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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power, and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America, a presidential election year.

And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one, because we want to and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

I am delighted to be joined by none other than Alan Dershowitz, who is a very well-known

American lawyer and author of Get Trump, The Threat to Our Civil Liberties, Our Due Process, and Our Constitutional

Rule of Law. And it's a book of extraordinary relevance, really, and particularly this week, as Donald Trump

starts his first criminal trial. And this case, the Manhattan case, Alan, people are saying

that it is the weakest in many ways legally of the indictments, but it may be the only one that gets done in time for the

election and maybe the only way in which Donald Trump will be called a convicted felon

before November 5th. Is that your reading of it? Well, it's not only the weakest case of the

four. It's the weakest case I've seen in 60 years of practicing teaching and writing about criminal law.

It starts with a misdemeanor that's way beyond the statute of limitations.

And then to turn it into a felony, you have to prove that in his mind, in his mind,

psychoanalytically, the only purpose he had for keeping this hush money secret and not disclosing it was to influence

the election, not to protect his wife, not to protect his business interests, not to protect

his children. And if that's the case, then you can argue that he did it for purposes of violating

election law, which is a federal crime, but the federal government

refused to prosecute it. So you have the city government going after somebody for a federal

crime that the federal government didn't want to prosecute. It's the most bizarre combination

...