Welcome to the Beat Everyone. I'm Ari Melbre. I hope you have a good weekend too, but I hope you stay with us.

Because tonight we begin with developments that I think really offer a kind of a contrast in this period of legal reckoning and accountability that we've been talking about together because

we were thinking about this for tonight's show. If you look at all the prosecutors and all the investigators and all the probes that Donald Trump has faced, including squaring off against big time experienced investigators like

prosecutor and former FBI director Mueller, there were crimes found. There were issues that ensnared Donald Trump's aides. But even as the now two year probe of a very public

insurrection and attempted coup has grinded on and on and not reached Donald Trump or most of his top aides. There are more clear signs and steps that show one prosecutor on a different fact pattern in a different case has proven able

to legally get farthest against Donald Trump and make precedent. I am talking about the New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg who actually only recently took over that office. He has less experience as a prosecutor or in this role and certainly less power than the leaders of the Federal Justice Department like the current Attorney General. But it was Bragg who put Donald Trump.

Dead center right there as you see at that infamous arrangement table the first criminal indictment of anyone who's ever been a president of the United States. It is DA Bragg who is now gearing up to go forward after that arrangement that ignoble day for Donald Trump as a defendant and actually put Donald Trump on trial.

And it is Alvin Bragg who is doing all that methodically moving forward while these other probes that we sometimes hear about in Washington or down in Georgia continue to basically take a lot of time without resulting in anything that seems like a coup related indictment of Donald Trump. We hear about process and delays and their witnesses.

And it is DA Bragg who is making waves tonight that is the context for the story I wanted to kind of remind everyone that it's not nothing to be a local DA and indict a former president but now Bragg's making waves and going so far that even some Trump critics are wondering in legal circles what he's up to.

Because it's a new crackdown taking aim at Trump world. The DA is trying to pressure the convicted Trump money man who already did some time in Rikers for fraud.

That's former Trump organization CFO Alan Weissselberg who basically got convicted went to jail but never actually flipped on Donald Trump as a cooperating witness.

And here's the big story Bragg is eyeing a new indictment new perjury charges against Weissselberg if he won't cooperate further.

And that is an effort in the ongoing campaign to either get or bolster what this DA clearly thinks is existing available criminal evidence against Trump.

That is to say you don't seek this kind of cooperation unless you have reason to believe that the guy knows something that he can provide.

And this is the New York Times report you see there and Bragg, well he may be trying to turn over every stone or he may think that Weissselberg still knows things that could even add to the affirmation case.

The criminal case against Donald Trump indeed was only within the last two months about just less than two months ago when Trump was indicted in a rain in New York.

Here's Donald Trump walking the hallway. Let's listen to see if he speaks to reporters.

It was Trump himself and his own voice pleaded not guilty. So we now have it. Everything we've been talking about these are felony crimes in New York state.

No matter who you are. We cannot and will not.

Normalize serious criminal conduct.

That was last month early April. It's not exactly clear from the new reporting what Bragg wants to learn from Weissselberg.

But even though we live in this very unusual time, we kind of all know that what we're living through and the political echoes of this MAGA era, it is still striking.

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