The case(s) against Trump: New York charges only beginning of legal woes posted at 20:21:08 UTC via theguardian.com
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It was the day that Donald Trump got mugged by reality. After years of dodging legal accountability, the former US president found himself being driven towards a New York courtroom where he would be charged with a crime.
“WOW, they are going to ARREST ME,” he wrote on his Truth Social media platform, the true scale of his predicament finally dawning on him. “Can’t believe this is happening in America.”
But dramatic as the day was, as Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records relating to hush money payments, it represented only the first drop of rain in what could be a legal thunderstorm. Several more cases are fast approaching and some are potentially far more devastating.
Whereas the ex-president has so far been able to spin the hush money indictment to his political advantage as he seeks to win back the White House in 2024, experts suggest that the quantity and gravity of the upcoming investigations could ultimately bury him and his electoral chances.
Tuesday’s court appearance, in which Trump – the first former US president in history to be arrested and arraigned on criminal charges – had to answer meekly to a judge and found there was no one to hold doors open for him, was the humbling and sobering moment that he discovered his legal troubles are no longer theoretical.
Michael D’Antonio, a political commentator and author of The Truth About Trump, said: “His attitude prior to this has always been obstinance and a chin-jutting pride and refusal to appear to be affected. But he sure appeared to be affected this time. There was a quality of a cow being led to the slaughter.”
He added: “He must realise that he’s in trouble and that the situation is grave and that showed on his face. He doesn’t care as much about the proceedings politically as he cares about the story that he can tell about them. He is a storyteller above all and a fabulist. If he can tell a story that motivates his base and also manage to stay out of prison, he will argue that it’s a victory over a corrupt system.”
Trump himself will not be in jeopardy when Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News goes to trial, currently scheduled for 17 April. But the case, which could hear testimony from the Fox Corporation executives Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and an array of Fox News hosts, could provide some deeply embarrassing details about how the ex-president is perceived by the network.
Then, on 25 April, a civil trial in a New York lawsuit involving Trump is scheduled to begin. E Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, accuses Trump of defaming her by denying he raped her in New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996. Carroll is seeking monetary damages and it is not known whether Trump will testify.
Another important trial is set for 2 October. Letitia James, the New York attorney general, is suing Trump and his Trump Organization for fraud. James has said her office found more than 200 examples of misleading asset valuations between 2011 and 2021, and that Trump inflated his net worth by billions of dollars.
James said the scheme was intended to help Trump obtain lower interest rates on loans and better insurance coverage. The civil lawsuit seeks to permanently bar Trump and three of his adult children from running companies in New York state, and recoup at least $250m obtained through fraud.
Before then, there may have been developments in Georgia, where a prosecutor is investigating Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in that state. Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who will ultimately decide whether to pursue charges, told a judge in January that a special grand jury had completed its work and that decisions were “imminent”.
Trump arrives at the courtroom at the Manhattan criminal court in New York. Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty ImagesIf convicted, Trump would not be able to seek clemency from a future Republican president since such pardons do not apply to state offences. Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said: “The most perilous is probably the case out of Georgia because it relates to election interference and because there is no ability for Trump, if he becomes president again, to pardon himself.
“We know the grand jury foreperson said that they were recommending indictments of more than a dozen people and she strongly hinted one of those people was Trump. That one might pose the most danger to him at the moment.”
Meanwhile the justice department has investigations under way into both Trump’s actions in the 2020 election, including lies that led to the January 6 insurrection, and his retention of highly classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021. Both are overseen by Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor and political independent.
When he returned to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Tuesday night and hurled abuse at the investigators one by one, Trump devoted the lion’s share of his comments – and patent falsehoods – to the classified documents case, implying that he recognises it as posing the maximum danger.
The FBI seized 13,000 documents from Mar-a-Lago last August; about 100 documents were marked classified and some were designated top secret. Earlier this week the Washington Post newspaper reported that investigators have fresh evidence pointing to possible obstruction of justice by the former president as he resisted a subpoena demanding the return of all classified documents.
As for the charges over hush money payments during the 2016 election campaign, Trump is expected back in court in New York on 4 December – about two months before the official start of the 2024 Republican presidential primary calendar.
It’s extraordinary. Outside of the mafia, it’s hard to find any American with such legal problemsAllan Lichtman
Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “The moment he set foot into official custody in New York probably was a chilling realisation for him of the difficulties that lie ahead, and not just in this case, although it’s serious.
