This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is opposing efforts to dismiss President elect Donald Trump's hush money conviction, but he has expressed openness to delaying sentencing until after Trump's second term. In a court filing today, the DA said Trump's forthcoming presidency isn't grounds for dropping a case that was already tried, but quote, given the need to balance competing constitutional interests, consideration must be given to potentially freezing the case until
after he's out of office. Trump's lawyers are hoping to toss out the case completely, telling the judge in a letter that there are strong arguments for dismissal, including the Supreme Court's July decision on presidential immunity in criminal cases. But Bragg said Trump's argument that he can't be prosecuted as president elect has no bearing on the state's case after a Manhattan jury unanimously found him guilty at a
time when he was not immune from criminal prosecution. The President elect was convicted in May of falsifying business records to cover up a scheme to influence the twenty sixteen election. Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter Eric Larson, who's been covering all these cases. Eric tell us about Alvin Bragg's letter to the judge.
So the judge overseeing the hush money case had asked the prosecutor to let him know his recommendation for what should happen next in the case given Trump's election victory. So the letter had a bit of a concession in it by the district attorney, who said that given the election outcome and the powers and responsibilities of the US presidency, the DA would be open to discussing delaying the case
during Trump's term in office. But the prosecutor also signaled further fighting here by saying that the DA would fight any attempt by Trump to outright dismiss the case. And Trump's side said in a letter earlier that they do intend to seek a dismissal of the case, even though, of course, the jury has already delivered its verdict and he's been found guilty on thirty four felony counts. Trump is going to argue that, in light of his election victory,
the whole case and verdict should be passed out. So the prosecutor is signaling sure, you can make that act, but we're going to fight it, and in the meantime the case will be delayed. So there's still quite a bit of arguments going ahead here.
Trump's lawyers wrote that the case had to be scrapped to facilitate the orderly transition of executive power and in the interests of justice. I mean, if he's not going to be sentenced, it doesn't interfere with the transition of power. And the jury rendered its verdict in the justice.
System, well, it has been decided. But this, of course is so unprecedented. There's really never been a case like this before. I mean, it's strange enough or unusual enough to have a former president found guilty of crime. But the fact that he was convicted before the election, but then was not sentenced before the election, it leaves open this question. So the government clearly is saying, it said in this letter that look, the jury has spoken, and
we have to respect the findings of this jury. But let's talk about how this proceeds. So we can expect to see some very novel arguments laid out in Trump's filing whenever that does come. Beking dismissal of this verdict but of course they're going to point to the powers of the presidency and point to clashes between states and the federal government and who should prevail. So again, nothing has ever happened like this before, So we'll have to
wait and see what Trump's filing says. But the prosecutor is definitely signaling a fight here.
Yeah, I mean, it would be so unusual to just set aside a jury verdict because the defendant has become president.
What would be the legal basis for that, right?
I think some of the legal experts have actually said that a judge really can't do that in the New York law, that except under certain circumstances, and it's unclear if this be one of those. But you know, other experts have said that if things don't go the way Trump wants in this court, they could also try again to have the whole case transferred to federal court, where it could be more quickly dismissed, potentially under these federal arguments.
And Trump of course did try that in this case a couple of times earlier in sales, but that was before the election, so he's got new potential arguments here. This has not happened yet, but it is something experts is that he could try to do in terms of moving into federal court.
Is the sentencing date still scheduled?
Right, So the court is saying that as of now, technically the November twenty sixth sentencing date, it's still on the calendar, but it seems fairly clear that that's not going to actually happen. The letter itself, but by the district's attorney, proposes that Trump be given a deadline to file his motion to dismiss and that the DA be given a chance to respond. Of course, and the response to date proposed that a DA was December ninth, So the judge is probably going to look pretty strongly at
what the DA is proposing. This is the government's case here, and so it doesn't seem like there's any chance of that actually happening on November twenty sixth.
And we should note, I mean it's been delayed the sentencing at Trump's request, right.
