Trump pleads not guilty

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Trump pleads not guilty’

Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, April 5th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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Donald Trump is officially the first former US president to be indicted on criminal charges. Plus, Credit Suisse held its last shareholder meeting ever yesterday and there were fireworks and walnuts, for that matter. And investors in Hong Kong took on HSBC executives. We’ll tell you how that meeting went. I’m Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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Donald Trump appeared in court in New York yesterday for the first time. The former US president pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. They’re related to alleged hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. The FT’s US legal correspondent, Joe Miller, was at the courthouse yesterday.

Joe Miller
So I got to downtown Manhattan at roughly 6am, and at about 8am we were all given passes to eventually go into the building and be either in the courtroom or in the overflow courtroom, as I was when Donald Trump’s hearing took place later that afternoon. Roughly 2pm, we heard that Donald Trump was on his way. We, as journalists, were shepherded through two security checks. We couldn’t use our phones, and then we just sat there in silence as Donald Trump’s lawyers walked in, as the prosecutors walked in. And what followed was a fairly standard arraignment hearing, a little bit longer than the ones you would usually have in criminal court, but fairly standard besides for the fact that the defendant sitting there was the 45th president of the United States.

Marc Filippino
So what did we learn when the charges were actually unsealed, Joe?

Joe Miller
Everything that we learned, we have kind of learned over the past few days, despite the indictment officially being under seal. There were quite a few leaks. And those leaks essentially suggested that there would be 34 felony charges that all relate to the hush money payments, so-called hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, just 12 days before the election in 2016. Those payments were made by Michael Cohen, who is a former Trump lawyer. But crucially, Donald Trump is alleged to have reimbursed Michael Cohen in 2017 while he was president and to have falsified the records of those payments in his bookkeeping. And that is the nuts and bolts of these 34 charges.

Marc Filippino
Gotcha. So then what happens next, Joe?

Joe Miller
Essentially the defence team, Donald Trump’s defence team will file a bunch of motions seeking to dismiss this case. Now they have until, I think, August 8th to do that. So they may choose to do that before the deadline, but it could be we won’t hear anything from them for several months. So you will see substantive motions filed. Then the government will have till sometime in September to reply to those motions. And then the judge gets to decide whether he wants to dismiss the case, dismiss some of the case, narrow the case. He gets to consider all of these motions. And he said he would come back in December and rule on those motions and there would be a hearing then which Donald Trump’s lawyers had asked in court he need not appear at or he be excused from appearing at. But the judge denied that.

Marc Filippino
Joe Miller is the FT’s US legal correspondent.

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After 167 years, Credit Suisse held its last annual general meeting yesterday and the bank’s chair, Axel Lehmann, opened the meeting with this apology to investors.

Axel Lehmann via translator
It’s a sad day for you and for us, too. I can understand the bitterness, the anger and the shock of all those who are disappointed, overwhelmed and affected by the developments.

Marc Filippino
Those developments are, of course, the collapse and then rapid-fire rescue of Credit Suisse last month. Swiss regulators arranged for the country’s biggest bank to buy Credit Suisse. And at Tuesday’s meeting, Credit Suisse shareholders took hours to express how frustrated they were at executives.

Owen Walker
Somebody stood up and told the board that if they were in medieval times, they would be literally crucified.

Marc Filippino
That’s our European banking correspondent, Owen Walker.

Owen Walker
You had somebody else turning up with a bag full of shells from walnuts that he said he’d eaten. He said he bought the bag for the same prices as a single Credit Suisse share and that he was going to give the bag of shells to the board. Lehmann tried to diffuse situation by saying, you know, “Thanks, I’ll take the walnut shells, but I’ve actually got my own nuts here to, to chew on.” The whole gamut of what you expect really from a modern shareholder meeting from a bank, but also, you know, times by 10.

Marc Filippino
OK (laughter). I have to admit, the walnut thing is, is actually pretty funny. So is yesterday’s meeting just an opportunity for shareholders to blow off steam, Owen?

Owen Walker
I mean, it was all about, yesterday’s event was all about being somebody who could be beaten up, I suppose, by these shareholders who, let’s not forget, who’ve lost an awful lot of money and had absolutely no say on this transaction whatsoever. There was nothing they could have said other than to hold their hands up, say they’re very sorry, and really just take it, all the blows that came their way.

Marc Filippino
Owen Walker is the FT’s European banking correspondent.

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Executives from another global bank also had to face angry shareholders this week. HSBC’s global chair and CEO were in the former British colony of Hong Kong to meet one of their most important constituencies: local investors. The FT’s Kaye Wiggins was at that meeting and says one of their biggest beefs is HSBC’s sudden takeover of the UK arm of collapsed US lender, Silicon Valley Bank.

Kaye Wiggins
I mean, one of the things that the shareholders were like kind of repeatedly saying was, we’ve got questions about this deal. And some of them are saying, you know, we’re really not happy about that. How could you possibly know what you’re buying after doing, like, just a few hours of due diligence? How do you know what type of risks you’ve been taking with our money?

Marc Filippino
It was not an easy conversation for HSBC’s top executives.

Kaye Wiggins
Well, you could see Mark Tucker, who’s the bank’s chair, kind of becoming kind of increasingly frustrated by some of these questions. So at one point, he told one shareholder they were completely wrong to say that this was the UK government’s idea, that HSBC should buy the Silicon Valley Bank’s UK business. And he kept, he was stressing, you know, “We paid £1,” he said. “We paid £1, £1 for this company.” He’s really stressing that they think they got a great deal here.

Marc Filippino
And most of these shareholders aren’t wealthy financiers, but they’re still influential.

Kaye Wiggins
Hong Kong shareholders are like a really crucial constituency that they have to keep happy because the really high proportion of the stock is owned by kind of small shareholders. You know, compared to sort of other global institutions, HSBC has a much higher proportion in the hands of individuals and families. For me, it was the first time I’d been to one of these shareholder meetings, and it was just a really interesting insight into an important part of kind of life in the city, almost, in Hong Kong, you know, which is the, sort of, you realise how big of a role HSBC really does play in the lives of a lot of people here. And so many sort of ordinary people, families got on a bus to come down here to this sort of conference centre.

Marc Filippino
So these ordinary people are really engaged and also frustrated.

Kaye Wiggins
So what this really plays into, I think, is this like sense among the Hong Kong shareholders that HSBC is, like, from that perspective is still way too focused on the UK and too little on Asia, even though it generates the majority of its profits in Asia. They really see it as being sort of too UK-centric still. And this UK deal really does play into that.

Marc Filippino
Kaye Wiggins is the FT’s Asia financial correspondent.

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You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.