraignment. The Biden White House has largely avoided commenting on the active case, but White House Spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre responded to news of those threats.

Karine Jean-Pierre: I am not going to speak to an ongoing case. We condemn any type of attacks on any judge.

Geoff Bennett: Joining us to talk about this and more, Jacqueline Alemany, Congressional Investigations Reporter for The Washington Post, Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times, Francesca Chambers, White House Correspondent for USA Today, and Hugo Lowell, Reporter at The Guardian. Thanks to all of you for being with us.

Let's start our conversation tonight where we started this historic week, Donald Trump pleading not guilty on Tuesday to 32 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Jackie, if this case goes to trial, it likely won't happen until the New Year, what happens between then and now in this case and how I the Trump team preparing?

Jacqueline Alemany, Congressional Investigations Reporter, The Washington Post: A very good question, Geoff. There are sort of two prongs two this answer. There is the process part of it and then sort of the political strategy part of it.

From a process perspective, as Hugo and I both heard in the courtroom in New York this week during the arraignment, prosecutors sort of laid out a schedule. Trump and his lawyers and the prosecution need to come to an agreement on a protective order that was laid out during the arraignment. So, that needs to be set before anything else can really happen. That has not yet been agreed to.

From there, there is going to be different stages of the discovery that prosecutors laid out. That's going to take up to a week depending on when the protective orders are agreed to, and then up to 65 days. And then by the end of August, potentially, Trump's legal team will have all of the discovery that Alvin Bragg's team has put together. And then by the end of the year, maybe we will see them in court again for sort of a conference. But, as you noted, we are not going to see them all together back in that courtroom in New York on trial until potentially sing of 2024, as Todd Blanche, Trump's newest lawyer, asked for Judge Merchan on Tuesday.

Geoff Bennett: Yes. And, Hugo, if you read the indictment's statement of facts, the D.A.'s office seems to have the payments pretty well-documented. But New York law says that prosecutors have to prove it was part of another crime in order to bump that misdemeanor up to a felony, and the charging documents don't specify which laws Mr. Trump allegedly broke. And Alvin Bragg is basically saying, I don't have to show my cards.

Hugo Lowell, Political Investigative Reporter, The Guardian: Right, no. Under New York law, Alvin Bragg, doesn't have to lay out the particulars. That comes in the bill of particulars. And that's why in the statement of facts, you basically get the narrative and it seems to be the kind of information that they got in the grand jury investigative phase. And the key question is going to, what is that second crime? And there seemed to be multiple paths that were laid out there.

One was, of course, the hush money payments and the potential campaign finance violence. The second, tantalizingly, was the element about mischaracterizing the payments for tax purposes. And then the third was about filing these sorts of documents to other entities, potentially to the FEC, potentially to other government entities. And so I think there are multiple paths that were have laid out, all of them pretty chargeable. I mean, there's a lot of discussion about whether you can have a state prosecutor use a federal crime in conjunction with an underlying state crime. And under New York law, that seems to be pretty permissible.

Geoff Bennett: And, Peter, there are two ways, I think, to read former President Trump's reaction to all of this, his furious reaction. One, it sort of fuels his particular brand of grievance politics. On the one hand, it's not all surprising. But on the other hand, it could be read as him acknowledging his vulnerability, not just in Manhattan but the three other ongoing cases.

Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, that's the thing, exactly. If this were the last thing we were going to see as a legal challenge to former President Trump, that will be one thing, because people would make their judgments about it. They say they won't see a trial until next year and they may have to decide, well, it's laundry (ph), it's not all that pretty a picture, but on the other hand, is it disqualifying for a president?

We went through this 25 years ago, by the way, with bill Clinton. We had the exact, very similar conversation, about whether lying about sex in an official proceeding is disqualifying for a president or not. Republicans and Democrats have different views today than they once did. But it's not the last thing we are going to see.

We are going to see some kind of resolution, if not, an indictment from three other cases. And when you start to build them up one after the other after the other, and you have all of these other legal issues he has got, he is on a trial for what amounts to rape in three weeks with E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit in a civil court in New York and he's got another civil case from Letitia James in New York. He is going to be in a courtroom, or his lawyers will, all year long. And it's going to be -- the cumulative effect of that, we don't know.

Geoff Bennett: Well, Francesca, in the meantime, former President Trump's goal seems to be crystal clear, which is to turn his legal problems into political gain.

Francesca Chambers, White House Correspondent, USA Today: And he has raised quite a bit of money off of this so far. But when you look at the rest of the expected Republican field our current Republican field, they are banking on exactly what Peter just said, is that the cumulative effect of all of this will start to wear down his numbers. So, while you are seeing a jump now in his numbers and his popularity, that you'll see that dip back down. But as you were saying, the question really remains as to whether one of them can also break out in that sort of environment and permanently beat him in this race.

