From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday, April 5th.

The bedrock, in fact, the basis for business integrity and a well-functioning business marketplace is true and accurate record-keeping.

That's the charge that's brought here, falsifying New York State business records.

DA Alvin Bragg there from yesterday's news conference, and as we consider the charges against

the former president, let's not forget the political context.

April 4th was not January 6th around Donald Trump in New York. And it was in 2016 for his party yesterday in Wisconsin.

The crowd did not show up to protest Trump's arrest behind cheerleader-in-chief,

Marjorie Taylor Green. the crowd did show up to vote

in Wisconsin to protect abortion rights and reject Republican gerrymandering by electing

a liberal Supreme Court justice yesterday in a state Trump won in 2016 in a very closely watched

state Supreme Court election in advance of next year's presidential.

With us now, Andrea Bernstein, who covers democracy for ProPublica and Trump Legal Matters

for NPR, she is the author of the book, American oligarchs, the Christians, the Trumps, and

the marriage of money and power, and co-hosted the podcasts Will Be Wild

and WNYC's Trump, Inc. And she was in the courtroom for yesterday's proceedings where video

cameras and microphones were not allowed. Andrea, always good to talk. Welcome back to WNYC.

Great to speak with you, Brian. You were down in the courthouse. What was it like?

So to those of your listeners who have been to Lower Manhattan, in some ways, it was an ordinary day in Lower Manhattan.

The cars kept going through, bikes kept riding on the bike lane, tourists came through snapping pictures.

But superimposed on that was a horde of international media.

The only way that I can liken it to anything is to an inauguration in terms of the number of media tents,

vans, people from all over the world around, and some few hundred maybe protesters making quite a bit of noise,

...