Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Donald Trump is bracing for his most legally perilous week since he left the White House, with the Manhattan district attorney likely to bring criminal charges against him over his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as he huddled this weekend to strategize his legal and political responses.

The former US president has posted in all-caps on his Truth Social platform that he expected to be “ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK” and called for his supporters to engage in protests – an ominous echo of his tweets urging protests in the lead-up to the January 6 US Capitol attack.

Trump’s post was nothing more than guesswork about when Alvin Bragg might bring charges, sources close to Trump said, after he saw media reporting that the district attorney’s office had contacted the US secret service about security in the event of an indictment.

The grand jury in New York hearing evidence in the resurrected 2016 hush money case is now expected to hear from one more witness on Monday, making it unlikely that an arrest would come the following day because it could take additional hours to draft charging papers.

That witness is reportedly Robert J Costello who is appearing at the request of Trump’s legal team. Costello was once a legal adviser to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen but the two have since fallen out. Costello’s testimony is likely to be aimed at undermining Cohen’s.

But the frenzied posts from Trump reflected his deep panic and anxiety over the imminence and likelihood of criminal charges, the sources said, not least because he is powerless to stop the district attorney’s office from moving forward with a case that will take the US into new legal territory as Trump revs up his 2024 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump and his allies have suggested in recent days that an indictment in the hush money case could benefit him politically – the Republican base might see the years-old case as a genuine “witch-hunt” as he has claimed – but it is also true that Trump himself is deeply fearful of criminal charges.

Trump discussed the hush money case every day last week, and his advisers say they have run through various scenarios in the event of an indictment, including whether he would initially travel to New York for an arraignment, or appear remotely from his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Trump has expressed interest in appearing in person at the Manhattan criminal court, where he believes he can turn proceedings into a spectacle before a gaggle of reporters, sources said, and raised the prospect on Saturday afternoon as he travelled to Oklahoma for an NCAA wrestling championship.

But some members of his legal team have advised against making such an appearance in person, citing security issues among other concerns, and have suggested he allow them to negotiate an agreed-upon surrender date and a remote initial appearance when they are notified of charges.

Trump’s legal team has separately focused on a defense strategy. The outside counsel – Joe Tacopina and Susan Necheles – have reasoned that a hush money case centered on campaign finance violations could be weak after a similar prosecution against Democratic senator John Edwards failed in 2012.

If the indictment alleges the hush money violated campaign finance laws, the Trump lawyers are expected to argue that it fails the “irrespective test” – that Trump would have paid Daniels irrespective of the 2016 campaign to avoid the embarrassment because he was already a public figure.

Trump may face an uphill struggle with those arguments, given the fact that having “mixed motives” to protect himself personally and to protect his campaign could leave him liable, and the timing of the payments suggests there was an urgency to pay the money before the end of the 2016 campaign.

In response, the Trump legal team is expected to argue that because Daniels tried to sell her story about an affair with Trump in 2011, and she was told then to “leave Trump alone. Forget the story”, that proves her silence was desired long before Trump was running for president.

Trump’s lawyers recently made these arguments to the district attorney’s office when Necheles went in to urge Bragg to drop the case, the Guardian previously reported. But all signs indicate that Bragg will move ahead with the case all the same in an unprecedented indictment of a former US president – and one seeking to return to the Oval Office.

The investigation concerns $130,000 that Trump made to Daniels through his then lawyer Cohen in the final days of the 2016 campaign. Trump later reimbursed Cohen with $35,000 checks using his personal funds, and Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges involving the hush money.

The district attorney’s case is likely to focus on how Trump and the Trump Organization handled the reimbursements. According to court filings in the federal case, the Trump Organization falsely recorded the payments as legal expenses, referencing a legal retainer with Cohen that did not exist.

The district attorney’s office has had at least seven top Trump aides and advisers testify before the grand jury in recent weeks, including Cohen, who testified for around two hours on Wednesday – his second appearance – and every juror was said to have asked a question, suggesting an engaged grand jury.

That is a typical sign for prosecutors as they weigh potential charges, legal experts say, because it could indicate the grand jury found him to be a compelling witness – and a jury at an eventual trial might be similarly convinced.

I have been “woke” by this recent spate of hopeful news, BUT I don’t see him n leg irons yet. Wake me again when he is behind bars!

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Every decent American can agree that reporters should not be calling what Trump and Stormy had “an affair”.

Dems and the Folly of Micromanaging the Trump Spectacle

I’ve only gotten a couple negative replies to the post below about Alvin Bragg’s expected indictments of ex-President Trump. But those replies have had a wild intensity that started me thinking about what the possible disconnect was between me and these readers. What I said was that it’s not great. But it’s happening entirely outside any framework that any of us can do anything about. And, mostly, I don’t think it will matter much one way or another if, as I expect, it is followed by indictments for graver crimes. In fact, even if this is the only Trump indictment ever, I still don’t think it matters much.