“It’s that feeling of the walls closing in from every direction. He’s got a lot of serious problems on his hands. Even in a Republican primary, the compound of all of these challenges will be very deleterious because Republican primary voters are going to ask: can he win?”
Asked if the 45th president could end up in prison, Eisen, author of Overcoming Trumpery: How to Restore Ethics, the Rule of Law, and Democracy, replied yes. “It won’t be easy, it may not be fast but it’s certainly possible,” he said.
Beneath the cries of a witch-hunt by Democrats and the “deep state”, and despite a bounce in primary polls as Republicans rally in his defence, Trump, 76, may no longer be sleeping easy at Mar-a-Lago. Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, commented: “He looked like a man with pins sticking into his torso. He is scared stiff.
“Sure, he’s going to bluster and express bravado and confidence, but he is terrified of being confined. No doubt about that. This is the beginning of the first day of the rest of his life. The issues are just going to pile on. It’s extraordinary. Outside of the mafia, it’s hard to find any American with such legal problems.”
WASHINGTON — The shadow that former President Donald Trump casts across Washington and the rest of the country grew a little longer with the unveiling of the criminal indictment by the Manhattan district attorney last Tuesday.
During President Joe Biden’s first two years in office, Trump lost his dominant place on the national stage, but as the first former president to be arrested and arraigned for a crime, he stands poised to reclaim the spotlight as he runs for a second term in the White House.
Trump’s presence not only will be felt in the political arena as he seeks to outrun Republican rival Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, but it will also reverberate in the U.S. Capitol, where his support from his base will ensure he keeps his hold on House Republicans.
“Sex, hush money, adult film star, Trump and the National Enquirer — how can America resist?” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at The Third Way, a moderate Democratic policy group in Washington, D.C.
“Of all the criminal cases against Trump, this one is considered the least likely to succeed legally. But it’s the easiest to understand and hardest to turn away from,” Kessler told Newsday. “I don’t think Trump has a choice when it comes to the spotlight because he craves it and it craves him.”
Or as George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley put it on Fox News: “It's a curious thing … to lead with this case because the chaos that is erupting is pretty much the element for Donald Trump. It's like trying to kill an orca by throwing him in the water.”
Yet the water could get choppy if Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis files charges against him in Georgia for election tampering or Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith indicts him for taking classified documents or for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.
And analysts said leading up to the 2024 election, Trump could be as unpredictable as he has been in the past, creating problems for negotiations over the debt ceiling and the federal budget, and possibly hampering Republicans’ attempts to retake the Senate and increase the party's majority in the House.
Political analysts say they are keeping a close watch on the polls following the spectacle of Trump’s motorcade arrival and departure at Manhattan criminal court. He sat, unsmiling, as he appeared before Judge Juan Merchan to plead not guilty to 34 criminal counts.
One of the most recently published polls, by Yahoo/YouGov, after the filing of the sealed indictment on March 30, found Americans split almost evenly over whether the criminal charges against Trump would make him a stronger or weaker candidate for president.
Predictably, twice as many Democrats as Republicans said it would weaken him, and three times as many Republicans as Democrats said it would make him stronger. Independents split evenly on the question.
Since leaving office, Trump has had an approval rating of between 39% and 44%, according to polling averages calculated by FiveThirtyEight, the statistical analysis publication. That is about the same as Biden’s approval rating for the past year, those averages show.
In the week since the filing of the sealed indictment, however, Trump’s lead over DeSantis has grown from about 46% to 51%, while DeSantis has fallen from 29% to 25%, according to polling averages compiled by the right-leaning Real Clear Politics website.
Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump on business record violations for hush money payoffs to an adult film star as well as a Playboy model has stirred considerable debate about whether it will boost or bust Trump’s bid for a second term.
Democrats should not underestimate Trump, Kessler warned. “He will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. There’s no politician in my lifetime who has been able to turn bad press into more votes,” he said.
“No question many Republicans, even his opponents, are rallying around him right now,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political science professor. “But what happens if there are further indictments about more serious matters such as trying to overturn the election and his unlawful holding of federal documents?”
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others have grumbled about the unorthodox candidates backed by Trump who lost last year, allowing Democrats to continue to control the Senate and producing a narrow five-vote majority for House Republicans.
