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What the Trump trial circus is missing
On the first day of the first criminal trial of a former US president, I couldn’t resist. The courthouse is 15 minutes from my desk here in New York, so I jumped on the 6 Train and headed out to the scrum of protesters, counterprotesters, journalists, police, and other gawkers in Lafayette Park outside the courthouse.
There was lots – lots – of yelling. Just as I arrived, a guy in a “Gays for Trump, You got a problem with that, Bitch!” T-shirt was at the center of a smartphone scrum screaming at a woman holding a “Trump is the Definition of Depravity” sign that she was a “pedophile.”
Before long, content creators from both sides of the national divide were on the scene, livestreaming and shouting at each other about Hunter Biden, about inflation, about child labor, about immigration. Even Triumph the Comic Insult Dog barked into the mix, asking one of several Proud Boys stalking the scene in wraparound shades: “If Trump is convicted, do you think he’ll be sentenced to four years … in the White House?”
The only people not screaming, as I recall, were four elderly Chinese-American ladies in huge sunglasses, sitting on a bench under a leafless sweetgum tree, holding hand-painted signs that read: “Kangaroo Court, Banana Republic.”
It was, in all, the usual performative mayhem about the usual subjects. But the one thing that almost no one was actually yelling about was the thing that was going on inside the building 100 feet away: the trial itself.
All that circus, and hardly a word about the elephant in the ring.
But isn’t that how a lot of us talk about Trump’s trials and titillations these days? We argue about the politics rather than look at the merits. And that’s a bad thing.
For Trump, the political cage matches keep the focus right where he wants it: on the narrative that he, as a popular threat to a corrupt establishment, is the victim of a political witch hunt. That the ruling party is using the justice system to silence a political rival. That those ladies with the big sunglasses under the sweetgum tree are right.
On the other side, people talk about the long-coming legal downfall of a demagogue seen as a threat to the Republic itself. The Capone of politics nabbed on his own kind 0f tax rap.
“People know what verdict they want in this case,” says Richard Klein, a professor of law at Touro Law School and a longtime trial criminal defense lawyer. “But few people are focusing on DA Bragg’s case against Trump. They're focusing on all the noise around it.”
To review, briefly. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg alleges that Trump falsified business records to conceal a payment that was made, in the fall of 2016, to a porn star who says she and Trump had a fling.
“Hush money” is bad, but that’s not actually what the trial is about. Paying someone to keep quiet isn’t necessarily a crime, and fiddling with business records in New York isn’t a felony.
Bragg’s case elevates the charges by arguing that this book-cooking was done with the intention of committing other felonious infractions – including, it seems, a conspiracy to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and commit tax fraud.
To prove this intent, Bragg will bring various witnesses, including Trump’s former lawyer and fixer-in-chief Michael Cohen, who made the payments, as well their recipient, the actress known as “Stormy Daniels.”
Legal scholars like Klein say Bragg’s approach is something of a high-wire act. He is linking dozens of lower-level crimes – some of which Trump appears to have admitted publicly – to harder-to-prove felonious ones, and then asking a jury to decide that Trump did all of this to sway an upcoming election rather than, say, simply to save his marriage or protect his kids from scandal.
The key witnesses, moreover, aren’t exactly folks with an unblemished reputation for truthtelling. Cohen has already admitted to lying under oath previously.
How much does this matter? If Bragg fails to convince the jury, Trump will be vindicated – look, he’ll say, these kangaroo court prosecutors came at me and 12 very good people of New York saw through it. This will color the politics of the other three cases he faces.
If Trump is convicted, of course, it may not move the needle for the 35% of “you got a problem with that bitch!”Americans who are unwaveringly fanatically loyal to him.
But about half of Americans say if Trump is convicted he should not be president again. That includes 14% of Republicans and, perhaps more importantly, a third of independents who say a guilty verdict would sway their vote. In a tight election – and this one will be tight – that could certainly be the difference.
As I went to file this, news broke that the jury has been set for the trial. And so we’re off. I may not be able to resist heading down to Lafayette square for some good mayhem again in the coming weeks – but as a society it’s a mistake to let that political circus distract us from the real drama in the courtroom itself.
Trump's NYC hush-money trial: What to watch for
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
This is what we are watching in US Politics this week: Trump's trials.
Former President Trump faces or faced six civil or criminal actions against him in 2024, an election year. Two of which, civil finds that he was already found liable for. He's had to pay significant sums of money. Two of which, a case in Georgia and one in Florida, are very unlikely to start in this year, and one of which could start later this summer, this federal trial against Trump for election interference in Washington, DC. The final trial is set to begin next week. A trial in Manhattan for business records frauds related to hush money payments he made to a woman he was having an affair with before the 2016 election.
The key witness in this trial is Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney, who Trump's going to try to discredit the testimony of by saying, “He's a liar, he's out for publicity. But the evidence against Trump is pretty damning here. There's almost no, it sure looks like he committed this crime. However, the allegations will have to be proven in court. Trump could win this case and the jury could decide to throw out the corroborating evidence. There's a lot of ways this could still go in Trump's favor. And if it does, that will be a significant win for Trump, because a significant portion of the electorate is telling pollsters today that if Trump is found guilty of a crime before the election, they would be less likely to vote for him.
Trump support drops by about ten percentage points in a New York Times poll from earlier in the year, based on whether or not he's found guilty. And these are really high stakes, drama for Trump. One of the key political inoculates Trump has is that the trial could be over quickly. He also is going to make the case that this is a politically motivated witch hunt and that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA, is out to get him and stop him and undermine him because he's a Democrat. That message is certainly resonating with Republicans. The key question for Trump's election campaign is, “Does that message resonate with independents, or do they continue to see the criminal charges against Trump as being disqualifying?”
The trial starts next week. We'll find out what happens.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks at a joint press conference with South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup in Seoul, South Korea, 31 January 2023.
What We’re Watching: Pentagon leak fallout, Manhattan DA sues House Republicans, new source of tension in Ethiopia
The fog of leaks
Fallout continues from the leak of secret US documents related to the war in Ukraine. The leaked info suggests that Egypt, one of the world’s largest recipients of US military aid, planned to secretly supply Russia with tens of thousands of rockets for use in Ukraine and that the United Arab Emirates, also a key US ally, would help Russia work against US and UK intelligence. Egypt and the UAE say these reports are false.
Another document suggests that US eavesdropping on its ally South Korea indicated that aides to South Korea’s president had discussed sending artillery shells to the US or Poland for use by Ukraine, a move that would violate South Korea’s policy of refusing to export weapons to any country at war.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has claimed that “quite a few of the documents in question were fabricated,” but he isn’t saying what’s true and what isn’t. The world may never know who leaked these documents, why they were leaked, and which parts of them, if any, were entirely fabricated or partially altered. But the headaches for those who must now repair damaged international relationships are real, and the domestic political fallout for leaders of some of these countries, particularly South Korea, will continue.
Manhattan DA sues House Republicans
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Tuesday that he’s suing House Republicans for allegedly interfering in the criminal case against former President Donald Trump.
Bragg’s lawsuit is focused on the actions of Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. In the 50-page suit, Bragg accuses Jordan of “a transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” the district attorney as his office pursues criminal charges against the former president for allegedly breaking campaign finance laws by making a hush-money payment to a porn star.
House Republicans have demanded that Bragg’s office hand over documents and testimony related to the Trump case, insisting that the committee has oversight rights. Crucially, Jordan had issued a subpoena for Mark F. Pomerantz to deliver a closed-door deposition. Pomerantz is a former assistant DA who left his job last year after Bragg reportedly opposed a wider tax-and-insurance fraud prosecution of Trump, which Pomerantz favored.
Bragg has sued to block the subpoena saying it amounts to “an unconstitutional attempt to undermine an ongoing New York felony criminal prosecution and investigation.”
Whatever happens, as this case makes its way through the courts, Jordan will be delayed in getting his hands on the documents and testimony he is seeking.
Fresh unrest hits Ethiopia
For almost a week now, protests have raged in the Ethiopian region of Amhara over a federal government plan to absorb local security forces into the national army.
The tensions are only the latest example of how fragmented Africa’s second most populous country has become. It was just months ago that the government finally reached a peace deal with separatist militants from the region of Tigray, ending a gruesome civil war that had displaced millions.
In that conflict, as it happens, Amhara’s local forces fought alongside the government, pursuing long-standing grievances and territorial claims against their Tigrayan neighbors.
Now Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed wants to eliminate all regional forces of that kind. For Abiy, it’s necessary to strengthen national unity. He won’t back down, he says, even if a “price needs to be paid.” But the Amharas worry that without those forces, they’ll be vulnerable to fresh attacks from other ethnic groups or the federal government itself.
That puts Abiy in a familiar bind. Five years after popular protests swept him to power with a mandate to liberalize Ethiopia’s political system, he is still struggling to master the country’s ferocious ethnic and regional rivalries.