The Anatomy of Donald J. Trump indicted on charges of cover-up a sex scandal and criminal probes of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia
The country went to this somber moment because of Trump’s behavior. He’s also being investigated over efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia, and by a special counsel probing his hoarding of classified documents and conduct in the run up to January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. The only case that has been indicted so far is the one in which Trump is accused of consorting with someone who was not his wife.
The arrest of Trump will be processed by the district attorney’s office at a courthouse in Manhattan Tuesday afternoon, where he will be brought to hear the charges against him.
He will return to his Mar-a-Lago resort and make a speech to the media after court that will attempt to distract from the fact he is going to be a criminal in the New York case.
The indictment has already had an impact in the GOP presidential race, with leading potential challengers to Trump, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, joining the ex-president’s allies in Congress to blast the Bragg investigation as motivated by partisanship. It is premature to think that Trump will be a long-term rallying point for GOP voters given his popularity with grassroots Republicans.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment marks the first criminal charges against Trump, but it’s not the only potential legal trouble in front of the former president: Special counsel Jack Smith is still moving forward with an investigation into Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. The grand jury in Fulton County had concluded its investigation into the attempt to overturn the election in Georgia.
Legal experts had not seen the still-sealed indictment, so they questioned if it was sufficiently serious to warrant indicting an ex-president who is already running again.
Donald J. Trump is facing 34 criminal charges that could result in a criminal trial if he is convicted of covering up a sex scandal during the presidential campaign.
“Had he not been running for office right now, for the office of the presidency – which, by the way, the polls have shown since this has been announced, his numbers have gone up significantly – had he not been running for presidency, he would not have been indicted,” Tacopina said. Bragg has not made a comment since the indictment was handed down.
Donald Trump is on the Way to Make America Great Again. The Case of the 2018 Hush-Money Indictment Revisited
Mr. Cohen, who broke from Mr. Trump in 2018 after the hush-money deal came to light, is the prosecution’s star witness. He pleaded guilty to federal crimes involving the hush money and served more than a year in prison, which Mr. Trump’s lawyers will likely use to attack his credibility.
Intense security is already in place in New York given the political sensitivities of the case and after Trump warned of potential “death and destruction” ahead of being charged, especially given his past incitement before the Capitol insurrection. So far, however, Trump’s calls for protests have not drawn many of his supporters onto the streets.
A person who spoke to Trump directly said that Trump was unaware that a grand jury had indicted him. The former president had to get used to the idea that a potential indictment could be weeks away. The former president has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the matter and continued his attacks on Bragg and other Democrats following news of the indictment.
Hutchinson, a Republican, called on Trump to quit the race now that he is facing criminal charges.
In a statement on Thursday, Trump showed that he would respond to this brush with political fate in the same way he has lashed out at previous threats in his business and political career, by using his political power to stir up huge disruption and partisan anger.
He said that the witch-hunt would backfire on Joe Biden. The American people know what the Radical Left Democrats are doing. Everyone can see it. The movement and our party are united and strong so we will first defeat Bragg and then defeat Biden so we can make America great again.
This Tuesday is likely to be the start of a new chapter in Trump’s political career and an extreme test for America, as his approach means.
The decision by Mr. Trump to surrender was culmination of a monthslong drama that began with the question of whether he would be indicted, and continued with predictions about how he would respond. He has alternately fretted about and blustered over the prospect of an arrest, while his aides have leveraged the indictment to ramp up fund-raising and push primary rivals into an awkward dance between criticizing prosecutors and backing Mr. Trump.
CNN reported that the former president spent the weekend in Florida playing golf and pondering how to boost his campaign after he was indicted.
But even before Trump’s appearance, his presence will be felt in the Manhattan courthouse Tuesday, as all trials and most other court activity is being halted before he is slated to arrive.
“This is the first time that it really seems likely that the former president of the United States will be having a mugshot, being fingerprinted,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told NPR’s Morning Edition. With Trump also facing a handful of other ongoing criminal cases, “we’re in for a very rocky spring,” Brinkley said.
In a remarkable spectacle playing out before a divided nation, Mr. Trump’s 11-vehicle motorcade arrived just before 1:30 at the district attorney’s office, part of the towering Manhattan Criminal Courts Building. While in custody, he was fingerprinted like any felony defendant, but special accommodations were made for the former president: He spent only a short time in custody.
