Reality Strikes Trump, Finally
By Richard C. Gross
“My crown I am, but still my griefs are mine. You may my glories and my state depose but not my griefs; still am I king of those.”
--William Shakespeare, “Richard II,” King Richard, Act IV, Scene 1
Despite the denials, the delays, the pretenses, the lying, Donald J. Trump earned the distinction Monday of being the first former president of the United States to face a criminal trial in a spectacular downfall of someone who created the false notion accepted by millions that he won reelection in 2020.
That fiction in itself is morally, if not legally, criminal.
A color photograph of him at the defense table in the New York Supreme Court makes him look haggard, as if he didn’t sleep the night before the opening day of his trial on 34 felony counts for trying to hide a sex scandal by falsifying records of a hush money payment. He dozed, his chin falling to his chest.
Twelve jurors and six alternatives must be found before the historic trial starts in earnest. More than half of the prospective 96 jurors were dismissed M0nday when they said they could not be impartial. Trump has pleaded innocent to all counts. He faces up to four years in prison if convicted.
The trial could take six weeks, Judge Juan Merchan told prospective jurors.
Trump, the expected Republican nominee for president, is again playing the role of victim, charging outside of court that Democratic officials have used the “weaponization of law enforcement” to attack his presidential candidacy since polling shows him to be popular. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a Democrat.
Trump reportedly is considering testifying to prove to jurors that the case against him has been manufactured.
Does anyone but a diehard Trump supporter really believe New York prosecutors cooked up a plan how to get the former president? There are three other trials awaiting him, two of them federal. He’s trying to delay those, too, beyond the November election so he can dismiss the charges against him if he wins.
“This is a political prosecution,” the Associated Pres quoted Trump as saying as he entered the court, a typical long-running pattern of his whining about being targeted. “This is a prosecution like never before.”
Trump allegedly sought to hide an affair with a porn star, Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, when he was running for president in 2016 so that voters wouldn’t know of the seamy activity even though he was bragging about grabbing women sexually in an “Access Hollywood” tape.
Prosecutors asked Merchan to fine Trump $3,000 for writing social media posts last week that violated the jurist’s gag order to prevent him from attacking witnesses. He called his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen and Daniels “two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!”
“The defendant has demonstrated his willingness to flout the order,” the AP quoted one of the prosecutors, Christopher Conroy. “He’s attacked witnesses in the case.”
Nothing new about that, is there?
Merchan said he would rule on the gag order fines April 23.
He is charged with reimbursing Cohen $130,000 for giving Daniels that money to prevent her from publicly telling her story a month before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter with him 10 years earlier. The payments to Cohen allegedly were described falsely as legal fees. Trump’s lawyers say they were legal expenses, not a cover-up.
New York law says it’s a misdemeanor to lie about business records. But it can be raised to a felony “if the falsification is used is done with the intent to defraud and to conceal another crime,” wrote Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus. Bragg charged Trump with violating federal and state election laws and a state tax law, she wrote.
Post columnist Jennifer Rubin went to great lengths Monday to show that this trial is far more significant than a simple hush money charge – “that the case revolves around allegations that, if proved true in court, would amount to Trump’s first — and only successful — attempt to use deception and illegal means to gain power.”
She quoted part of Bragg’s indictment to help prove her point:
“From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects. In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York. The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme.”
This case, even though it’s in a state court and not a federal one, may be crucial for Trump. And for us. It should be noted again that he is running for a second term for the White House, a center of the free world, when tens of millions of Americans and U.S. allies fear his return to power.
Richard C. Gross, who covered war and peace in Israel, the American military at the Pentagon, was foreign editor of United Press International and was the opinion page editor of The Baltimore Sun.