MC: This may sound obvious, but why are you "overjoyed?"

JT: I think it's because this is somebody who, his entire adult life, has been criminal adjacent, and finally, the law caught up with him. And as someone who wrote a book called Big Dirty Money, I get very frustrated with how the white, wealthy, and well-connected treat our laws as optional--and gain wealth and power through the commission of fraud and the mass victimization of the public. And he is the poster child for that. To see even a modest amount of comeuppance is a reason for joyful celebration.

MC: The conventional wisdom is that this is a weak case, similar to the one against [former U.S. Senator] John Edwards, who was not convicted. Tell me why you think differently.

JT: Well, I guess I would say two things. I don't know that election fraud charges will be part of this. I believe that the falsification of business records charges may be similar to the records charges we saw in the successful conviction of the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation just this December. And so, instead of the analogy being to John Edwards, the more apt analogy is to the successful indictment by Bragg just a few months ago.

What kind of financial records falsification would have been involved with Stormy Daniels?

JT: So, the Trump Corporation says, "Here is a legal expense for Michael Cohen." And if they had just said, "It's a reimbursement for a cash outlay," that wouldn't have been a false record, but they put it down as a "legal expense." It's not a legal expense or a real business expense because that was a personal expense of Donald Trump.

MC: So, Trump reimbursed Cohen $130,000 for the Stormy Daniels hush money...

JT: Well, there are two different numbers. There's also the Karen McDougal case, which might be part of this.