Right, So we're at this moment where the judge is going to have to decide whether or not he can sentence a president elect, which would be unprecedented and you know, maybe not a great look for the United States government
going into a new administration. But the reason that we are here at this moment is because Trump was able to delay the sentencing a couple of times before the election, and a lot of the legal experts have predicted that when the sensing, if it goes forward, that he would get a lot less than the maximum four years under the law, just for various reasons like he's a first time offender and the crimes are non violence and that
sort of thing. So in theory, Trump could have been sentenced months ago and even served his sentence or even got no time dis probations, and it all could been done before the election, but the judge was worried that any kind of sentence could impact the outcome of the election. That was his reason for delaying it the last time.
And Trump has really succeeded with his strategy of delay in all his cases. What's happening with the Justice Department's cases against him? Have those been dropped yet?
Right? So? Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the two federal cases against Trump, it seems like the writing is on the wall that those cases are going to have to go away. The US Justice Department officials said that they had asked and received a court order delaying all deadlines in the election interference case while they consider exactly
what to do next. And of course there is a longstanding DOJ policy against prosecuting or indicting sitting presidents, so the expectation is that those cases are going to go away. The classified documents case in federal court in Florida, of course, was dismissed by a Trump appointed judge earlier this year, but the Justice Department has appealed that, and so it's likely that that appeal would be dropped and that other
case dismissed as well. So yet, to the extent that Trump thinks on this election victory making his extensive legal troubles go away, that largely is a success.
The Georgia election interference case is also on hold. It's kind of amazing that he and his lawyers were able to just freeze two federal cases and two state cases.
It's sort of mind boggling.
I mean, he has a lot of lawyers, they have some creative strategies. And of course, all along here Trump was campaigning for the presidency, which gave him additional ways to delay the cases from the proceedings. And in Georgia, of course, they were able to. It wasn't even really Trump's false. So to say that that case got delayed so much, I mean the district attorney there, Fannie Willison
Fulton County. The reason that case is the latest because she had an affair with another person on one of our investigators on the case, and Trump had moved to have her disqualified, and an appeals court is eventually going to have to decide that before that case can move forward anymore.
And so what the district attorney is suggesting here is basically put it on hold and will sentence him after his presidency is over.
Is that the implication, Well DA in Manhattan didn't explicitly stable sentence him after the presidency is over, but more just to put the entire case on hold yet. The sentence thing is the next thing to come up here, But there could be additional arguments that could be made once the case restarts theoretically after his term in office,
around immunity or things like that. So not specifically saying schedule a sentencing after his term in office is over, but just putting the whole case on hold and revisit it later.
The lawyer who represented him in the hush money case. Is he one of the lawyers that Trump is appointing to the Justice Department?
Right? I think Todd Blanche has been nominated for Deputy Attorney general position, if I'm remembered correctly.
Yeah, that's right, and Blanche was a former federal prosecutor. He's also nominating his other defense lawyer in this case, Emil Bove as principal Associate Attorney General, and the lawyer who represented him in the presidential immunity case at the Supreme Court has been chosen as the Uslicitor General. So Trump's lawyers are getting plump positions in the Justice Department. Thanks so much, Eric, that's Bloomberg Legal reporter Eric Larson. It would be a historic crackdown on one of the
world's biggest tech companies. That is, if a judge agrees to the Justice Department's proposal to sell Google's Chrome browser as a remedy for his decision that the tech giant illegally monopolized the search market, Federal anti trust enforcers will ask Judge Ahmitt Meta to order Google to sell off Chrome because, as the world's most popular web browser, it represents a key access point through which many people use
its search engine. That's according to Bloomberg sources, it would mark the biggest forced breakup of a US company since AT and T was dismantled in nineteen eighty four. Joining me is Bloomberg Anti trust reporter Leean Nylan Lea tell us what you learned. The Justice Department is going to be asking for as a remedy, although Google might view it as a punishment for Google's violation of the antitrust laws.