Geoff Bennett: Yes. Who can take us behind the curtain of Trump world? How are they really feeling about this beyond the spin and the bluster?

Jacqueline Alemany: Well, I think that actually Trump's performance on Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago after the arraignment was pretty telling. At the top of his mind, what he kept going back to was the classified documents case.

It wasn't -- he did attack Bragg, he attacked Judge Merchan in violation of that protective order and of the warning that the judge -- not of the protective order but the warning that the judge had given to him that day, saying you really need to tamp down the rhetoric out of concern for the safety of the officials involved in these proceedings and also for Judge Merchan. But he was fixated on the classified documents case as well.

And so I think that is fairly telling that there are, as Peter judge laid out, a number of potential avenues for criminal exposure down the line that have potentially more grave consequences than what he is facing in New York. And even just looking at his face in that courtroom -- I was in the overflow room, so I didn't see him firsthand, but you could see up on the live stream of him, and he was downcast, dour and did not look like someone despite a lot of bravado and fundraising appeals who wanted to be there.

Geoff Bennett: Yes. And, Hugo, to Jackie's point, I mean, legal analysts have always said that the mishandling of the classified documents, if you're going to compare the cases, that one is more of a slam dunk.

Hugo Lowell: Yes. I think that -- look, the documents case is complicated, right, because you have espionage elements and then you have obstruction elements. And, actually, I think a lot of recent reporting seems to suggest that the special counsel is looking towards an Espionage Act charge.

All these questions to witnesses in the grand jury about what were the kinds of documents that Trump was throwing around, was there stuff about Milley, the former joint Chiefs of Staff, was there stuff about like math that he was showing to donors? Those are the kinds of questions that strike me you would ask if you are instructing espionage case.

And I think the espionage case comes in conjunction with the obstruction case. I don't think you can do one without the other. Because to basically say Trump willfully retained documents and to prove that willfulness, the easiest way to do that is to say, well, he obstructed the investigation. And there you go, that's the willfulness.

Geoff Bennett: Peter, the New York case strikes me. The thing that makes that case difficult is that prosecutors have to prove intent, which is notoriously hard to do. Ask anybody who was involved in the John Edwards case, which he was acquitted about that. What do you see as the historical analog there between that case and the Trump case?

Peter Baker: Well, that's an interesting case. So, John Edwards, of course, was a United States senator who ran for president and then was on a vice presidential ticket and he covered up, in effect, an affair with money that was construed by lawyers as an illegal campaign or an unreported campaign contribution. He went to trial. He was acquitted on one charge. There was a hung jury on the other. The prosecutors took away from that a lesson that this doesn't work because it is kind of a novel definition, the hush money counts as campaign contribution, right? We had not thought of it that way in the past and that was a new way of looking at it.

Now, a lot of people are saying that means this one is in trouble for the same reason, that the logic may not work. I think it is a little different. First of all, the judge in that case and the other's case did let it go to trial, okay? And it was the jury who decided, okay, we're not sure about this particular case, they weren't judging on the law, the jury (INAUDIBLE) the facts that they were presented to them. The jurors in this case assumed that the judge lets it go to trial, again, judge the facts as they're presented.

And the facts are pretty remarkable. We have known this for six or seven years, right, because the reporting in The Wall Street Journal gave us a lot in advance, Michael Cohen told a lot of this event (ph). But if you would read the statement of facts for the first time, you had never seen this before, there a remarkably powerful recitation of the evidence there.

And I think the intent comes through pretty clearly that he wants to cover this up before an election. And that is at the heart of the case. Are you trying to taint an election by preventing the public from having information that they otherwise would have?

Geoff Bennett: Francesca, one criminal prosecution is onerous enough. Trump has not been charged in any of the other cases. And we should say he is innocent until proven guilty in the New York case. But they are facing this multi-front defense across multiple cases and it further disrupts his ability to dictate his political schedule and really control his own political destiny. That is what a political candidate does not want, this sort of lack of control.

Francesca Chambers: But it is complicating the entire field's ability to dictate their schedule as well. You had Asa Hutchinson announce his presidential bid. And you saw him try to get in there right before Trump was indicted. And then he has his formal announcement later in a month.

And I think that is a challenge that's facing the GOP field but also President Joe Biden as well, as he tries to figure out when he should get in this race as well. And you have any numbers. You're talking about court cases that could come up. So, it makes the entire election cycle unpredictable. If that unpredictability, though, that again is giving opponents of the former president the sense of an opportunity here where they might just be able to sneak by him.

Geoff Bennett: Let's talk about the Republican reaction, because Republican lawmakers, to include Mitt Romney, who twice voted for impeachment, in various different ways, are coming to Donald Trump's defense. Only Asa Hutchinson, who you mentioned, suggested that he should step down, get out of the presidential race now that he is under indictment.

