Reporter Matt Lee opens up about J6 and the Trump trials

In a recent interview on July 1st, Patrick Henningsen engages in an insightful conversation with reporter Matt on Lee, delving into the controversial issue of Donald Trump’s court persecution. The discussion unravels the intricacies surrounding the legal battles faced by the former President and dissects the potential consequences these cases may have on the political landscape. Henningsen’s sharp analysis and Lee’s thoughtful questions shed light on the underlying motivations behind these legal proceedings and explore the wider implications for the nation. This thought-provoking dialogue provides a comprehensive examination of Trump’s court challenges, offering valuable insights into the potential impact on both the individual at the center of the storm and the broader political climate.

Patrick Henningsen: Now let’s go shift gears now across the back, across the Atlantic to the big apple. to the Southern District New York Federal Courts. In the caverns of the federal courts, we will find our legal correspondent somewhere lurking his name is Matthew Russell Lee from Intercity press. I think we’ve got him on the line right now. Matthew, how are you doing?

Matthew Lee: Doing well. Doing well, Patrick. You’re right. I’m lurking around. I’m just back from state court, but once again, the Trump docket never fails.

If you don’t mind, here’s a story for you. Yesterday, the prosecutors here at the southern district of New York, which are also AKA, the sheriffs of Wall Street, in a sort of 4th July fireworks of indictments, announced four separate insider trading cases. They did a single press release for cases, and we can go through them. And there was, you know, one guy bribed somebody with a Rolex to get information off the person’s girlfriend’s laptop or worked at Morgan Stanley and then traded on it. He was arrested.

He wants to play poker in Las Vegas. That’s his next job. Here’s some other guy who worked at Pfizer. A guy called Mister Dagger. He stole information about Pat’s Lovet before he became approved, made money. But one of the four cases had a very attenuated connection to Trump.

Three guys in Florida invested in a SPAC (Special purpose acquisition company) which is a special purpose entity. It’s kind of a new way of doing weird mergers where you invest in an absolutely empty entity, which in turn then buys an entity, which doesn’t want to really make a lot of disclosure.

In this case, the entity being bought was Trump Media, aka, True Social. And so, these guys knew that the deal was happening, and so they ran it and made money. They were indicted. When you really look at the case, it has nothing. It’s not Trump’s fault at all.

Right? It’s an entity that bought it and some guy is trading on it. But, look if you will online. Look at, for example Reuters, of the four insider trading cases. The lead, the main one, is the Trump related SPAC falls afoul of Department of Justice prosecutors. So we can add yet another case.

Although it’s totally BS, it’s called a Trump case. It’s not really a Trump case, but it’s major news to certain media.

Patrick Henningsen: So, the mainstream media spun that to make it sound in the headlines that something nefarious going on and Donald Trump’s behind there. Kind of responsible in some way or linked to it. Right?

Matthew Lee: Totally. Easily. Exactly. And so as you know, to me, I saw all four cases. It sort of took me off kilter because, you know, I’ve decided that I’ll cover it. I’ll chase these cases down.

I can play well. I can cover, you know, a shooting through the door of a housing project. People, which I’ll get to in a moment, as well as these, you know, Rolex for laptop cases.

But that’s why I reported for all four, you know, in equal amounts of detail. But the Trump one got much more response, you know, let’s say, Twitter responses, in other ways.

And people were like, you see Trump haters were like, you see everything he touches is sleazy. And it’s just like you know, it’s just amazing.

It’s amazing. And I think the prosecutors knew. Because all of the four other cases that they listed, especially if a company was sort of in a sense, the victim, or was definitely not the perpetrator. For example, Morgan Stanley was the one whose information was used by this now poker playing inside trader.

They called it Investment Bank One. And one of my colleagues called them and asked for a comment. They were like, no.

No. No. They managed to keep hidden because people are that way. If you hear “Morgan Stanley insider trading case,” you think, oh my god, Morgan Stanley. They’re doing insider trading.

Actually, they would claim they’re victimizing people in many ways. But in this case, they would say they were the victim. Somebody took the information home and traded off it. But the Trump one, they didn’t say buying the media company. They were like investing in Trump Media.

And so, we’re off to the races. I can’t keep track now in terms of the Trump docket. It’s spiraling out of control. You’ve got the pyramid scheme case. You’ve got two separate E. Jean Carroll cases, and there is a development in that.

There were two developments. I guess they were both actually kind of not pro Trump. But the Trump supporters liked it, and it was this. Here’s the headline. Trump sues Eugene Carroll.

No. For those, you know, who may not remember EJ Carroll. She’s the former advice columnist. She may still be giving advice. She’s actually quite funny.

I’m a fan of EJ Carroll. I don’t think she’s part of a big conspiracy. I think she’s a Trump hater, but I think she’s an interesting writer. You should highly recommend her book. Tail’s Affordable Men or whatever it’s called.

But he sued her. It’s not really a lawsuit. That’s misreporting. It’s a counterclaim. She sued him for $10,000,000.

She said after the verdict, the things that he said and on the CNN town hall in New Hampshire, was just new slander and he owes her

Patrick Henningsen: $10,000,000.

Matthew Lee: And some Trump haters are saying, this is great because every time he speaks, he can be sued. Every time he gets a speech, whether this week since we last spoke, certainly, he gave one at I think it’s called Faith and Freedom.

It’s a pretty much anti-abortion, Ralph Reid entity. They had they’re conference in DC with his (Trump’s) two-hour speech. Later, you know, it was reviewed by the Guardian and others as unhinged and it was actually pretty interesting.