Trump’s lawyers tried to wrest control of the court proceedings on Monday against a request by news organizations to allow television cameras into Tuesday’s guilty plea. The media outlets argued that the case was of such public interest that it should be broadcast. Trump’s lawyers stated that it will create a circus-like atmosphere, raise unique security concerns, and be in contradiction with his presumption of innocence.
CNN was among several media organizations who requested that news outlets be able to broadcast the proceedings live. Five still photographers, however, will be allowed to take pictures of Trump and the courtroom before the hearing begins.
The news organizations sent a letter requesting only a small number of photographers, videographers and radio journalists to the court in order to ensure the operations of the court will not be disrupted.
Merchan, an acting New York Supreme Court justice, has sentenced Trump’s close confidant Allen Weisselberg to prison, presided over the Trump Organization tax fraud trial and overseen former adviser Steve Bannon’s criminal fraud case.
Attorneys who have appeared before him told CNN that, although he doesn’t stand for delays or disruptions, he does maintain control of his courtroom even when his cases draw attention.
Timothy Parlatore said in an interview that he was not comfortable trying a case before him but that he would likely be fair.
“I’ve tried a case in front of him before. He could be tough. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be something that’s going to change his ability to evaluate the facts and the law in this case,” Parlatore said.
The formerpresident will plead not guilty, according to tacopina. His team “will look at every potential issue that we will be able to challenge, and we will challenge,” Tacopina said.
The indictment of Donald J. Trump as a political witch hunt and why the venue change is not a priority for his legal team
The documents also includes the allegation that Trump instructed Cohen to delay making the payments to Daniels until after the election because after that point, it would not matter if her story came out and they could perhaps avoid making the payments altogether. Prosecutors may seek to use that alleged instruction to justify the felony charges by arguing that the purpose of the payments were to secretly influence the presidential campaign, in violation of election law.
The legal team for Trump is currently not thinking about moving the case to another New York City area. “There’s been no discussion of that whatsoever,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in another interview Sunday. “It’s way too premature to start worrying about venue changes until we really see the indictment and grapple with the legal issues.”
Sources close to Trump say that, over the weekend, his political advisers were discussing how to best campaign against the indictment they have portrayed as a political hoax and witch hunt.
His team has spent the last several days presenting the former president with polls showing him with a growing lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, currently considered Trump’s biggest 2024 rival, in a head-to-head match up. His team says they have raised over five million dollars since he was indicted.
Bragg was attacked before and after the indictment by a lot of Trump’s allies, critics and likely opponents.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/03/politics/what-to-know-trump-arraignment/index.html
Hutchinson, the Judge and the hush money: The case against Donald Trump and the Censorship of a High-Precision Judge
The office is more important than any individual person. So for the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that’s too much of a sideshow and distraction,” Hutchinson said in an interview on ABC News. He needs to be able to concentrate on what’s important.
For months, a 23-person grand jury heard evidence of the former president’s role in the hush money scheme, including testimony from Daniels and Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen. The jury believed there was reason to suspect thatTrump committed a crime, resulting in his indictment.
Trump has denied any criminal wrongdoing and is expected to plead not guilty. “On Tuesday morning I will be going to, believe it or not, the Courthouse,” he wrote on Truth Social. America was not supposed to be this way.
An arraignment is a criminal defendant’s first court appearance. For a normal defendant, that’s usually when one would appear for photographs, fingerprints and arrest paperwork, a process that typically takes several hours behind closed doors.
The charges against defendants are heard by a judge. Defendants can enter a plea, most often “not guilty,” at this stage in the criminal process.
What’s next for Trump? The logistical challenges of coming to a far-off decision in the case of Cyrus, an U.S. attorney
His status is expected to present some unusual logistical challenges. He has a large team of people. It is expected that there will be protests. There is going to be attention from the media. A busy state court office will be where all of that will happen.
Cyrus said in anNPR interview on Sunday that there’s a lot of external factors that don’t happen for 95 percent of the cases. It will be a challenge for the police department, court officers, investigators and everyone else to make sure that everything is running smoothly.
But he’s still entitled to the same due process as everyone else, says Kim Wehle, a former assistant U.S. attorney and now a law professor at the University of Baltimore.