People just see things differently of course. And intense disagreement is nothing new to me. But I think there’s something more going on here — or two things rather. And, because I think these few TPM Readers represent a lot more people who think the same way, here’s what I think those things are.

Some people think indictments of Donald Trump are a make-or-break thing for the future of the country. Among other things, they could be what blocks his path back to the White House in 2024. So getting it all arranged just right couldn’t be more important. But that’s misguided. Holding Trump accountable, especially for his actions surrounding January 6 and the events in Georgia, is very important. Judicial accountability is how a country speaks to itself about what is acceptable and what is not. But that means bringing indictments. We can’t control whether juries will find him guilty. And we certainly can’t control how the country at large will react to the prosecution of a former President.

The thing that is going to stop ex-President Trump from returning to the White House is voters refusing to vote for him. Indictments and prosecutions can play a role in that inasmuch as they are the society communicating to itself what is okay and what is not. The January 6 hearings played some of this role in the 2022 elections. But they operate that way only if there is an underlying belief in the population which charges underline and confirm. They can play a role in shaping public opinion but they are no replacement for an election. They are not a judicial deus ex machina which removes Trump from the scene. Expecting them to be is a big mistake. Judicial accountability for the past and an election about the future are two things that may influence each other. But they’re fundamentally two separate things running in parallel.

The other thing is something more fundamental about what you control and what you don’t. I see a lot of people who get very wound up about their people needing to get everything inflected and pitched just right not only so that no one gets the wrong impression but so that no bad people will claim you meant something you didn’t. If it’s a political campaign, which this isn’t, everybody needs to produce messages that are as clear and effective as possible. But there is a certain point where you have to recognize that you cannot control what everyone thinks or says or how they react.

Some of this tendency came out during Trump’s two impeachment trials. It was an inherently frustrating process since the de facto judge in the first trial, the GOP Senate majority, was absolutely committed to acquitting Trump no matter what. But the basic dynamic was the same in both trials. This prompted a wave of anger and second-guessing about the case brought by the House impeachment managers. (I confess to doing some myself.) If only they’d taken things to the next level, made a more piercing or overwhelming case, the outcome might have been different. Few people made this argument fully explicit. Because once seen in the cold light of day it was clear there was no argument, no new facts, no anything that would convince Republicans to convict Trump at trial. But even if few could defend the argument, lots of people felt it, and strongly.

At a certain point we all need to recognize which things we control and which we do not and frame our expectations and actions accordingly. That’s not settling or lowering expectations. It’s just a proper way to live in the world. The issue in the impeachment trials wasn’t how good the Democrats’ arguments were. It was Republicans’ absolute commitment to defending Trump no matter what. Once you realize this, it’s clarifying and even liberating. You understand what you’re actually trying to do. The contrary impulse led a lot of Democrats and a seemingly endless number of pundits to enthrall themselves in tales of Democrats’ fecklessness and impotence. Failure after failure! They can’t get the job done!

Recognizing what you control and what you don’t isn’t a matter of letting yourself off easy. It’s a way to remain sane and not demoralized or enervated by the hopeless folly of trying to control everything.

The importance of prosecuting Donald Trump isn’t any vain hope that it cuts short or removes the requirement of defeating him and anyone who would take his place at the ballot box. It’s rather that in our society, when people commit crimes they get prosecuted for it. While there may be a place for some forbearance for former Presidents, if a President can commit crimes of such a brazen and grave character with no response we are truly saying that Presidents have impunity and are above the law. And that is something we should not allow. It simply cannot be the case that Trump is such an habitual criminal that the political opposition is at fault or on the line for the fact that he might be prosecuted first for one of his lesser crimes. It’s too much to ask.

I think he's got a lot of common sense.

From our file on Sensible Advice for Reporters

Josh Marshall @joshtpm

Quote:

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Every decent American can agree that reporters should not be calling what Trump and Stormy had “an affair”.

As rumors swirl about what may be an upcoming indictment against former president Donald Trump from Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, Republican Party leaders are in a bit of a pickle.

For years now, they have gone along with—and some have fed—Trump’s insistence that the government is stacked against him and therefore against the right wing. Some have gone along out of conviction, undoubtedly, but others almost certainly were trying to keep the base voters without whom the Republicans cannot win an election.

Now, as it appears that some of the legal cases in which Trump is embroiled might be coming to the point of indictments, they are in a difficult position. Trump is blowing up his social media website with increasingly unhinged accusations and demanding that his supporters “take our nation back.” His language echoes that of the weeks before the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, during which Trump supporters tried to overturn the results of a presidential election. And few Republican leaders actually want to launch a war against the Manhattan district attorney's office.

So far, at least, Trump’s demands for his supporters to rally around him again have produced anemic results, suggesting his power is waning. When senior reporter for HuffPost Christopher Mathias reported from outside the Manhattan DA’s office, he found that the media there far outnumbered the protesters. “So many reporters here I just saw a reporter start interviewing someone but they turned out to be a reporter too,” he tweeted.

As a number of people have pointed out, Trump rallied his supporters in late 2020 around the idea that a key election had been stolen. His supporters are likely to find the idea that he must be protected over financial crimes committed in New York, possibly related to a sexual encounter with an adult film actress, less compelling.

And then there is the issue that those who turned out to support him in January 2021 found themselves on the hook for crimes, all on their own, without his help. Just today, a jury found four more people affiliated with the Oath Keepers guilty of conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an official from doing their duty, destruction of government property, and civil disorder. The jury found two others guilty of entering and remaining on restricted grounds. Meanwhile, Trump spent the day “truthing” on social media.

So, if Trump’s influence is waning and he is perhaps facing indictments—remember, there are a number of investigations outstanding, and for all that Trump is talking about an indictment about his hush-money payment, we do not know what any of them will turn up—what direction should Republicans who signed on with Trump now jump?

Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, and Ryan Lizza of Politico reported this morning that House leadership has gathered for their annual three-day retreat at a luxury resort in Orlando, Florida. Led by House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), far-right representatives were preparing to demand that members of the Manhattan district attorney’s office testify about any such indictment.

Indeed, this afternoon, the chairs of three House committees—Jordan, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY), and House Administration Committee chair Bryan Steil (R-WI)—sent a letter to Bragg criticizing his investigation as an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority,” even though there has been no announcement of any charges.

The chairs claim they want to know if federal money was used in the investigation, but Representative Daniel Goldman (D-NY) noted: “Defending Trump is not a legitimate legislative purpose for Congress to investigate a state district attorney. Congress has no jurisdiction to investigate the Manhattan DA, which receives no federal funding nor has any other federal nexus.”

Representative Glenn Ivey (D-MD), a former state’s attorney for Prince George’s County, went further, saying that he was “stunned” that the House Republicans were trying to obstruct a criminal investigation and intimidate an elected state law enforcement official.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says the chairs are just “asking questions.” He appears to be trying to prevent an attack on the legal system while also keeping his far-right extremists happy. He says that people should not protest if Trump is arrested, but also seems to be trying to keep his claim on Trump voters by claiming that Bragg’s investigation is politically motivated.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has his own problems with the whole situation. He wants Trump’s voters but does not want to be saddled with a scenario in which Trump tries to hole up at Mar-a-Lago to resist an indictment in New York. Today, DeSantis said he would not get involved in an extradition order, although Florida law allows him to intervene in a contested extradition.

His lack of support for the former president apparently outraged Trump, who promptly accused DeSantis of sexually assaulting a teenaged boy. The tension between the two Republican leaders has prompted speculation that Trump will fight extradition if only to force DeSantis to choose between alienating Trump’s supporters or kowtowing to the former president. Either would wound his presidential hopes, perhaps fatally.

Other Republicans are trying to deflect attention from the former president’s potentially criminal behavior and to focus instead on what they say is overreach by prosecutors. But when former vice president Mike Pence this weekend said he was “taken aback at the idea of indicting a former president of the United States,” former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele tweeted "Why the hell are you 'taken aback by the idea of indicting a former President' who has engaged in criminal behavior? Why continue to make excuses for Trump who would rather see you hanged & rancid behavior you decry in others?"

Other Republicans have apparently decided to stay out of this whole mess. It is notable that Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) voice is missing right now, as he recovers from his fall.

Meanwhile, the Fox News Corporation’s troubles over the defamation lawsuit against it by Dominion Voting Systems have just gotten worse. Fox News producer Abby Grossberg has sued the company in New York and Delaware, saying company lawyers tried to coerce her into giving misleading testimony in the lawsuit to set up her and FNC personality Maria Bartiromo to take the blame for the airing of Trump’s conspiracy theories against Dominion.

Regardless of how that lawsuit proceeds, Grossberg’s quite graphic account of the misogyny at the network will not help its profile right now.

And what is most astonishing about all of today’s sordid news is that, so far, nothing has happened. If and when it does, it’s going to be quite a ride.

What did happen today, though, is that the Biden administration issued the president’s economic report—which I will cover in more depth in the next few days—and that American aid worker Jeff Woodke, who was taken prisoner more than six years ago in Niger and held captive by a terrorist group, has been released. Secretary of State Blinken told reporters, “As you know, I have no higher priority or focus than bringing home any unjustly detained American, wherever that is in the world.” He thanked the government of Niger, Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens, and “all of those who have been working at the department” to get Woodke released.