Trump is likely to be indicted on Tuesday
The Witch-Hunt Will Backfire Massively on Joe Biden: Indictment of a Grand Jury indictment
The political consequences of the indictment – along with any other potential charges that may come his way — must be set aside when we consider the importance of reestablishing accountability. In the end, the grand jury has made an important contribution to contemporary politics by choosing to hold Trump to account and settling the question of whether that is possible, once and for all.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office started an investigation when Trump was still in the White House and related to a $130,000 payment made by Trump’s then- personal lawyer Michael Cohen to Daniels to silence her from going public about an alleged affair. Trump denied having an affair.
Daniels received the money less than two weeks before the election. After Trump won, he reimbursed Cohen with his own checks. Although he has denied having had an extramarital affair, Trump reimbursed Cohen for the money he paid to her.
Prosecutors were also weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying business records in the first degree for falsifying a record with the intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal another crime, which in this case could be a violation of campaign finance laws. That is a Class E felony and carries a sentence of a minimum of one year and as much as four years. To prove the case, prosecutors would need to show that Trump intended to do something.
Trump and his attorneys, thinking Bragg might be reconsidering a potential indictment, were all caught off-guard, sources said. Some of Trump’s advisers had even left Palm Beach on Wednesday following news reports that the grand jury was taking a break, the sources added.
Following news of the indictment, the former president continued to attack Bragg and other Democrats, even after he denied wrongdoing.
“I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” the former president said in a statement Thursday. “The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. We are going to win the battle against Bragg and then we are going to defeat Biden so that we can make America great again.
The FBI Investigated the 2016-2017 Indictment in the U.S. Sen. J.P. Bragg’s Case
The former president had first been asked to surrender Friday in New York, his lawyer said, but his defense said more time was needed and he’s expected in court on Tuesday.
The initial court appearance of the former president will look similar to that of any other defendants and in some cases will look very different.
Public hearings are usually the first appearances. If an arrest of a defendant is not needed, arrangements are made with them or their lawyers for a voluntary surrender to law enforcement. With their first appearance in court, defendants are usually booked and finger-printed. And if a first appearance is also an arraignment, a plea is expected to be entered.
That alone makes it historic. But Trump is currently a few months into his third White House bid, and his criminal case jolts the 2024 presidential campaign into a new phase, as the former president has vowed to keep running in the face of criminal charges.
Bragg was already well-known by Republicans who tried to place his progressive positions on criminal justice, in a city they often depict as being besieged by violent crime, to national Democrats like President Joe Biden. In the run-up to the indictment and then in its immediate aftermath, even those Republicans who have been more willing to criticize Trump denounced Bragg’s investigation as a political stunt or an abuse of power.
One of the committee chairmen who wants Bragg to testify before the Congress about the Trump investigation is Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Ted Cruz said that the indictment was a huge step in the weaponization of the justice system.
As part of the response to the indictment, Trump’s team will start hitting Democrats, the investigation and Bragg across various media as they work to shape the public narrative, according to sources close to Trump.
The second week of March, prosecutors gave the clearest sign to date that the investigation was nearing its conclusion – they invited Trump to appear before the grand jury.
Associated With Michael Cohen: “I Wanna See Them Now” — Donald Trump’s Threat to the 2020 GOP Presidential Campaign, Attorney General Martin Wehle, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy
Even if the charge itself doesn’t reach the heights that people would expect from a former president, it’s quite serious according to Wehle.
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen negotiated a deal with porn star Stormy Daniels, paying her $130,000 in exchange for keeping quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.
NPR is not able to confirm whether Trump is still in Florida. Two reliable flight trackers have not registered movement on his private plane since the 757 flew to West Palm Beach five days ago.
DeSantis also reiterated that he would not “assist in an extradition request” for Trump, a Florida resident. Trump is expected to appear in court on Tuesday in New York, where he had lived most of his life.
Though he’s yet to announce his candidacy, he’s widely considered to be a top 2024 Republican presidential contender and a threat to Trump’s bid for reelection.
“I don’t want to be involved in some type of manufactured circus by some person that gives money to politicians,” he said, according to an account from POLITICO. He’s trying to do a political spectacle. I’ve got real issues I’ve got to deal with here in the state of Florida.”
The grand jury vote to indict the former president was denounced by him in a statement on Thursday.
“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable — indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” the statement from his website reads.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted that Bragg has “irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election.” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called the probe a “blatant abuse of power from a DA focused on political vengeance.”
Detecting and prosecuting the financial misconduct of A. A. Vance, the former impeachment manager of the New York City district attorney
One of the party’s messages was blind justice, and they used the phrase “no one is above the law.”
The rich and powerful must be accountable to the laws of the nation. “Especially when they do,” said the former impeachment manager.
Cohen said, “Now that the charges have been filed, it is better to let the indictment speak for itself.” “The two things I wish to say at this time is that accountability matters and I stand by my testimony and the evidence I have provided to [the New York district attorney].”
In light of the speed and significance of this news cycle, it’s worth remembering that Trump also faces scrutiny in other investigations that could lead to charges of their own.