So the big headline is, the Justice Department is going to propose that Google be forced to sell off Chrome, It's web browser, if some of the other things that it is proposing to sort of increase competition in the market aren't successful. So the other big things that it really wants to do is force Google to license the data this is called click and query data that underlies its search results, as well as syndicate the search results
themselves to other companies and AI startups. The syndication is supposed to sort of help other companies other search engines sort of get better a lot more quickly because they'll be able to rely on the same results that Google
does in its search engine. And then this underlying data, the click and query data, can sort of help them beef up their own systems to sort of make them as good as the one that Google has itself, because one of the main allegations in the complaint and that the judge found was true in his opinion, is that Google's conduct has led to such a situation that the other search engines don't have the same level of quality because Google just has so much more traffic than them.
So this is a way to sort of get them a lot of the same high quality results so that they can improve their own systems to be as good as Google. The other really big interesting thing is they want to make some proposals that would limit a couple of the things that Google is doing on artificial intelligence.
So right now, companies can opt out of having their website scraped and that data used in building Googles llm's large language models which underlie its AI products, but they're not allowed to, for example, opt out of the so called aioverviews that appear at the top of a search
results page. So sometimes when you Google something, instead of showing you the ten blue links, it just gives you sort of like a summary at the top, and it's been taking that summary using AI and sort of just putting it there at the top, and oftentimes website publishers have complained people don't click through. They just see that AI summary and then you know, they have their answer
and they're done. And website publishers say that this is problematic for them because they've been losing a lot of traffic and therefore, you know, the advertising dollars that are associated with that. So they really don't like the AI overhus But Google right now doesn't give anybody a way to opt out of that. So the Justice Apparent wants to make it so that website publishers have a lot more options for how their data is used by Google, in particular in its AI products.
So the Justice Department is saying, we want to have the option of having Google cell Chrome if we decide that these other things aren't working. I mean, is the government saying that decision should be up to us.
We're not sure. The filing is supposed to come tomorrow, so we will find out exactly how they are proposing that would work. But yes, you seem to sort of be trying to keep this option of like having the big sword over Google's head to make sure that it complies with some of the other things that it wants
in this injunction. This is all very dependent on the judge, though, you know, the judge I'm at Meta is going to have a remedy hearing in April to sort of hear from witnesses a little bit about these options, and then he will issue a decision sometimes next year. He said he will have it out by August twenty twenty five with his final decision on how Google should change its behavior.
A lot of people think that the judge is really not going to go for the breakup or the vestuture option that the Justice Department has you know, hinted and that we reported that they're going to propose, just because it is a little bit more of a sort of radical option. You know, the government hasn't actually broken up a company since the AT and T case in nineteen eighty four, and so you know, even though it had wanted to break up Microsoft, it ended up, you know,
accepting some lesser changes instead of a breakup. So a lot of people really think that Meta is not going to go for this, so that this may be a little bit of like a position that the Justice Department is taking to sort of fear meta a little bit more towards the middle ground, which is the you know, data licensing portion.
What's left of Google if you force it to sell off at search engine.
Well, they're not proposing that it be forced to sell off the search engine, only Chrome the web browser. Oh, it would still have the search engine, it would still have Android, the mobile operating system. It just would no longer have a browser. And the browser has been a very important sort of They call it a search access point, a way in which people access Google Search because it
is you know, tied into the browser. It automatically goes to Google if you type something in and that it has also been a pretty important feature for Google in terms of if you're using Chrome and you are signed into a Google account, it keeps a lot of information about where you have visited and you know what other Google services you use, you know, your YouTube history, all of that information, and that is some of the details in data that Google used to help target ads towards you.
So if Google no longer has this browser, this sort of gateway that people use and helps them collect you know, data and information about people, it would be an important blow to the company because you know, they do rely on Chrome quite a bit for some of their other services.
Actually, I think I might be confusing the browser and the search engine.
