Can the Donald Trump indictment be interpreted as a test of the American judiciary? An analysis involving the case of an ex-president charged with alleged mishandling of classified documents
That’s because the ex-president – the first to face criminal charges – also appears to face serious problems in a potentially more perilous case involving his alleged mishandling of secret documents being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith. Charges look like an increasing possibility as the Justice Department secures evidence about Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.
The stage where Donald Trump built his reputation as a mogul and popular culture figure is expected to be the site of his downfall after he turns himself in on Tuesday.
By the afternoon, Trump is expected to be brought to the courtroom, where the indictment will be unsealed and he will formally face the charges. Trump will be released on his own when he is charged. It’s not impossible that he could be in a position to decide on his travel.
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. Given Trump’s popularity with grassroots Republicans, his potential rivals may have no other move, but it would be premature to conclude that Trump’s legal problems will prove to be a long-term rallying point for GOP voters.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all of the cases. But once more, America’s political and legal systems, under a near-constant stress test since he came down the escalator in Trump Tower to launch his campaign in 2015, will be put under enormous pressure that is likely to only deepen the country’s internal estrangement.
Some legal experts, without having seen the still-sealed indictment, have questioned whether a case that appears to revolve around infringements of accounting practices and possible campaign finance violations is sufficiently serious to merit the historical step of indicting an ex-president who is already running again.
“I very much anticipate a motion to dismiss coming, because there’s no law that fits this,” Tacopina said, accusing Bragg, a local prosecutor, of overstepping his powers by seeking to charge a federal election crime. Trump may have been indicted for infringing laws in New York, but since the charges haven’t been made public, it is impossible to assess his claims. CNN reported last week that Trump will face more than 30 counts related to business fraud.
“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 made no public comment on the case since the indictment came down last Thursday.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer who went to prison for lying to Congress, may be a key witness in any trial of Trump.
The prosecution will not be affected by the public opinion of the New York case. Acting New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, who will preside over Trump’s arraignment, is immune to his political pressure. There is a chance that Trump’s attacks on prosecutors will backfire in a legal arena. And even a former president can’t disregard the choreography of a court case and rules of criminal procedure.
CNN has reported that Trump was caught off guard by the grand jury’s decision to indict him, according to a person who spoke directly with him. He was bracing for an indictment and then began to believe that there was a charge weeks away.
But former Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who announced his presidential campaign on Sunday, doubled down on his call for Trump to drop out of the race now that he is facing criminal charges.
In a statement on Thursday, Trump showed that he will respond to this brush with political fate in the same way he has lashed out at previous threats in his business and political career – with fury and by seeking to use his political power to stir up huge disruption and partisan anger.
“I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” he said. “The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong – will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
His approach means that this Tuesday is likely to be just the start of a new, dramatic and divisive chapter in Trump’s political career and another extreme test for America.
The expected voluntary surrender of a former president and 2024 White House candidate will be a unique affair in more ways than one – both for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the New York courthouse where he’ll be arraigned and for a nation watching to see how it’ll shake up the GOP presidential primary.
The former president has remained “surprisingly calm,” spending the weekend in Florida playing golf and mulling how to use it to boost his campaign, CNN reported Sunday night, after an indictment that caught him and his advisers “off guard.”
At times, he may be compelled to appear in court. The grueling pre-trial process, with its numerous legal argument deadlines and heaps of evidence the defense must sift through, will impose severe demands on a legal team that has often struggled to act coherently. When Trump made a last-minute shuffle of his legal team, he brought in another attorney to serve as his lead counsel, a move that some saw as sidelining another attorney. The ex-president’s camp pushed back on this interpretation, however.
The Secret Service will be on hand for most of the day. His arrest will be processed at the district attorney’s office. Sources told CNN that there are concerns that a mugshot could leak out, and that it is still unclear if a mugshot will be taken.
Ordinarily, a defendant who is released would walk out the front doors, but Secret Service will want to limit the time and space where Trump is in public. After the court hearing ends, Trump will need to go back into the public hallway and back to where his motorcade will be waiting.
CNN requested to have cameras in the courtroom on Tuesday but the lawyers for Trump argued against it. The media outlets argued that the case was of such public interest that it should be broadcast. The lawyers for the president told the judge that it would create a circus like atmosphere, raise unique security concerns, and be contrary to the presumption of innocence.
CNN has requested the unsealing of the indictment and permission to broadcast Trump’s appearance in the courtroom on Tuesday.
The news organizations are asking for a “limited number of photographers, videographers, and radio journalists to be present at the arraignment,” and said in the letter that they are making “this limited request for audio-visual coverage in order to ensure that the operations of the Court will not be disrupted in any way.”
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.
Merchan does not stand for disruptions or delays, attorneys who have appeared before him told CNN, and he’s known to maintain control of his courtroom even when his cases draw considerable attention.
Trump attorney Timothy Parlatore said during an interview Friday on CNN that Merchan was “not easy” on him when he tried a case before him but that he will likely be fair.