“The success Democrats had in the 2022 midterms reminds us that the more Trump dominates the headlines, the more voters want an alternative,” said Steve Israel, the former Long Island Democratic congressman who ran his party’s national House campaign committee.
“There are 18 House Republicans in districts won by President Biden. Those members do not want Trump on center stage. They want him behind the curtain,” said Israel, director of The Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University.
Peter King, a former Republican representative from Seaford, said Trump might be wearing out his welcome.
“Right now. I would say that he definitely is riding high,” King told Newsday. “But a year is a long time and it's possible that Republican voters may start getting tired if it's like endless summonses coming from New York and then Georgia and then Washington.”
King added, “It can start to wear people out. They may be saying, ‘Do we really want to go through all this again?’ ”
Trump’s move back to center stage also could cloud pending negotiations between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Biden over the looming debt ceiling deadline and a compromise deal on a spending bill to keep the government open.
“Kevin's in a tough spot,” King said.
No matter how good the deal McCarthy can work out with Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), King said, it will not satisfy Trump’s supporters in the House.
“Trump’s biggest effect on the congressional GOP is to divide it internally even more deeply,” said Frances Lee, a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. “Trump makes it hard for Republicans to stand pat on their party’s old fiscal orthodoxies.”
Trump has never expressed much concern about federal deficits, for example, even though many House Republicans are deeply concerned.
Fiscally conservative Republicans are calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, but Trump has warned them to leave those social service programs untouched.
“Trump’s stance against tackling entitlement spending is a factor behind the inability of the House GOP to reach agreement on a budget this spring,” Lee said.
Ultimately, Trump will be operating in uncharted territory.
“There is no point combing history books to find a precedent for an indictment of a former president seeking a comeback,” Cook wrote. “It’s never happened before. Then again, there has never been a precedent for just about anything Donald Trump has said or done.”
WASHINGTON — The shadow that former President Donald Trump casts across Washington and the rest of the country grew a little longer with the unveiling of the criminal indictment by the Manhattan district attorney last Tuesday.
During President Joe Biden’s first two years in office, Trump lost his dominant place on the national stage, but as the first former president to be arrested and arraigned for a crime, he stands poised to reclaim the spotlight as he runs for a second term in the White House.
Trump’s presence not only will be felt in the political arena as he seeks to outrun Republican rival Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, but it will also reverberate in the U.S. Capitol, where his support from his base will ensure he keeps his hold on House Republicans.
“Sex, hush money, adult film star, Trump and the National Enquirer — how can America resist?” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at The Third Way, a moderate Democratic policy group in Washington, D.C.
WHAT TO KNOW
- The shadow former President Donald Trump casts across the nation grew longer with the unveiling of the criminal indictment against him last Tuesday.
- As the first former president to be arrested and arraigned for a crime, Trump stands poised to reclaim the spotlight as he runs for a second term in the White House.
- Trump’s presence will be felt in the political arena as he seeks to outrun Republican rival Ron DeSantis, and in the U.S. Capitol, where he is expected to keep his hold on the House GOP.
“Of all the criminal cases against Trump, this one is considered the least likely to succeed legally. But it’s the easiest to understand and hardest to turn away from,” Kessler told Newsday. “I don’t think Trump has a choice when it comes to the spotlight because he craves it and it craves him.”
Or as George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley put it on Fox News: “It's a curious thing … to lead with this case because the chaos that is erupting is pretty much the element for Donald Trump. It's like trying to kill an orca by throwing him in the water.”
Yet the water could get choppy if Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis files charges against him in Georgia for election tampering or Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith indicts him for taking classified documents or for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.
And analysts said leading up to the 2024 election, Trump could be as unpredictable as he has been in the past, creating problems for negotiations over the debt ceiling and the federal budget, and possibly hampering Republicans’ attempts to retake the Senate and increase the party's majority in the House.
Poll watching
Political analysts say they are keeping a close watch on the polls following the spectacle of Trump’s motorcade arrival and departure at Manhattan criminal court. He sat, unsmiling, as he appeared before Judge Juan Merchan to plead not guilty to 34 criminal counts.
One of the most recently published polls, by Yahoo/YouGov, after the filing of the sealed indictment on March 30, found Americans split almost evenly over whether the criminal charges against Trump would make him a stronger or weaker candidate for president.
Predictably, twice as many Democrats as Republicans said it would weaken him, and three times as many Republicans as Democrats said it would make him stronger. Independents split evenly on the question.