According to confidential records, a grand jury investigation has been going on in Manhattan for more than five years.
The assistant district attorneys were assigned by the district attorneys and did not get far: the federal prosecutors who charged Mr. Cohen requested that the office of the district attorneys stand down.
But soon they hit another roadblock. Mr. Trump had a lawsuit filed to prevent his accountants from getting his financial records.
Mr. Trump had often drawn scrutiny in his long career as a businessman, but one thing stood out to Mr. Vance’s prosecutors: his annual financial statements. The statements, they came to suspect, were a grand work of fiction that inflated the value of his hotels, golf clubs and other properties.
The key part of the evidence that was missing was a Trump Organization employee who would testify against Mr. Trump. So Mr. Vance — who had recruited an outside lawyer, Mark Pomerantz, to help steer the investigation — waged a pressure campaign on one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal lieutenants. They targeted Allen H. Weisselberg, his financial gatekeeper for decades.
The prosecution team was told on February 22nd, 2022, that Bragg wasn’t going to authorize charges against Trump. The prosecutors quit the next day.
Trump is under criminal investigation in Georgia and Washington, D.C., for his attempts to subvert the outcome in the 2020 race. He tried to stage a coup every time he wasn’t punished for violating rules intended to safeguard America’s electoral system. Escaping conviction in his second impeachment, for trying to overthrow the democratic system he was sworn to protect, he now treats Jan. 6 as something heroic, honoring rioters at his most recent campaign rally.
The Case for Justice: The 2009 September 8 Anomalous Events of President Gerald Ford’s First Presidential Amendment and the 2001 September 11 arraignment
Julian Zelizer is a CNN political analyst and a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 25 books, including the New York Times best-seller, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past” (Basic Books). He can be followed on social media by going to the account, @julianzelizer. His views are not reflected in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.
As the nation awaits the details of the charges — with questions swirling about his scheduled arraignment on Tuesday — the implications of the decision are starting to sink in.
The first element of the indictment has to do with accountability. The event of September 8, 1974 was referred to as the turning point of American politics. Just one month after Richard Nixon announced his resignation, then-President Gerald Ford pardoned the former president for any crimes that he may have committed while in office.
Many Americans were outraged by the pardon, believing that Ford had struck a deal with Nixon, who had appointed him as vice president in 1973 after his former Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigned in disgrace for pleading no contest to tax evasion as part of a plea deal that dropped more serious charges of political corruption. Now Ford, they said, had delivered for Nixon and become an unelected president in the process. His approval ratings plummeted from 71% to 50% after the pardon, and protesters congregated outside the White House waving a large banner that proclaimed: “Promise Me Pardon and I’ll Make You President.”
By avoiding the attempt to hold Nixon accountable, Ford circumvented the judicial process, and the nation never tested what could be done about presidents or former presidents who were accused of violating the law.
This issue came up again with President Bill Clinton. In Clinton v. Jones, in 1997, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision that concluded sitting presidents were not immune from civil law litigation arising from events that had taken place before entering office. In 1998, he was impeached by the House for lying about his affair with Lewinsky, but his charges were rejected by the Senate. After being acquitted, Clinton decided to cut a deal with a special prosecutor who would not prosecute him for making false statements after leaving office.
We were unsure if it was possible to hold the president accountable after he left the White House. The issue was not simply a legal question, but one that concerned the will of prosecutors and juries.
He has fallen back onto the well-worn strategy of presenting himself as the victim of a corrupt establishment and getting his supporters behind him. It was no surprise that soon after the news of an indictment broke, Trump said that it was “Political interference and persecution at the highest level in history.”
They have begun reversing the damage that was done to the body politic by Ford, who refused to allow the legal process to play out with a former president who had engaged in immense wrongdoing and abused his power. And if the nation fails to continue the long process of reestablishing the important standard of accountability, we will be perpetually trapped by the perils of an imperial presidency that holds commanders-in-chief to a different legal standard than all other Americans.
Why does the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, attack a Republican Presidential Candidate in the 2024 Primary? An open debate with Rep. James Comer
Republican candidates for the 2024 primary coalesced on Thursday around an attack on the Manhattan District Attorney, with no praise for President Donald Trump.
“The person denigrating integrity, the integrity of our entire judicial system is Alvin Bragg, this Soros-funded political activist who is occupying the Manhattan DA’s office,” said Johnson on Fox News on Friday. “He’s spending all his time and resources going after the former President. Why? The President announced that he is running again.
After the January 6, 2021, riot in the US Capitol, the former Vice President called the indictment of his former boss an outrage and suggested that Bragg was politically motivated.
The idea of the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe in fairness and equal treatment before the law is offended by the Manhattan District Attorney’s targeting of one American in their campaign.
Rep. James Comer: The House Oversight Chairman attacked the “political witch-hunt” of former President Donald Trump the day after he was indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
One thing we are concerned about in Washington is if there is coordination between the DOJ and Donald Trump, because we have heard that there is more than one entity going after him. They are doing everything they can to hurt Donald Trump and that is a political witch-hunt.