When asked about the potential charges against him and penalties they would carry, she says that’s “way, way down the line,” telling All Things Considered there are plenty of hurdles to get through first.
There are a number of procedural protections in place to make sure that the far-off question is decided fairly.
Legal experts said that the strength of evidence presented by prosecutors would be key to a trial. According to Michael Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina, the jury will be a factor in the case.
“This ultimately will be decided not in the court of public opinion, but it will be decided by those 12 people,” Gerhardt told Weekend Edition. “Lawyers for Mr. Trump will be there every step of the way, and they will have to make sure that jurors are fair and free from bias.”
He said that if he had to choose which side to take, he’d probably be on the prosecution’s side because the jury pool in Manhattan is against Donald Trump.
It would likely take a year for most similar cases to go to trial. He expects that Trump’s strategy will be to delay that process as much as possible.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/03/1167756756/trump-traveling-new-york-arraignment-whats-next-trial
Is Trump going to have an audience? The extraordinary moment of Donald Trump’s media coverage and the changing media landscape: A reappraisal
He says they’re not going to make him an offer that would work for him. “And I think more than anything he probably wants that public stage to play the victim, to have an audience.”
The extraordinary moment will present newsrooms with a number of confusions and test how well they have adapted to the coverage of Trump since he left office in disgrace.
The first version of the article appeared in the newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/03/media/trump-coverage-reliable-sources/index.html
Donald Trump, the Attorney General, and the Ex-President of the U.S. Senate, Martin Luther, III: Preparing for a Multi-Front Defense
► Molly Jong-Fast: “He needs to be covered as a truth sandwich. Tell the truth before you repeat one of his lies. If you can’t repeat the lies. Remember to say it’s a lie if you have to repeat it. Don’t use his campaign’s framing! He should not be your assignment editor. Trump is both a candidate and a likely case, so treat him like any other case. Don’t give him the benefit of the doubt.”
► Jack Shafer: “Editors and producers should stop looking over their shoulders worrying about what the ox peckers might say about their camera angles, the number of hours they spend on the booking, the number of column inches they burn on the prosecution and trust their own journalistic instincts and training. Follow the story. Inform your readers and viewers.”
You must not be spun by the Trump world. Trump and his team will try to exploit the narrative and frame it as a win for him when they see the results of the indictment. Being indicted is always a bad thing and it hurts him in a general election regardless of what he says.
And there are increasing signs that this new reality – which will come with hefty financial commitments in legal fees and locks on Trump’s calendar – could be multiplied at a time when he’s already facing the intense demands of another White House bid.
Smith’s prosecutors have secured daily notes, texts, emails and photographs and are focused on cataloguing how Trump handled classified records around Mar-a-Lago and those who may have witnessed the former president with them, CNN’s Katelyn Polantz and Evan Perez reported Monday. The steps that the Justice Department is taking are consistent with the end of the investigation.
While Donald Trump’s comments will indicate how he will fight the charges against him in the political arena, the former president is preparing for the fight in court. He added a new attorney, Todd Blanche, to serve as lead counsel on his defense team on Monday.
One criminal prosecution is onerous enough. Trump has not been indicted in any of the cases, but a multi- front defense in multiple cases would represent an extraordinary storm. The ex-president would have a harder time controlling his political schedule because of it. During the Russia investigation and both impeachments, Trump exploited his popularity with Republican voters to undermine the allegations against him. He pressured most GOP senators, who knew they would pay with their careers if they voted to convict him in an impeachment trial.
The situation is somewhat similar to the 2020 election, when the will of voters prevailed because Trump’s attempts to have votes thrown out and results changed foundered in multiple courts because of the fact-based standards of evidence and the law.
The FBI Search for a Camera of a First Lady: The Case of Mark Ustad’s Conciliation with the Media Circus
In a late night ruling, the judge turned down the request for cameras. Five photographers will be allowed to take pictures of Trump and the courtroom before the hearing begins.
If anyone knows how to thrive in a media circus, it is Trump. He fears he won’t be able to control a media circus that he is now part of.
Mr. Trump was yelling as he entered the courtroom. Boris Epshteyn, his legal adviser, and the attorneys handling the case were with him. Mr. Trump declined to speak before or after the hearing, and immediately left to fly back to his home in Florida.
Mr. Blanche said the former president was upset by the charges but was determined to prevail. “He’s frustrated. He’s upset. But I will tell you what. He has motivation. It’s not going to slow him down,” he said.