As you know, we actually went over this. This is an early question of the trial. What is the difference between a browser and the search engine. So the browser is the thing that you use to access the internet, you know, it is the program where it has up at the top and you can type in, you know, HTTP whatever.
You know.
The first one was Internet Explorer, but Chrome, which was introduced by Google in two thousand and eight, was very innovative at the time because when it could remember a lot of the website, so you oftentimes you don't have to like type out the entire website like you did in the past, you know, www dot New York Times dot com. If you just start typing it, it says, oh, you want to go to New York Times and then
be there. The other thing is you can actually just type a query in the web browser bar and it will automatically take you to Google as though you were using that as a search engine. And that was like a pretty you know, unique invention at the time, back in two thousand and eight. And that's a reason why a lot of people do use Chrome, you know, because it is integrated with Google. It's integrated with a lot
of Google cell their products so that it remembers. For example, you know, if you have searched for a recent location on Google Maps, it remembers that, and it can be like, oh, are you trying to go to this Italian restaurant you went to last week or two weeks ago. So Chrome has integrated a lot of Google services, is pretty useful. Now. Google likes to say, you know, Chrome is our product. The software underlying Chrome is actually an open source product.
Anyone can use it, and a lot of the other browsers, including Impact of Microsoft's Edge, are built on that open source that Google made from Chrome. So Edge is based on this open source Chromium. The one that Amazon has built for the Fire device is called Silk, is also built on that. So you know, they say Chrome doesn't have very much value without you know, a lot of the other Google data underlying it. We'll see, we'll see. You know, there are some people who might be very
willing to pay for Chrome. Our analyst here at BI suggested that it might be worth as much as twenty million dollars because of the number of people who use that browser every day something like three billion daily active users. And so you know, if another company could take it and integrate it with their own services, it could be
pretty powerful. For example, if open ai wanted to have a browser and sort of integrate it with its new sort of burgeoning AI and search though its that might be in a really interesting combination.
But as you point out in your story, some of the companies that might want to buy it, like Amazon, are facing their own antitrust scrutiny. I mean, will it go from one monopolist to another, or should I say one mega company to another.
Yeah, that's definitely true. I mean the very first company that somebody mentioned might want to buy it with Microsoft, and I was like, well, there's no way they're going to let Microsoft buy this browser. Like one, Microsoft has the second most use browser, and you got Microsoft in trouble, like back in the day, right was the Internet Explorer browser. So I really don't think we're going to go back down the road of like giving Microsoft control of the browser.
What do you think.
Google will be willing to or will be suggesting as a remedy?
Do you have any idea just will be judge meta?
Yeah, Google has said, you know, if the judge has a problem with these contracts, what they could do is just it's the contracts, but eliminate their exclusive nature. So he said it was a problem that Google was paying you know, Apple, for example, twenty billion dollars a year
to be the exclusive search default. Okay, maybe they're no longer going to be paid to be the exclusive Maybe they'll now just pay for whatever searches are sent by Apple to Google, and then everybody else can pay because other companies do pay to sort of appear on you know, when you open up a browser window in Safari, you sometimes see you know, you can go to Microsoft thing, you can go to Yahoo, you can go to Wikipedia. All those things those companies actually pay for that placement.
So maybe everybody just pays for whatever traffic is being sent to them through the browser or you know, Apple users, instead of having it be an exclusive devolve. The government, of course, isn't thrilled with just that change, because you know, their argument is Google has benefited from having these contracts for so long. You can't just now say, you know, go orhm to no more. You have to sort of fix the market that has been sort of distorted by
Google's conduct having these illegal contracts for so long. So Google is really going to be pushing to sort of limit this as much as possible, maybe make it just about the contracts, whereas the government is going to say, yeah, we need to change the contracts, but we need all these other things as well.
And most people you spoke to thought that Judge Meta wouldn't go as far as you said at and T was the last time there was a government ordered breakup of a company, that Judge Meta wouldn't go so far as to order that.