Greene serves on the House Oversight Committee, one of the key committees trying to investigate the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, and told CNN she regularly keeps Trump up to date on their investigative priorities.
Sen. John Cornyn, a member of Senate GOP leadership, told CNN the Trump indictment “looks to me like this is an opportunity for this [district attorney] to try to make headlines and gain publicity.”
Asked if he would consider re-evaluating after seeing evidence, Moore replied, “I’m open to thinking that. There’s a reason I’m in the garbage business, and I know how to spot a pile of garbage, and this thing looks like a pile of garbage.
He thought that the indictment might help Trump in the White House. Moore himself was indicted and eventually found not guilty on perjury charges in 2014, when he was a member of the Alabama State House.
“After I was indicted, that weekend, we had more people knock doors than any time in our campaign,” he added. Is that correct? We did, because the people saw it for what it was. I think the American people see this for what it is.”
Trump and the Grand Jury: Why Trump and Cohen Did Not Want to Indict a Sesame-Term President After Trump Left the White House
So they waited. The next day the grand jury was scheduled to meet, jurors were told not to come in. Bragg and his top prosecutors had to come up with a strategy to counter the testimony of Costello in the grand jury.
The former head of American Media Inc, which publishes the National Enquirer, is one of the witnesses brought in by prosecutors. In February, there was a news story. The controller testified before the grand jury. Members of Trump’s 2016 campaign, including Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, also appeared. In March, Daniels met with prosecutors, her attorney said.
After the indictment, Trump ate dinner with his wife, Melania, Thursday evening and smiled while he greeted guests at his Mar-a-Lago club, according to a source familiar with the event.
Trump’s attorneys made a last-ditch attempt to avoid an indictment. According to an allegation made by Cohen’s former advisor, Joseph Costello, the president’s lawyer, Cohen said that he decided to make a payment to Daniels on his own in order to keep her quiet.
The US Justice Department regulations against charging a sitting president was the reason why federal prosecutors did not want to indict Trump. In 2021, after Trump left the White House, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York decided not to pursue a case against Trump, according to a recent book from CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig.
Weisselberg was sentenced to five months at Rikers Island after pleading guilty to the charges. Prosecutors had hoped to flip Weisselberg to cooperate against Trump, but he would not tie Trump to any wrongdoing.
Disagreements about the pace of the investigation had caused at least three career prosecutors to move off the investigation. They were concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges, CNN and others reported last year.
In January of 2022, Bragg took office. Less than two months into his tenure, two top prosecutors who had worked on the Trump case under Vance abruptly resigned amid a disagreement in the office over the strength of the case against Trump.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/politics/trump-bragg-inside-indictment/index.html
Trump Bragg Inside Indictment: A First Meeting with the DP-Analogues of the Mueller Investigating Hush Money
“I and others believe that your decision not to authorize prosecution now will doom any future prospects that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating,” Pomerantz wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by CNN.
Prosecutors were building a wide-ranging falsified business records case to include years of financial statements and the hush money payments, people with direct knowledge of the investigation told CNN. It was believed by those prosecutors that the felony charge related to the hush money would be dismissed by the judge because it was a new legal theory.
“Investigations are not linear so we are following the leads in front of us. Bragg told CNN in April 2022, that they were doing that. The investigation is ongoing.
Trump was not personally charged in that case. But it appeared to embolden Bragg’s team to sharpen their focus back to Trump and the hush money payment.
Cohen was coming back to meet the prosecutors. Cohen had previously met with prosecutors in the district attorney’s office 13 times over the course of the investigation. The January meeting was the first in more than a year, and signaled the direction prosecutors were taking.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/politics/trump-bragg-inside-indictment/index.html
Bragg was a psychopath during the void, and he wasn’t going to be indicted by the New York grand jury
Asked about Bragg’s hesitance, Pomerantz said: “I can’t speak in detail about what went through his mind. I can surmise from what happened at the time and statements that he’s made since that he had misgivings about the strength of the case.”
Behind the scenes, Trump attorney Susan Necheles told CNN she met with New York prosecutors to argue why Trump shouldn’t be indicted and that prosecutors didn’t articulate the specific charges they are considering.
Trump took to social media to say that he would be indicted. In a post attacking Bragg on March 18, Trump said the “leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”
Trump’s call for protests after a potential indictment led to meetings between senior staff members from the district attorney’s office, the New York Police Department and the New York State Court Officers – who provide security at the criminal court building in lower Manhattan.
Trump kept on saying that Bragg was a “degenerate psychopath” during the void. And four Republican chairmen of the most powerful House committees wrote to Bragg asking him to testify, which Bragg’s office said was unprecedented interference in a local investigation. An envelope containing a suspicious white powder and a death threat to Bragg was to delivered to the building where the grand jury meets – the powder was deemed nonhazardous.
There were multiple reports that the grand jury was going to go on a break in April, two days after Pecker testified. The grand jury was not expected to take up the Trump case.
Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump’s who had a history of orchestrating so-called “catch and kill” deals while at the National Enquirer, was involved with the Daniels’ deal from the beginning.
