Former President Donald Trump worked hard for this moment, and no one should be surprised that he was reported “relatively excited” en route to his arraignment in Manhattan on Tuesday, where he raised a fist to the crowd, just as Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley had done to elicit a reaction from January 6 seditionists.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of filing false company records in connection with “hush money” payments to two women to improve his electoral chances. What you think of the case against him almost probably hinges on whether you believe holding a former president accountable under the law is better for our democracy than not doing so.
If the fact that this man has been under investigation on and off since the 1970s indicates that this is all political, then incredibly foresighted of New York Democrats to not only see 50 years into the future but to begin going after him while he was one of their own.
Though Trump was cruelly denied the perp walk he had hoped for and the handcuffs that would have boosted his fundraising, his presidential campaign was at least cashing in on the indictment by selling tee-shirts with a bogus photograph of him.
Several members of the party that Donald Trump ate whole, drenched in ketchup, seven years ago showed up in New York to support him. According to one woman in the audience, for a former president to be indicted, “there needs to be a body.”
His ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, kicked off Holy Week by comparing a man charged with paying off a porn star to Jesus Christ: “Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today… Nelson Mandela was arrested, and served time in prison. Jesus — Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government.”
On the other hand, Greene didn’t have as much company on the streets today as she and her role model had wanted. Despite Trump’s most significant efforts to rally his fans, the “murder and destruction” he warned about has yet to materialize.
And no one has used a baseball bat to attack Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg since our former commander-in-chief posted a photo of himself holding a bat next to a photo of Bragg’s skull.
Despite Trump’s approval rating among Republicans having risen since his indictment, the long-term political ramifications are unknown, which is fine because they should also be immaterial.
After the arraignment, Bragg told reporters that prosecutors have a long history of trying similar cases in the financial center of the world. DAs in New York, he said, have “charged hundreds of felonies” for the falsification of business records. In fact, he said, that’s the “bread and butter” of his office’s white-collar work.
In Trump’s case, Bragg said, records were falsified “to cover up crimes relating to the 2016 election” and “hide damaging information from the voting public.”
The records were explicitly crafted to appear as if Trump was paying Michael Cohen for legal services when, in fact, he was reimbursing him for money spent to keep porn actress Stormy Daniels from revealing an affair she had with Trump shortly after his wife Melania gave birth to their son. He is also accused of plotting to prohibit a second lady from discussing their s*xual interaction.
This case has been compared to the prosecution of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who was charged with illegally spending campaign funds to pay a woman whose kid he had fathered while his wife, Elizabeth, was battling breast cancer, which finally killed her.
Edwards was not convicted, and Trump may not be, either. But no Democrat accused Edwards’ prosecutors of pursuing him for political reasons. (Also, no one compared him to Jesus.) And whatever the outcome of this case, neither politics nor power and privilege should ever have kept Trump or anybody else from being subject to the law.
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