On Wednesday morning, judges at the Thurgood Marshall federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan heard two separate cases, both of which raise questions President Donald Trump and the rule of law. 

In the first case, lawyers representing Donald Trump, private citizen, argued that local law enforcement can't investigate him for possible tax crimes, because he's the sitting president. The case stemmed from a probe into Trump's business practices being conducted by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance.

"The DA's lawyers — they just dismissed that," said Andrea Bernstein, co-host of WNYC's and ProPublica's Trump Inc. podcast, who attended the hearing. "They said the Trump team is just making things up." 

Meanwhile, fellow Trump Inc. co-host Ilya Marritz was attending the second case. That case involves two men — Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — who were charged with breaking election laws in 2018. Around that time, they were also beginning to work for Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, to get Ukraine to intervene in the 2020 election. Trump has insisted that he doesn't know the men. But Parnas' lawyer tried to tie the case to Trump, and suggested that executive privilege may affect prosecutors’ ability to gather evidence.

Listen as Bernstein and Marritz discuss both cases with All Things Considered host Jami Floyd.