Yeah, a lot of people have said, you know, even since his decision in August, that they really think that he's not going to go for a breakup. I mean, he has relied very heavily in his opinion and in his thinking about this on the Microsoft case. And in the Microsoft case, you know, the judge originally ordered a breakup and then the DC Circuit sort of knocked that down.
So really taking that into account, they think that judgement is probably going to be pretty reluctant to go down the same path that the original Microsoft just judge did because he really is invested in making sure that his decision stands up on appeal. And is compliant with the law, and given sort of the tenor of the courts recently, they don't think that the breakup option is really what
he's going to go for. The other interesting thing I heard is if the government isn't successful in pushing him to require a divestiture here, they still have their other case. You know, we have closing arguments in that one next week. This is the case about involving advertising technology, and Chrome is actually pretty important in that one too, because as I mentioned, you know, all of the data that Google gets from people using the Chrome browser is a thing
that uses to help target advertising. So if Meta is reluctant to order a sale of Chrome, they might have a second chance to argue for that before the other judge, Judge Brinkamatt in Virginia.
Google says it's going to Judge Meta's decision, and you know, I assume that if it goes to the DC Circuit, then it'll go to the Supreme Court no matter what, which may or may not take the case. So I mean we're talking about years ahead.
Yeah, I mean, so Judge Metta has said he intends to have his final order issue by August of twenty twenty five, and then it's going to go to the DC Circuit. That process is probably going to take nine months to a year. The Justice Department has been trying to push this argument that, like, these things need to be expedited. This has been going on for a long time. It needs to be resolved because we need to sort of yet underway at starting to bring competition back to
these markets. So they may try and push the DC Circuit to do it on a more of an expedited basis than they would otherwise. But it's true like by the time we get through these appeals, it's probably going to be a year to eighteen months. So at the earliest, you know, any of these changes that they are proposing are probably not going to be in place until twenty twenty six, maybe early twenty twenty seven.
Yeah, good luck with trying to convince the DC Circuit that this all of a sudden it requires lightning speed, and Judgemadow will hold that hearing in April of twenty twenty five, So quite a long time to go even to the hearing, let alone the appeals. Thanks so much, Leah. That's Bloomberg Anti Trust reporter Lean Nylan coming up. Just Who is Bitcoin Jesus and why is he fighting extradition?
This is Bloomberg To his followers, Roger vere is known as Bitcoin Jesus, a charismatic advocate of the cryptocurrency that's once again captivating investors worth record breaking gains.
But to the.
Irs, Verr is a new target for the digital age, a crypto holder suspected of failing to pay taxes after selling tokens, and prosecutors have charged Verer with evading more than forty eight million dollars in taxes for selling two hundred and forty million dollars in tokens. The case marks a break from more traditional cases where prosecutors tax tax charges onto crypto cases for crimes like money laundering, ransomware attacks, and investor scams. The case against Veer deals solely with
tax fraud and digital asset sales. Joining me is Bloomberg legal reporter David Voriakis, who's.
Written about him? So, David, who is Bitcoin Jesus and how did he get that name?
Roger Meer was an early investor in bitcoin. He grew up in Silicon Valley and he was a libertarian. When he was twenty two, he was convicted of selling explosives without a license, and he did ten months in prison. That reinforced his negative attitude towards the US government, and he moved to Japan. Then he later renounced his US citizenship and he became a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Along the way, he became a very powerful advocate for bitcoin, selling it everywhere that he could, selling the notion of it promise and the potential of cryptocurrencies to transfer wealth without mediation by regulators or governments or other institutions. And he's a charismatic speaker who got the nickname Bitcoin Jesus. He invested in several crypto companies in their startup days and made a lot of money. Roger Vere has gotten into trouble with the Internal Revenue Service.
I mean, how did he get so popular and so well known.
