Alwaght- While in recent months Donald Trump stepped up attacks on the administration of Joe Biden in the inter-party competitions, these days with the indictment of the ex-president, the political and media focus is on implications of the court ruling on the next year presidential election.
Trump’s charges are unclear because the indictment is sealed until Tuesday’s trial, though Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could unveil it sooner.
Still one of Trump’s charges is paying money to cover up paying hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 election campaign. The case is just one of at least three criminal probes into Trump. Citing anonymous sources, CNN reported that Trump is facing more than 30 charges of business fraud. After setting the record of impeachment twice in one presidential term, Trump became the first American president to face trial.
Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles said that the former president was not expected to be handcuffed, but is likely to be fingerprinted under standard protocols when he appears in court on Tuesday for the reading of the grand jury indictment.
How has Trump reacted?
“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” Trump said in a statement after his indictment, adding: “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.”
Referring to the unprecedented nature of the indictment, Trump said that the hoaxes will finally take down President Joe Biden.
Trump also attacked the District attorney who is under support of prominent Democratic figures, saying that the ruling by Alvin Bragg who took his post with the will and backing of the billionaire and supporter of the Democratic Party George Soros was “scandalous”, and instead of fighting crimes in new York, he was “doing Biden’s dirty work.”
The former president also called the accusations against him “false” in another post on his social media platform, Truth Social, stating that it was not possible he would have a fair trial in New York.
What about Trump’s scandal?
Trump’s scandal first hit the White House in February 2017. In 2018, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen admitted violating election campaign financial laws and paying $130,000 and $150,000 in hush money to two women at Trump’s request to conceal the affairs with the president.
One of the two women was Stormy Daniels who told CBS News that she approved the deal because she was worried about her family’s security, including her small daughter.
In April 2018, the Wall Street Journal published Daniels’ remarks. Trump first called these claims false and said he was unaware of the hush money deal. But a month later, he admitted that he had paid Cohen a monthly amount that had nothing to do with his election campaign.
Cohen also agreed with Trump and then Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who is now in prison for tax fraud, on paying $50,000 to a company that published fake polls.
“Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign,” Cohen testified before Congress in 2019.
Trump supporters bracing for protests
Since the day Trump trial date was announced, a number of his supporters in various cities protested, especially outside his resort Mar-ag-Lago in Florida. In the meantime, Trump also asked his supporters to take to the streets in protest at the indictment.
The Trump call for protests caused police to predict challenging days ahead. During the storming of the Congress in 2020, the protestors seized the building, with the incident leading to death of several people.
Now, the police have started working closely with the federal authorities, the court and the security services to take Trump to court and also to deal with the possible demonstrations of his supporters. The New York Police Department said it will be ready for whatever happens.
As soon as the news of the indictment against Trump was announced, the NYPD increased the number of officers outsidof Trump Tower as well as the district court in Manhattan. Reports indicate that 35,000 police officers, including plainclothes officers, have been ordered to wear uniforms and prepare for deployment.
Unprecedented support for Trump by Republican leaders
Although it is clear to all that a majority of prominent leaders of the Republican Party are at loggerheads with Trump, they have recently thrown their full weight behind him as poll results show he is beating his main rival Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida.
“The unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage.... And it appears to millions of Americans to be nothing more than a political prosecution that’s driven by a prosecutor who literally ran for office on a pledge to indict the former president,” said Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence.
Also Senator Ted Cruz, a prominent Republican, said that the indictment served “weaponization” of the American justice system for Biden reelection. He had said that Trump arrest would only increase the popularity of the former president among his supporters.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a tweet: “The radical left has consistently weaponized our courts to silence conservative voices. The actions by the Soros-backed Democrat DA in NYC is the latest example of this abuse of power. I stand with President Trump.”
The strong-toned Republican criticism of the justice system has made Bragg respond to Jim Jordan, James Comer, and Brian Steele, the three heads of the Republic Committee of the House of Representatives who had written criticism to him. Rejecting that the indictment was politically motivated, Bragg urged the three to ask for calm instead of fueling the tensions concerning the ruling.