A Half Century of Faking with a Trump Tower Doorman: Indictment of Donald J. Trump and a Step Towards a Justice Scale
The National Enquirer paid $30,000 to a former Trump Tower doorman to lie about the father of Mr. Trump’s child. The claim was found to be false by the publication.
The tabloid made another payment to Karen McDougal, Playboy’s playmate of the year in 1998, who wanted to sell her story of an affair with Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign. She got $150,000 from the National Enquirer in order to keep her story under wraps.
According to prosecutors, the fraud began while Mr. Trump paid Mr. Cohen. In internal records, Mr. Trump’s company falsely classified the repayment to Mr. Cohen as legal expenses, citing a retainer agreement. Yet there were no such expenses, the prosecutors say, and the retainer agreement was fictional as well.
But it is perhaps unsurprising, given the crass and circuslike political era that Mr. Trump’s election ushered in — one marked by the elevation of D-list celebrities, uncouth social media posts and a casual relationship with the truth — that his first indictment stems from lies about a tryst with a porn star.
Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers had been under the belief that he would be charged with both misdemeanors and felonies, and they were jolted by reports that he would instead be facing dozens of felony counts.
Mr. Trump has spent nearly a half-century fending off criminal charges. He was first investigated in New York in the late 1970s, an episode that set the tone for how he dealt with prosecutors for decades.
Federal prosecutors are looking into Mr. Trump’s handling of sensitive documents and his electoral defeat. And a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.
Mr. Trump’s allies have been heavily focused on the idea that he could face a gag order, something his advisers are also aware is a possibility after his broadsides against Mr. Bragg, who pushed for indictment, and Justice Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the case. There isn’t any indication whether the judge will do that.
Greene, Trump and the prosecutor: a statement of facts about the campaign finance case in the state of New York during a news conference in February 2017
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican who is closely aligned with Mr. Trump, held a rally at the park across from the courthouse. Speaking through a megaphone, she denounced the Democratic Party, though her words were often drowned out by protesters — and counterprotesters — blowing whistles and chanting. After speaking for about five minutes, she was ushered out of the park by the police.
A separate $150,000 payment was made to another woman who is suspected of having an intimate relationship with Trump. Karen McDougal is a model who used to work at Playboy but is not named in the charges.
Trump and his allies have wondered about Cohen’s trustworthiness. But at his news conference, DA Bragg said his investigators obtained texts, emails, contemporaneous phone records and testimony from multiple witnesses — information that would emerge at trial.
The new statement of facts only hints at the approach Bragg is taking, but the prosecutor laid out his legal theory more clearly during a news conference after the arraignment.
The business records were altered in order to hide criminal conduct related to the 2016 campaign. He said that it’s illegal in the state of New York to promote a candidacy by getting others to do so.
The statement of facts explains that Trump orchestrated an illegal scheme with others to influence the election and that other participants in the scheme have admitted to committing illegal conduct.
Specifically, the statement of facts references the guilty plea by ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in the federal campaign finance case that was prosecuted in 2018 and the admissions of AMI – the publisher of National Inquirer – in the non-prosecution agreement it reached in the federal investigation.
In describing the alleged election influence scheme, the charging documents go into detail about how the plan to silence women accusing Trump of extramarital affairs allegedly came about.
According to the charging documents, the editor-in-chief and the CEO of the National Enquirer approached then-Trump lawye Cohen shortly after the “Access Hollywood” tape became public in October 2016, and told Cohen that adult-film actress Stormy Daniels was claiming she had an affair with Trump.
“In early February 2017, the Defendant and Lawyer A met in the Oval Office at the White House and confirmed this repayment arrangement,” the statement of facts says.
Many of the facts have been public for a long time. Cohen publicly revealed one of the $35,000 checks while testifying to Congress in 2019 in an effort to corroborate his story that Trump played a role in coordinating and orchestrating the payment to Daniels.
The Southern District of New York’s US attorney’s office entered into a non-prosecution agreement with American Media, Inc., relating to paying Karen McDougal for her story about an affair with President Donald Trump.
Detailing AMI’s role in the alleged scheme may also help prosecutors convince a jury at trial that the payoff gambits were aimed protecting Trump’s electoral chances, contradicting how the payments were allegedly recorded in business records