Well, he tweeted a lot. He's got seven hundred thousand followers on it, and he appeared at conferences. He was just no within the cryptoworld. He'd appear at meetups and other gatherings, and he was a very influential player in the early ecosystem of bitcoin. You know, he's well spoken,
good looking, charismatic. He has a real presence about him, and so his message resonated with people, and people reacted to his message that you should all go out and buy bitcoin and then other cryptocurrencies that he was also supporting.
He was a co founder of blockchain dot com. Is he still an owner there?
He is not, But there were other companies that he was an early investor in, like payment processor BitPay and the digital asset firm Ripple. There was a software upgrade that the Bitcoin network underwent that he opposed in twenty seventeen, and he switched to a split off coin called bitcoin Cash, and that was very controversial at the time. That that was the stand that he took, and so he's continued to be popular in crypto circles.
He renounced his US citizenship in twenty fourteen. What steps are required legally when you do that?
If they are worth more than two million dollars, they're supposed to report their worldwide assets to the IRS and pay an exit tax based on their assets sales. So they have to make a written through report to the IRS about what they own anywhere in the world, and then they have to file a return that reflects how much tax they owe on whatever income or sales they've had.
So did he report to the IRS when he renounced his citizenship?
Tell us what happened?
Well, according to the indictment in federal court in Los Angeles, he did not make an accurate report to the IRS about what assets he owned, specifically the crypto holdings that he had personally and through two companies that he founded
and that were based in California. They were called Memory Dealers and Agile Star, and the IRS, in its indictment, which accuses him of tax of asion, wire fraud, and filing a false tax return, says that he did not fully report his crypto holdings for one and then later on in twenty seventeen, they alleged that he sold about two hundred and forty million dollars in crypto and that he failed to pay forty eight million dollars in taxes on those sales.
And is this case unusual in any respect?
Is it different?
It is unusual because for several years the Internal Revenue Service has been talking about filing a tax of asion case based solely on crypto, and this has been a subject of considerable debate within the IRS for a long time. On how to notify crypto holders that they have an obligation to pay taxes when they sell crypto and what the proper rate should be. What crypto holders are supposed to disclose. It's now part of an IRS tax return. Do you have digital currency holdings or not? Yes or no?
And then they're supposed to pay capital gains tax on their sale. There was another person from Texas who was charged earlier this year in the first crypto only tax of asion case, and then Roger vere was the second who was charged. The other one seated guilty in September, and Verer is now facing extradition from Spain where he was arrested in April.
And what's his defense to the charges.
Well, his defense is that he was relying on the advice of his lawyers and his other tax professionals, and that at the time in question, which would be twenty fourteen to twenty seventeen, the IRS policy was very much unsettled on what crypto holders owed and how they were supposed to proceed. He says that he has exculpatory emails and other evidence that show that he had no intention to evade taxes under the law, you have to know that you have an obligation and willingly violate that obligation
to be guilty of tax evasions. He says that he had no intent to do that, and that he has evidence that the Justice Department is ignoring tell us.
About Spain and extradition. Is he still in jail in Spain.
He was arrested while attending a crypto conference in Barcelona in April. He's spent a month in jail there and since then he's lived on the island of Majorca, where he's had a steady stream of visitors, and he remains an outspoken critic of the US government.
So he's fighting extradition.
I take it there was an extradition hearing. The judge has not issued a decision yet. He's fighting extradition. The US government has successfully extradited other white collar criminals from Spain, and so there is a history of Spain cooperating with US requests for extradition. That may not vode well for his case, but the judge is still considering how to
act here. One of the cases involved Douglas Edelman, who was a former defense contractor who's charged with evading taxes on more than three hundred and fifty million dollars in income. He was extradited earlier this year and now faces trial in the US.
There's no timetable for the Spanish judge to make that decision, but I know you will let us know as soon as he does. Thanks so much, David. That's Bloomberg Legal reporter David Voriakis, and that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the
latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot bloomberg dot com slash podcast slash Law, and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg