It is an unprecedented spectacle. A former president of the United States, who has been indicted for allegedly violating criminal laws, is on trial in a New York court. The trial of Donald J. Trump began with the jury selection process on April 15 and is expected to last for up to two months. Trump plans to attend the four-day-a-week trial while pursuing his campaign for president.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, all of which relate to the former president’s role in the payment of hush money to a porn star, Stormy Daniels. The salaciousness of those charges would be bad enough and the embarrassment factor severe enough for most people to do what is necessary to cut a deal and try to move on. But not Trump. And, amazingly, the accusations against Trump are not a problem for many of his supporters. Maybe they are right. Maybe he isn’t guilty. But the “yuck factor” is overwhelming.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing. He asserts that the prosecution of his case is politically motivated and nothing more than a “witch hunt.” He has challenged the credibility, impartiality and fairness of the judge assigned to his trial and has sought repeatedly to delay the trial and disqualify the judge. None of that worked. So, he is now on trial and projects himself as a victim.
The charges against Trump relate to a $130,000 hush money payment made to Daniels by former Trump fixer Michael Cohen in the final days of the 2016 campaign. That payment, which Cohen said he made at Trump’s direction, was in exchange for Daniels agreeing not to tell her story of a sexual liaison with Trump. According to the charges, Trump reimbursed Cohen while he was president, and how he did so constituted criminal fraud.
The Daniels payment is not the only hush money payment prosecutors will likely highlight in their evidence against Trump. Although it is not part of their charges in the case, they have also accused Trump of orchestrating a broader scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election by directing his allies to purchase damaging stories about him, so that no one could publish them, and they would be kept hidden from the public. Each of the stories involves even more embarrassing allegations of misconduct by Trump.
The New York case is the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial. It could be the only one held before the November presidential election when Trump, the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, will face off, once again, against President Joe Biden for the privilege of serving as the next president of the United States.
We can expect daily updates of developments in the New York trial, complete with breathless reports about exactly how Trump comported himself both inside and outside the courtroom, as the presiding judge tries to impose behavioral discipline on a man who believes he may do and say whatever he wants, and does so, with the roaring approval of his adoring supporters.
Biden is wise to stay out of the fray. We can only process one ring of the circus at a time.
Let me, as one Trump’s adoring supporters, explain what the Exponent calls our approval of his actions. The prosecuting D.A. in this case, Alvin Bragg ran on getting Trump as part of his election campaign. He was joined in this scheme by Letitia James, the New York State D.A., in openly stating, before any crime was even suspected, that she too was determined to find something, anything which could be used to destroy Trump’s presidential aspirations. Since there was no evidence of any crime committed by the ex-president, Bragg illegally fused a statue of limitations expired misdemeanor with a federal election law violation, which a Manhattan D.A. has no jurisdiction over, into a weapon they could use to interfere with the 2024 presidential election.
This conclusion is shared by most of the respected legal minds in this country, including Alan Dershowitz, Andrew McCarthy who prosecuted the blind sheik, and Jonathan Turley, one of the most respected legal minds in the country.
Add on the timing of the trial, smack in the middle of election season and captained by a biased judge who has placed unconstitutional speech bans on Trump and what we have here is an attempt by the New York State political leaders to openly interfere in a presidential election by criminalizing politics. The purpose of this interference is to remove the Republican nominee from the election and by doing so severely damage the democratic election process by preventing the voters from choosing their president.
Calling this calumny, election interference doesn’t do justice to the damage being done here. This is an obvious attack on the core principles that our democracy is built upon. It’s not about liberals Trump derangement Syndrome, not about an incompetent, senile president refusing to give up his power, and it’s not about a major political party which has lost its moral compass.
.The real issue is whether this country can remain a constitutional democracy and a major player in the world when it loses the respect of it’s people.