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Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative March 2023 news and viewsNote: Excerpts are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes" such as this.
March 30
New York Times, Live Updates: GRAND JURY VOTES TO INDICT TRUMP
New York Times, Live Updates: GRAND JURY VOTES TO INDICT TRUMP, Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich and William K. Rashbaum, March 30, 2023. Unprecedented Case Will Have Wide-Ranging Implications. A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald Trump for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to five people with knowledge of the matter; The development will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark Mr. Trump as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.
Former President Trump faces varied legal and political threats, including an escalating New York criminal investigation into purported campaign finance crimes involving payments in 2016 to hide his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, shown above left on the cover of her memoir "Full Disclosure."
A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to five people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.
An indictment will likely be announced in the coming days. By then, prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, left, will have asked Mr. Trump to surrender and to face arraignment on charges that remain unknown for now.Mr. Trump has for decades avoided criminal charges despite persistent scrutiny and repeated investigations, creating an aura of legal invincibility that the vote to indict now threatens to puncture.
His actions surrounding his 2020 electoral defeat are now the focus of a separate federal investigation, and a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.
But unlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House, this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Mr. Trump’s presidency. The reality star turned presidential candidate who shocked the political establishment by winning the White House now faces a reckoning for a hush money payment that buried a sex scandal in the final days of the 2016 campaign.
On Thursday, the three lead prosecutors on the Trump investigation walked into the building where the grand jury was sitting in the minutes before the panel was scheduled to meet at 2 p.m. One of them carried a copy of the penal law — with Post-it notes visible — which was likely used to read the criminal statutes to the grand jurors before they voted. About three hours later, the prosecutors walked into the court clerk’s office through a back door to begin the process of filing the indictment.
Mr. Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing and attacked Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, accusing him of leading a politically motivated prosecution. He has also denied any affair with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had been looking to sell her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump during the campaign.
Here’s what else you need to know:
Mr. Bragg and his lawyers will likely attempt to negotiate Mr. Trump’s surrender. If he agrees, it will raise the prospect of a former president, with the Secret Service in tow, being photographed and fingerprinted in the bowels of a New York State courthouse.
The prosecution’s star witness is Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who paid the $130,000 to keep Ms. Daniels quiet. Mr. Cohen has said that Mr. Trump directed him to buy Ms. Daniels’s silence, and that Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization, helped cover the whole thing up. The company’s internal records falsely identified the reimbursements as legal expenses, which helped conceal the purpose of the payments.
Although the specific charges remain unknown, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors have zeroed in on that hush money payment and the false records created by Mr. Trump’s company. A conviction is not a sure thing: An attempt to combine a charge relating to the false records with an election violation relating to the payment to Ms. Daniels would be based on a legal theory that has yet to be evaluated by judges, raising the possibility that a court could throw out or limit the charges.
The vote to indict, the product of a nearly five-year investigation, kicks off a new and volatile phase in Mr. Trump’s post-presidential life as he makes a third run for the White House. And it could throw the race for the Republican nomination — which he leads in most polls — into uncharted territory.
Mr. Bragg is the first prosecutor to lead an indictment of Mr. Trump. He is now likely to become a national figure enduring a harsh political spotlight.
HuffPost, Trump Denies Wrongdoing In Statement On Grand Jury Indictment, Sara Boboltz, March 30, 2023. The former president called himself a "completely
innocent person" after news broke that he was being criminally charged — or, in his words, "INDICATED."Former President Donald Trump reacted angrily on Thursday to news that he had been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on unknown charges linked to a hush money payment made to an adult film actor. The 2024 candidate is now the first U.S. president in history to be criminally charged.
“These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, seemingly misspelling “indicted.”
AdvertisementHe went on: “THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. IT IS LIKEWISE A CONTINUING ATTACK ON OUR ONCE FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. THE USA IS NOW A THIRD WORLD NATION, A NATION IN SERIOUS DECLINE. SO SAD!”
Trump also released a more even-keeled statement minutes prior, calling the development “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”
“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,” his statement read.
It concluded: “I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on [President] Joe Biden. 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 [Manhattan District Attorney] 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!”
Palmer Report, Opinion: Michael Cohen reacts to the news that Donald Trump has been criminally indicted in Manhattan, Bill Palmer, right, March 30, 2023 (6:07 p.m.).
Moments ago the news broke that a Manhattan grand jury has voted to criminally indict Donald Trump on at least one felony charge. Even as we all attempt to put this into perspective, key witness Michael Cohen, above left, called in to MSNBC and shared some thoughts.
Cohen can be very direct when he thinks it’s needed. But on this occasion Cohen was mostly reserved, declining to state whether or not he knows what the specific charges are, and saying that “It’s better for the indictment to speak for itself.”Cohen did add that “Accountability matters” and that he stands by his grand jury testimony. Given that the Manhattan DA went ahead and asked the grand jury to indict, it gives vindication to the credulity of Cohen’s testimony.
Cohen added that “I always believed that this day was going to come.” He also added this: “I wish that people would have taken a few moments and not jumped the gun the way that we’ve been watching the media, many of the talking heads worrying about what’s happening a month from now.”
In any case, the contrast is now fascinating. Donald Trump has been criminally indicted and is now going to be placed under arrest, arraigned in front of a judge, and tried in front of a jury. Meanwhile Michael Cohen is now a respected public figure and a two-time bestselling author.
- Washington Post, Analysis: Trump is indicted in N.Y. Here’s what it means and what happens next, Perry Stein
- Wall Street Journal, Indictment Could Boost GOP Primary Bid but Hurt a Rematch With Bide
- Washington Post, Analysis: Trump indictment follows 50 years of investigation on many fronts, Marc Fisher
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