Trump’s Manhattan saga is facing an unprecedented moment

New York Times Report on a New Yorker indicted by a Grand Jury in his 1987 infamous “The Art of the Deal”

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A graduate from the Ivy League in 1971 rented a studio apartment on Third Avenue and 75th Street. The building next to the window had a water tank.

I tried to divide it up so that it would be larger. It was still a dingy little apartment no matter what I did. In 1987, Trump co-authored a book called “The Art of the Deal” with Tony Schwartz. When I was a kid I worked in Brooklyn and then found an apartment on the Upper East Side. … I became a city guy instead of a kid from the boroughs.”

Ultimately, he’d become the first New Yorker since Franklin D. Roosevelt to make it to the White House. But Trump’s Manhattan saga could be coming to a close on Tuesday only a few miles from where it began, when he is scheduled to appear in a downtown courtroom to face criminal charges.

As with almost everything about the former president, there’s no real precedent for the latest chapter of his story — and no way to tell how it will end.

The analyst wrote that it had finally happened. “After multiple investigations over half a dozen years, former President Donald Trump has been indicted by a grand jury in New York, according to sources familiar with the matter. Trump called the indictment a political persecution and warned it would backfire.

No one is above the law, and that Trump should be held responsible for his actions because of who he is. The charges are the first step towards accountability, but will be long and winding.

Trump can continue running for the Republican nomination for president in 2024 and if he can delay the prosecution and is elected, Rodgers pointed out, “expect him to argue that the case against him must be dismissed as unconstitutional based on the Justice Department’s 2000 guidance that a president cannot be indicted ‘or tried’ while in office.”

Elie Honig argued that the first hurdle for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is to overcome any motion by Trump’s lawyer to dismiss the charges. His prosecutors will have to convince 12 jurors to convict even if he succeeds.

If a case is thrown out, you are very likely to end up with one or more Trump voters on the jury, according to Honig. “A judge would tell jurors to put aside their political views and personal beliefs in order to follow the rules, but I know from my time as a prosecutor that jurors are human beings with the same emotions, biases, and incentives as anyone would be.” And the legal bar at trial is far higher than in the grand jury…”

There is a chance that Trump will be able to survive in the political arena. Trump’s political career is built on punching back against the people and institutions he believes are unfairly attacking him and he has an instinct for using moments of peril to his advantage. He has already fallen back on the well-worn strategy of presenting himself as the victim of a corrupt establishment and rallying his supporters behind him.”

In the Washington Post, Henry Olsen wrote, “Anyone who cares about fairness in our criminal justice system should be queasy that Donald Trump will be prosecuted in one of the country’s most liberal jurisdictions. By all accounts, this should be a federal case.”

“New York state’s entire judicial process is controlled by Democrats who could lose their positions in party primaries. During his campaign for district attorney, he boasted that he had sued Trump or his administration more than 100 times, something he probably did to curry favor with primary voters who disliked Trump. Every New York state judge who would either try the case or hear an appeal is elected on a partisan basis, too. It would take courage for a judge to apply the law fairly and ignore their voters’ wish for vengeance.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/02/opinions/trumps-manhattan-story-opinion-column-galant/index.html

The Nashville Shooting that killed three children and three adults: Trump’s legacy in Afghanistan looms wide-open in Washington, DC, as revealed by the Crumbleys

Sorrow, anger and frustration were among the emotions people felt after yet another school shooting last week — this time in Nashville, Tennessee, where three children and three adults were killed at The Covenant School on Monday.

“James and Jennifer Crumbley, who have pleaded not guilty, allegedly neglected cries for help from their son for months and dismissed serious concerns from the school the day before and the morning of the shooting. Yet even as they apparently ignored warning signs, the Crumbleys bought their son a gun and took him to target practice. Fifteen at the time of the mass shooting, their son pleaded guilty in October to terrorism and murder charges.”

The question of how to prevent shooting is raised. And they argued that on this front, there is a positive development — a move to hold parents accountable in certain cases:

The parents of the boy who shot and killed four students at Oxford High School in Michigan will stand trial after an appellate court last week rejected their argument that the charges have no legal justification.

President Joe Biden touted efforts to oppose autocratic governments at last week’s White House democracy summit, co-hosted by Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia.