And it was definitely two hours without notes, which a certain other sitting president… I don’t know if he can do that. Not that that’s the only talent required to be a president, right? But, I mean, it was impressive.

Somebody compared it to me to like a Gaddafi or I guess you could say, Fidel Castro. I don’t know. I haven’t heard of those. I know that Gaddafi apparently broke the record at the UN long before my time. There with a seven hour general assembly speech. But this thing was pretty cogent.

It jumped around. But, he definitely touched on the case and said, Eugene Carroll is a whack job, stuff like that. The judges in all these Trump cases are saying nothing we do is going to stop his campaigning. We totally respect free speech and certainly the right to run for office. I think the hope you know, is E Jean Carol. I think it’s just that she feels she was wronged.

Whatever she feels, but those sort of rooting for and sad to say, funding in one case, her case, they believe that this could be a more effective damper on Trump than Chris Christie, for example. Not quite as heavy, but definitely a damper.

Patrick Henningsen: Not quite as heavy? Is that a pun?

Matthew Lee: Yeah. Yeah. I thought I’d slip it in there for you. You know? And Chris Christie was booed… was roundly booed at the Faith and Freedom Rally.

He said that Trump had made mistakes, and they booed him off the stage. So it’s — Uh-huh…people took that to me No. They did. They took that to me like there’s none at least among some in the Republican party supporting Chris Christie. You know, it’s called a Comic Conzi campaign. I think he’s pretty much admitting that he can’t win, but he wants to, like, take down the orange man. it didn’t work at Faith And Freedom.

It didn’t work. But it might work elsewhere. I don’t know.

Patrick Henningsen: Yeah. It’s basically what he did the last time he ran. His was a bit of a kamikaze campaign and he was trashing Trump. And all of a sudden, Trump, did you notice how Trump does this? Like, to his rivals, he brings them to heel.

And then they stand behind him. And so he made Christie stand behind him at so many of these rallies and stuff like that. And then it totally destroyed Christy’s reputation. He looked like he was scamping. But — Totally.

— it was terrible.

Matthew Lee: Who’s the kamikaze? Who’s kamikaze and who? You know?

Yeah. And Marco Rubio was the same thing. You know, that they had that whole thing and about the small end. Ted Cruz.

Patrick Henningsen: Ted Cruz. Oh my gosh.

Matthew Lee: He (Trump) said he (Cruz) was connected with the Lee Harvey story.

Patrick Henningsen: — his dad and of killing Kennedy. I know.

Matthew Lee: He (Trump also did it (made the connection through a forensics photo of Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz’s father from an Examiner story). You know what seemed to have hurt Trump supposedly among Republicans or at least the sort of inner inside Republicans most?

It was when he tweeted a picture of Melania and Ted Cruz’s wife and said, like, a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ve never seen it. But it’s described as extremely cruel and objectifying, which I’m sure.

But they said there were some Republicans in 2016 who said, forget the access the Access Hollywood takes. This tweet is the end. And yet it wasn’t the end. You know?

Patrick Henningsen: Yeah. Everything was over. Everything was over in 2016.

Matt Lee: And so they think these indictments are the end. Everyone seems to think that this is it. And then there’s a “Oh, have you, yeah! Yes.

It’s a rumor that Trump will return to Twitter at some unnamed date. And there’s the sort of strategists or pundits saying he’s going to wait until he needs it to change the news cycle away from whatever the next indictment is going to be. Whether it’s Florida, whether it’s Jack Smith, January 6th, there’s more coming. And, I guess there seems to be a hope that although the first indictments haven’t really taken him down in the polls with the Republicans at all, that as they start building up and as they start zeroing in on this retention of national security information. Maybe it will happen, and that will be the day he comes back on Twitter.

So we’ll see.

Patrick Henningsen: Wow. So he’s keeping stuff in his pocket, for when he needs to, like, physically, it’s like Moses and the Red Sea. It’s like Moses with the staff and the tablets. Like, this is how he commands the media.

Doesn’t he? Amazing. It’s great.

Matthew Lee: It’s people, exactly. People, I think they may give him more credit. I mean, I will say, I did listen to them and I was doing other things too, but I just kept thinking like, okay. I’ll just wait and see what he says about the legal cases, and then I’ll pull out. But would you know it, you would think that after an hour, there’d be nothing more to say. But he just keeps generating more content, you know?

At the same time, some of his own I mean, here, I don’t want to make light of it, but there was a decision yesterday by the new Supreme Court or some would call it the Trump Supreme Court to basically outlaw or make much more difficult, affirmative action, to colleges.

And, I think that DeSantis, he’s got a huge research squad now, has dug up a tape of Trump saying he has no problem with affirmative action. Basically, DeSantis is trying to outflank Trump.

Like, I’m the purest, you know, culture warrior. You’ve been a New York Liberal almost and it’s going to come back and bite you. I think that’s already been tried. I think the current supporters know that there’s a liberal skeleton in Donald Trump’s closet.

And but, you know, Times changed. It’s like, what was it? You were just talking about Moses crossing the sea. This could be, like, you know, the road to Damascus, or he had some kind of conversion experience.

Patrick Henningsen: Oh, that would be glorious if he could do that. I mean, if Trump ever became humble, and actually had some kind of a damascene moment. I mean, it would be so touching.

Matthew Lee: Yeah. Definitely.

Patrick Henningsen: For people yeah. This is what’s missing. The guy’s Epic. And he doesn’t admit he’s ever wrong about anything.

But, if you could just show a little endearing humility, that would just be… It would go so far, wouldn’t it?

Matthew Lee: It would be definitely, it would say this was all a show. This is the real me. I’m going to show you the softer side. Now, I do want to get it because every time we talk, it’s always federal.