Dan Abrams Responds to MAGA Critics of His Megyn Kelly Debate: ‘You Can’t Change the Law to Fit Your Theory’

NewsNation anchor and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams addressed his viral interview with Megyn Kelly about the guilty verdict in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial on Dan Abrams Live  Tuesday night.

Kelly appeared on Abrams’s show last Thursday just hours after Trump’s conviction became official, and the two sparred over whether there was any “wrongdoing” on Trump’s part, with Abrams arguing that Trump seemed to have run afoul of federal campaign finance law (even though Abrams said he did not think he should be charged) and Kelly contending otherwise.

Addressing the “spirited back-and-forth” as Abrams described it on Tuesday, the host noted that the pair agreed that “the case never should have been brought” before acknowledging that he and Kelly had a “heated discussion” that was “picked up by various media entities.”

He continued, with a smirk:

But then this weekend, various characters from MAGA world took a small clip of what transpired and declared that I had been owned, eviscerated, schooled, with hundreds on the far right coming after me. Dan Bongino told his 5.2 million followers on X that I am “as dumb as a box of rocks.” The popular right-wing Twitter account called Catturd declared to its 2.5 million followers that “Dan Abrams just proved what an idiot he is in real time.” Then you got these two saying to their thousands of followers, “I thought, Dan Abrams is a serious person. Whoops,” and “I never realized Dan Abrams was such a complete idiot.”

All right. Now, putting aside what makes this particularly funny is that on Sunday, same day this is all happening. I was also getting attacked, as I have throughout the trial, by the left for saying on ABC that Judge Juan Merchan should have recused himself.

Abrams aired clips from the segment that were shared widely by critics, where Kelly said: “Wrong! … It does not amount to a campaign contribution if it is the kind of payment that could ever be made outside of the campaign context. There’s been Supreme Court precedent on this.”

Abrams responded:

That’s the game, I get it. And it also, of course, ignores the fact that as much as I often feel like an idiot who wishes he had the intellectual prowess of, say, a Dan Bongino, I was right. I get that right and wrong doesn’t matter in the clip wars. But to those who do care, this is for you.

First of all, we were discussing whether Trump did anything wrong at all, legally or even morally. And let’s put aside that this was clearly a personal expense, not a business one, even though he falsely put it down as a legal expense. Trump could have been charged, just as Michael Cohen was, for campaign finance violations in federal court. Megyn had claimed that if the payment could ever have been made outside of the campaign context, then it’s not a campaign finance violation. Except the law is actually just the inverse of that.

The FEC says a prohibited personal expense in this context would be one “that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s campaign or responsibilities as a federal officeholder.” So the legal question is whether the payment would have been made “irrespective of the campaign.” That does not mean the question is whether it could ever be made outside the campaign context. I called it a substantiality test. It means that it’s not a violation if it would have been made regardless of the campaign.

So would this be considered a violation by the FEC? Well, in 2021, they found that American Media knowingly and willfully violated the law by making and consenting to prohibited corporate in-kind contributions with regard to payments related to Karen McDougal, the other woman Trump and AMI chairman were trying to silence by buying their stories. So we know the exact same sort of payment was deemed to be a violation.

“Look, you can believe it wasn’t proven. You can believe, as the Republican former head of the FEC has said, that these facts don’t pass the test here to warrant a criminal prosecution. And you can also believe, as I do, that this petty-ante case should not have been brought against the former president,” concluded Abrams. “But you can’t change the law to fit your theory.”

Watch above via NewsNation.

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