Since leaving office, Trump has had an approval rating of between 39% and 44%, according to polling averages calculated by FiveThirtyEight, the statistical analysis publication. That is about the same as Biden’s approval rating for the past year, those averages show.
In the week since the filing of the sealed indictment, however, Trump’s lead over DeSantis has grown from about 46% to 51%, while DeSantis has fallen from 29% to 25%, according to polling averages compiled by the right-leaning Real Clear Politics website.
Pundits ponder
Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump on business record violations for hush money payoffs to an adult film star as well as a Playboy model has stirred considerable debate about whether it will boost or bust Trump’s bid for a second term.
Democrats should not underestimate Trump, Kessler warned. “He will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. There’s no politician in my lifetime who has been able to turn bad press into more votes,” he said.
“No question many Republicans, even his opponents, are rallying around him right now,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political science professor. “But what happens if there are further indictments about more serious matters such as trying to overturn the election and his unlawful holding of federal documents?”
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others have grumbled about the unorthodox candidates backed by Trump who lost last year, allowing Democrats to continue to control the Senate and producing a narrow five-vote majority for House Republicans.
“The success Democrats had in the 2022 midterms reminds us that the more Trump dominates the headlines, the more voters want an alternative,” said Steve Israel, the former Long Island Democratic congressman who ran his party’s national House campaign committee.
“There are 18 House Republicans in districts won by President Biden. Those members do not want Trump on center stage. They want him behind the curtain,” said Israel, director of The Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University.
Peter King, a former Republican representative from Seaford, said Trump might be wearing out his welcome.
“Right now. I would say that he definitely is riding high,” King told Newsday. “But a year is a long time and it's possible that Republican voters may start getting tired if it's like endless summonses coming from New York and then Georgia and then Washington.”
King added, “It can start to wear people out. They may be saying, ‘Do we really want to go through all this again?’ ”
Disruptive force
Trump’s move back to center stage also could cloud pending negotiations between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Biden over the looming debt ceiling deadline and a compromise deal on a spending bill to keep the government open.
“Kevin's in a tough spot,” King said.
No matter how good the deal McCarthy can work out with Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), King said, it will not satisfy Trump’s supporters in the House.
“Trump’s biggest effect on the congressional GOP is to divide it internally even more deeply,” said Frances Lee, a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. “Trump makes it hard for Republicans to stand pat on their party’s old fiscal orthodoxies.”
Trump has never expressed much concern about federal deficits, for example, even though many House Republicans are deeply concerned.
Fiscally conservative Republicans are calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, but Trump has warned them to leave those social service programs untouched.
“Trump’s stance against tackling entitlement spending is a factor behind the inability of the House GOP to reach agreement on a budget this spring,” Lee said.
Ultimately, Trump will be operating in uncharted territory.
“There is no point combing history books to find a precedent for an indictment of a former president seeking a comeback,” Cook wrote. “It’s never happened before. Then again, there has never been a precedent for just about anything Donald Trump has said or done.”
Snapshot of video investigation by Ukrainska Pravda
The head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP), Metropolitan Onufriy (Orest Berezovsky), and over 20 other hierarchs of this religious organization have Russian citizenship, according to an investigation by Ukrainska Pravda published on Friday, April 7. UPDATE: Metropolitan Onufriy has responded to the accusations, explaining how he had come to hold Russian citizenship.
The revelation of double citizenship, which is illegal in Ukraine, comes amid increasing pressure on the Moscow-backed church amid accusations that it is aiding Russia’s invasion by spreading “Russian world” ideology and failing to condemn clergy collaborating with Russians on occupied Ukrainian territories. The UOC MP, which is subjugated to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), had claimed to break ties with Moscow in May 2022, but in fact preserved its legal status as a part of the ROC.
Citing the Rospasport database, the journalists claim that Onufriy received a Russian passport in Moscow on 20 March 2002; the following year, he received a foreign passport of a Russian citizen. It was not his first, as he was already issued one in 1998, meaning he held Russian citizenship much earlier than 2002.
In addition, according to the investigation by Ukrainska Pravda, over 20 other priests of the UOC MP also hold Russian passports, including Bishop of Makariv Hedeon (Yuriy Kharon), an UOC MP archbishop and abbot of the Desyatynny Monastery in Kyiv. Moreover, the investigation claims that in January 2023, almost a year after the full-scale invasion of the Russian army into Ukraine, Kharon conducted a service in Kazan, Russia, where he “prayed for the support of the Russian troops and the Russian attack on Ukraine.”