Francesca Chambers: Well, the difficulty for them is that when you have Donald Trump, who is taking up so much of the oxygen in the GOP field, it is very evident that you need to win Trump's voters while differentiating themselves.

And I've heard from a number of campaigns that they believe that there will be a favorable contrast drawn between their own candidates and also between President Biden and what's going on right now as well.

Geoff Bennett: Peter, for Republicans who are looking to break away from Donald Trump, a number of them say that privately, the former president keeps giving Republicans off-ramp after off-ramp after off-ramp, unintentionally so, and yet the party is not taking any of these exits.

Peter Baker: No, they really haven't, right? They haven't from the beginning. I mean, they didn't after Access Hollywood, they didn't after Charlottesville, they didn't after January 6th, they didn't after last year's midterms, and everybody most recently thought, well, that's it for him, he's done. They don't want to do it for all the reasons Francesca just said. They are afraid of his voters or they want or covet his voters or think they cannot succeed without his voters.

So, their logic comes down to what Mitch McConnell's court is saying about my colleagues, John Martin and Alex Burn, in their book last year saying, we will let the Democrats take care of him for us. He was talking about that in the context of the second impeachment. But broadly speaking, that's their thought right now. We are going to let the Democrats/prosecutors/Justice Department/judges take care of him for us. We won't have to do it.

Geoff Bennett: Hugo, one more potential problem for Donald Trump. We learned this week that former Vice President Mike Pence will not appeal a judge's ruling that orders him to testify before a grand jury in connection to the January 6th investigation. What kind of story would Mike Pence, the former V.P., be able to give this grand jury?

Hugo Lowell: I think, overall, this is a win for the special counsel. He gets Pence in the grand jury. And Pence can testify to the entirety of November through January 6th. And he was there. He saw a lot. He had a lot of discussions with a lot of people.

But I actually am more of a skeptic about the order than I think other people because there is a speech or debate clause protection that was baked in, in that order. And if that is basically going to cover him for all his preparations as president of the Senate on January 6th, then that would include his discussions about what sort of electors he could throw out while he's presiding as president on the Senate. There were discussions at the White House December 21 with the Republican members of Congress, the discussion he had with Trump on January 5 and January 6 about he was going to preside.

Those are the black holes that the January 6th committee never actually managed to fill because they couldn't get Pence and they couldn't get the members in. And it doesn't strike me that the special counsel is going to be able to get those either because Pence will just claim speech or debate.

Geoff Bennett: And here again, history made this past week. Never before in American history has a vice president been summoned to appear in court to testify about the president with whom he served. What is your reporting suggests the impact of this might be?

Jacqueline Alemany: Yes. I was actually joking with some of Trump's legal team that last week would have been -- or this past week, geez.

Geoff Bennett: All the days were blending together.

Jacqueline Alemany: It would have been a great time for Pence to have snuck in and testified before the grand jury with little fanfare.

But I do tend to agree with Hugo here, that it is sort of a performative win for the special counsel's office, but we will see how much information and how helpful he can be. And at the end of the day, he already had some of his top advisers, people like Marc Short, Greg Jacob, testify to the committee. And they have been dealing with the special counsel's office as well and have given them all the information they have with regards to Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the election.

Geoff Bennett: Let's talk about how the White House is handling this. Because, Peter, you wrote a piece for The Times recently and the headline caught my eye. Biden has the Oval Office but Trump has the center stage. And I would say, The White House seems to be perfectly fine with that. President Biden is not trying to compete for attention with the former president who is brought up on criminal charges.

Peter Baker: Yes. It's the old saying, of course, when your opponent is busy shooting himself, don't get in the way, and they don't want to get in the way. And they want this next election to be -- if Trump is going to run, they want it to be a rerun of 2020, in which Biden may not be a favor guy, you might not be happy about it, inflation or Afghanistan or all the other different issues that he people aren't happy with him about, but he is not Trump.

And so the more that Trump is out literally getting his fingerprints taken and appearing in court rooms, they're going to let that stand. You played the tape of Karine Jean-Pierre, they are not going to comment. They don't want to look what like they are doing what Trump says they are doing, which is orchestrating this. But they're not going to try to compete either because this is not going to anyway.

Geoff Bennett: Yes.

Francesca Chambers: Literally, the White House press briefing started on time that day when Trump's indictment happened, so, to your point, maybe not even trying to compete at all that day with the split screen.

But when it comes to the White House, they say that he is just going to continue to focus on his agenda. And they do believe that that benefits him here, both when it comes to comparing himself to the former president of the United States but also what's going on with the GOP in Congress, where now you see them zeroing in on this Manhattan district attorney and spending their time focused on this as well.

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