I 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.
Tacopina told CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday that the former president will plead not guilty. His team “will look at every potential issue that we will be able to challenge, and we will challenge,” Tacopina said.
The charges, which are expected to remain under seal until Trump’s arraignment Tuesday, relate to his alleged role in covering up hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s legal team isn’t considering asking to move the case from NYC to another city. He told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that there has been no discussion of that. “It’s way too premature to start worrying about venue changes until we really see the indictment and grapple with the legal issues.”
According to sources close to Trump, his political advisers over the weekend discussed how to best campaign against the indictment they are portraying 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 it has raised more than $5 million since he was indicted.
Bragg has been attacked by many of Trump’s allies, opponents and likely opponents before and after the indictment.
Donald Trump, aka Michael Cohen, was convicted of a Class-A-felony in the First Court: He’s Going to The Courthouse
“The office is more important than any individual person. Hutchinson toldABC News that he thinks it is too much of a sideshow for the office of the presidency. He needs to concentrate on the task at hand.
Daniels gave testimony to the grand jury about her relationship with Trump, as well as his personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Ultimately, more than half of the jurors were convinced there was reasonable cause to believe that Trump committed a crime, resulting in his indictment Thursday.
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 supposed to be different!”
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.
Then, defendants go before a judge to hear the charges against them. Defendants can enter a plea, most often “not guilty,” at this stage in the criminal process.
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Logistical challenges will be posed by his status as a former president. He has a lot of people working for him, including a Secret Service detail. Protests are likely. There will be attention from the media. The workings of a busy state court office will also have that happening.
“There’s a lot of external factors that just don’t happen for 99.99% of the cases we have,” said former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance in an NPR interview on Sunday. It will be a challenge for law enforcement, the court officers, investigators, and everyone else to make sure things go 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.
She said that there are plenty of hurdles to get through first and that the potential charges against him and penalties they would carry are “way, way down the line.”
There are a lot of procedural protections to make sure that the question is fairly decided.
Key to a trial will be the strength of the evidence presented by prosecutors, legal experts said. Michael Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina, said that one factor will be the jury.
The decision will be made by 12 people, not by public opinion, according to Gerhardt. “Mr. Trump’s lawyers will be there every step of the way, and they’ll have to make sure that the jury is fairly chosen and that the jury does its job.”
“If I had to pick which side to be on, and I had to win to save my life, I would probably choose to be on the prosecution’s side simply because the jury pool in Manhattan is so incredibly against Donald Trump,” he said in an interview with NPR.
Most similar cases would probably take a year to get to trial, Galluzzo says. 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
The Newsroom: Covering Trump in the Presence of Anomalous External Sensitive Sentiment and Ruling Out a Presidential Candidate
He adds that they are not going to make him an offer that he would accept. The public stage is probably what he wants it to be to play the victim, to have an audience.
The extraordinary moment will give newsrooms a number of coverage questions and test how they have adapted to reporting on Trump after he left office in disgrace.
The newsletter was home to the first version of this article. The evolving media landscape is chronicled in the daily digest.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/03/media/trump-coverage-reliable-sources/index.html
The State of the Art in Defending the Ex-President: The Indictment against Trump on the Kremlin Insights into the Russia Investigation
► 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 don’t repeat the lies. If you must repeat the lie be sure to say it wasn’t a lie. He should not use his campaign’s framing. Don’t let him be your assignment editor. Trump is a candidate and also likely a defendant, treat him like every other candidate and defendant. 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.”
Don’t be deceived by the Trump world. Trump is currently spiraling over this indictment but he and his team will do everything in their power to try to harness the narrative and frame it as a win for him. Being indicted is never a good thing nor is it helpful to the candidate in a general election.
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.
CNN reported Monday that Smith’s prosecutors were focusing on what happened to classified records around Mar-a-Lago and if anyone witnessed the former president with them. There are new details and there are signs that the Justice Department is finished with an investigation.
While Trump’s comments will signal how he intends to fight the charges against him in the political arena, the former president is also 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 hasn’t been charged in any of the other cases, but a multi-front defense in multiple cases would represent an extraordinary storm. And it would further disrupt the ex-president’s capacity to dictate his political schedule and control his destiny. When he was under scrutiny in the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, or during his two impeachments, Trump exploited his huge popularity with Republican voters to discredit accusations 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.
When the will of voters prevailed in the 2020 election, it was because Trump attempts to have votes thrown out were foundered in multiple courts because of the fact-based standards of evidence.
The Associated Press Reveals that the Media Circus is not a Clue to the Future of Trump’s Powers and Roles
In a late-night ruling, Merchan turned down the request for broadcast cameras. Five still photographers will be allowed to take pictures of Trump and the courtroom before the hearing begins, however.
If anyone can thrive in a media circus, it is Trump. The difference, perhaps, in this case is that he fears being part of a media circus that he can no longer control.