M.S. W. Media.

This week, the nation debated the news that Donald Trump is implicated in campaign finance crimes

for which his former lawyer Michael Cohen was convicted and sentenced to three years

in prison. As Republican lawmakers and Trump allies struggled to react,

new evidence of Trump's guilt emerged.

And for the first time, lawyers from both parties

concluded that the president was in serious legal

jeopardy. Would there be enough evidence to prove Trump's guilt beyond a

reasonable doubt? What defenses could Trump raise let's get on topic. Welcome to On Topic, a weekly in-depth look at a topic that helps us understand the week's news. My name is Renato Mariati.

I'm a former federal prosecutor, a practicing lawyer, and a CNN legal analyst.

And I'm joined by my friend Patty Vasquez a WG on radio host who will

join us regularly on this podcast. So Maddie this week we are doing something very special and very different.

I debated different topics this week.

Certainly, I know a number of our listeners were interested in the Maria Bhutina case and I think we will cover that at

some point but I decided you know when I started seeing people like judging

Apolloano on on Fox and Friends repeating basically the same things that I said in my

political magazine piece and obviously Andrew McCarthy has said that he believes the president would be indicted.

And there's been a lot of debate. I was on Twitter this week debating with a lot of folks

what the law is as to these campaign finance violations. I thought it would be really

helpful to educate folks in a serious way about these campaign finance crimes that it looks to me now as the evidence has increased this week.

It's looking increasingly to me like the government could prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.

That is the first time I've really felt that way about anything other than obstruction of

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