The authors of the investigation also claim that in December 2022, the former Metropolitan of Izium and Kupiansk Yelysei (Oleg Ivanov), who cooperated with the occupiers during their invasion and fled to Belgorod after the de-occupation of Izium, received a Russian passport.
According to the investigation, additionally, the following UOC-MP clerics hold Russian passports:
- Metropolitan Ionofan (Anatoliy Yeletskikh) of Tulchyn and Bratslav;
- Bishop Serhiy (Serhiy Anitsoy), vicar of the Tulchyn eparchy and bishop of Ladizhyn;
- Archbishop Panteleimon (Victor Bashchuk), vicar of the Kyiv eparchy;
- Metropolitan Meletiy (Valentin Yegorenko), governing the Chernivtsi-Bukovyna eparchy;
- Metropolitan Mark (Mykola Petrovtsiy), governing the Khust eparchy;
- and Metropolitan Iryney (Ivan Seredniy), governing the Dnipro eparchy.
Ukrainska Pravda promises to publish the rest of the names soon.
Ukrainska Pravda did not specify where it received the database, but leaked Russian databases available online have been widely used before by investigative journalists, particularly from Bellingcat.
UOC MP denies accusations
The UOC MP has called the investigation “inaccurate and manipulative.”
“Some of the bishops mentioned in the video were deprived of their citizenship without any justification, and therefore they filed a lawsuit to restore their Ukrainian citizenship, as they do not have any other citizenship,” the statement said.
The Moscow Patriarchate said that since the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) repeatedly stated that it checked all UOC MP bishops for dual citizenship and has not revoked Ukrainian citizenship from the hierarchs mentioned by Ukrainska Pravda, “the information presented in the video cannot correspond to reality.”
The UOC MP claimed that Metropolitan Onufriy is a citizen of Ukraine from birth and does not hold citizenship of other countries.
UPDATE: Metropolitan Onufriy responded to the accusations, explaining that he received Russian citizenship because he studied in the Moscow Spiritual Academy, one of the three Christian education institutions that were permitted during the atheistic USSR after the Ukrainian Odesa Spiritual Academy rejected him as a student. In 1971, he became a monk of the St. Trinity-Sergiy Lavra in Moscow, where he was registered and lived until 1988 and inherited Russian citizenship when the USSR fell apart. The Russian citizenship was extended by default, but nobody cared about that in the period of “good brotherly relations” between Ukraine and Russia, and neither did he. He wanted to live until the end of his life in the Moscow monastery because of the godly people he encountered there, “and citizenship open up the opportunity for me to realize that dream,” but the bad relations between Russia and Ukraine, the dissolution of the CIS, and war of Russia against Ukraine killed that dream.
“Now I do not consider myself any other citizen except for my native land – Ukraine… I do not have a Russian passport,” Onufriy added.
Ukraine cracks down on the Moscow Patriarchate
During 2022, the SBU conducted more than 40 “counterintelligence and security measures” within the UOC MP. As a result, more than 60 criminal cases were initiated against UOC MP clergy who sided with the enemy, and courts have already handed down a number of verdicts against individual clerics. According to the SBU, two of them were exchanged for Ukrainian servicemen.
In addition, based on the materials of the security service, sanctions were imposed against 17 UOC MP officials, and nearly 250 Russian Orthodox Church clerics were banned from entering Ukraine. Ukraine also revoked the Ukrainian citizenship of 19 UOC MP priests who were found to have Russian citizenship, and initiated the forced return to their country of origin of two church clerics who were Russian citizens.
Particularly, Ukraine had earlier revoked the Ukrainian citizenship of four UOC MP clerics mentioned in the Ukrainska Pravda investigation: Metropolitan Ionofan (Anatoliy Yeletskikh), Bishop of Makariv Hedeon (Yuriy Kharon), Metropolitan Mark (Mykola Petrovtsiy), and Archbishop Panteleimon (Victor Bashchuk).
Also, on 1 April, the SBU brought charges against the abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra of the UOC MP Pavlo (Lebed), accusing him of inciting religious enmity, justifying and denying Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine. The court imposed a 60-day round-the-clock house arrest on Pavlo and ordered him to wear an electronic bracelet, but his defense has appealed this decision.
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