This makes the premise of the summit ring hollow since the Biden administration abandoned 40 million Afghans to the Taliban just over a year ago when it was promoting democracy and women’s rights.

The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan is under investigation by the House Republicans, as is the lengthy war in Afghanistan. There’s a double-edged sword to any examination of America’s record in Afghanistan, since the Trump administration signed the agreement with the Taliban that led to the total US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/02/opinions/trumps-manhattan-story-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Love Better: How to Help Kids with Domestic Abuse and Sexual Exploitation in the United States after a Breakup of Their Social Networks

“It might seem an arcane issue to trigger a massive popular uprising, but Israelis promptly concluded their democracy was at stake, and what followed was one of the most far-reaching, disciplined and determined waves of protests inside a democratic country in recent memory.”

“On Monday, under nearly unbearable pressure, Netanyahu agreed to postpone the overhaul -— which was being rammed through the Knesset — until the next legislative term. The crisis, however, is not over.”

Breaks don’t work. New Zealand is doing a campaign to help people deal with the aftermath of a broken relationship. “Our behavior doesn’t have to” follow suit, wrote Holly Thomas.

The nation’s Love Better campaign is about helping young people recover from their break ups. The campaign includes a dedicated phone, text or email helpline run by Youthline, an organization dedicated to supporting people ages 12 to 24.”

It is part of a larger strategy to help eliminate family and sexual violence, and follows a survey of 1,200 16-23-year-olds who said their experiences included self- harming, substance abuse, risky sexual behaviors and violence following rejection. It is wild that these campaigns are not ubiquitous in other countries as well. At the very least, it would improve our collective mental health. At the very least, it might save lives.

Alaimo said that it was about time. The law that regulates social networks in the United States has made this potentially incredibly dangerous for children and parents cannot keep their kids safe without it. Congress should pass a law that protects every child in this country.

Parents will be able to access their children’s accounts, apps won’t be allowed to show children commercials, and accounts for kids won’t be allowed to be used between 10:30pm and 6:30am without parental permission.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/02/opinions/trumps-manhattan-story-opinion-column-galant/index.html

A Manhattan District Attorney’s Office investigation of Donald Trump’s prosecution of business fraud in the indictment of Keir Giles for a terrorist attack on the United States

Last weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin expanded on his plans to station nuclear weapons in Belarus, which borders both Russia and Ukraine. Keir Giles wrote that there was nothing new, but it still set off some alarms because he thought they were exaggerated.

The debut cover of the new comic showed a superhero punching Hitler, a year before the US entered World War II.

Captain America was born more than eighty years ago. Roy Schwartz wrote a piece about his history and the artist who adopted the name of Jack Kirby. Both writer and artist were the children of Jewish immigrants.

As Schwartz noted, “After the war, superheroes fell out of favor and Kirby wrote and drew other genres of comics. In 1961, Stan Lee was told by the editor and head writer at what would soon be known asMarvel to try again superheroes like the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the Incredibles, and many more. Kirby earned the title of King of Comic books due to his artistic innovation. It also made him one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.”

The charges against Donald Trump will be challenged once they are made public, according to an attorney for the former president.

“We’re not doing anything at the arraignment because that would be showmanship and nothing more because we haven’t even seen the indictment yet. A team will look at every possible issue that could be a challenge, and we will challenge it, when we take the indictment, said Joe Tacopina on CNN.

The former President will find out the charges that the grand jury has approved against him on Tuesday when he makes his first appearance in court.

At times, the lawyers have vowed to ask for the charges to be dismissed. The full slate of charges are still not known. And crucially, a judge will ultimately determine if the law is sound enough for the case to move forward to trial.

We can speculate on what evidence they might have, or not have, but we really don’t know what they’ll present at trial, according to the former Manhattan district attorney.

Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in the indictment. The investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office began when Trump was still in the White House and relates to a $130,000 payment made by his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels in late October 2016, days before the presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier.

“They’re not false entries. But assuming they were, they’re misdemeanors way beyond the statute of limitations, so they had to cobble them together to try and get a felony,” he said.

Where are we coming from, folks? Where have we come from? Where do we stand, what are we supposed to know? Where did we go? What did we learn?

“There’s been no discussion of that whatsoever,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in another interview. We have to be careful not to start fretting about venue changes until we see the indictment and have a discussion about the legal issues.