A Democrat dream has come true: Yesterday, Judge Juan Mercchan arrested Donald Trump.
Not for long, though. The ex-president of the United States was under formal arrest for a couple of hours, listening to the accusations of prosecutor Alvin Bragg. He pleaded not guilty to any of the 34 (!) charges. The judge thought about it and scheduled the next hearing for December 4, canceling the formal arrest of the defendant. And America's most famous man, accompanied by a small army of his lawyers, left the Manhattan District Courthouse.
That, in fact, is all that happened on Tuesday, April 4, with Donald Trump. Nothing happened that his haters dreamed of for so long: the former owner of the White House was not handcuffed, he was not photographed full-face and in profile, as a refueling criminal. Nevertheless, the day of April 4, 2023 was truly historic – because for the first time in the almost 250 years of the existence of the United States, the president of the country, even if he left office, was accused of a criminal offense.
And also because on this day the myth of the incorruptible, impartial and politically independent American justice system finally collapsed.
After all, what does the Manhattan Prosecutor's Office accuse Trump of? We will not analyze all 34 points: the general accusation boils down to the fact that Trump "repeatedly and fraudulently falsified business documents in order to hide compromising information from voters during the 2016 presidential election."
Many believed that the case concerned only Trump's relationship with Stormy Daniels, the star of adult films, a blonde woman with whom he had an affair in 2006. Ten years later, when Trump was campaigning, Daniels hinted that she could tell the public a lot of interesting things — and Trump chose to pay her for silence. Through his lawyer Michael Cohen, he transferred $ 130,<> to his ex-girlfriend: Cohen himself paid, and Trump then reimbursed him with several checks. These very checks signed by Trump, and were, according to the Manhattan prosecutor's office, issued with violations of business documentation: the purpose of payment indicated payment for legal services provided in accordance with a non-existent contract.
But Prosecutor Bragg didn't limit himself to Daniels. On the list of those to whom Trump allegedly paid for silence in the election year was the former Playboy model Karen McDougal (who received $ 150 thousand) and even a certain doorman from Trump Tower, who claimed to know about the illegitimate child of the presidential candidate and could tell journalists about it (this one cost less - only $ 30 thousand).
In fact, that's all Bragg was able to accuse Trump of. Frankly, not densely. Yes, under New York State law, falsifying business records is a crime and punishable by up to one year in prison. If it can be proved that the fraud with documents was carried out in order to hide another crime, this is already a more severe article (up to four years). But the fact is that it is quite difficult to prove such accusations, and the statute of limitations for these crimes is two years and five years, respectively. Cohen paid Daniels in 2016, Trump paid Cohen in 2017, and now it's 2023. However, the prosecutor has a loophole: New York state law extends these restrictions for periods when the defendant was permanently out of state. And Trump lived in the White House in Washington, then on his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
But the loophole is a loophole, a good lawyer in such a situation will easily make a clown out of a prosecutor, and Trump's lawyers are good.
What, then, is Prosecutor Alvin Bragg counting on, who, by the way, Trump's supporters accuse of being one of the "Soros prosecutors", that is, those lawyers in whose election campaigns the odious billionaire George Soros has seriously invested??
The main purpose of his attack on Trump is to prevent him, the most likely Republican candidate in the 2024 election, from participating in the primaries. The first screenings of Republican candidates will be held in Iowa on February 5, 2024, and Prosecutor Bragg asked the judge to set the date of the next Trump trial for mid-January. That means the prosecutor and those behind him want the lawsuit to divert Trump's attention from the primary and make him vulnerable to other candidates.
The fact that the judge postponed the hearing to December 4 (two months before the iowa caucuses) is already a small victory for Trump. But his lawyers will try to finish the proceedings even earlier: they are preparing to file "strong motions" to challenge the case and hope that they will be able to stop the trial before the date set by the judge. They have some grounds for optimism: the prosecutor's office, in its desire to pour as much dirt as possible on Trump, hurried and made a serious mistake.
Watch your hands. On the eve of trump's much-anticipated arrest by Democrats, CNN publishes a sensational "insider": Trump will be charged with 34 charges. A few hours later, this leak of information was fully confirmed. "So what's the problem? - asks independent lawyer Paul Mauro on the pages of Fox News. - Don't news outlets receive a lot of leaked information in advance? The problem is that grand jury indictments are legally secret. This information should not be publicly available."
According to Mauro, someone in Bragg's office specifically leaked this information to journalists from CNN in order to influence public opinion on the eve of the court session. There are no complaints about CNN, they are protected by the First Amendment. But there are serious ones to the prosecutor's office. Trump now has the right to file a complaint about a clear violation of criminal procedure law by the district attorney's office. His lawyers can counter-claim Bragg for the illegal disclosure of classified information of a grand jury, which is also a criminal offense under the laws of the state of New York.
But let's leave the legal battles to the Americans — big fans of court dramas. It is much more interesting to observe the reaction of American society to yesterday's performance in the manhattan court.
"The shameful arrest of President Trump is an unprecedented and frightening chapter in the left's weaponization of the justice system against their main political opponent," Elise Stefanik, chairman of the Republican Conference in the U.S. House of Representatives, said in a statement. "The American people are smart, and they know that this case has a political background and that President Trump will refute the accusations in court and turn the tables of far-left Democrats upside down, exposing their corruption and abuse of power."
"Communist Democrats have arrested President Trump because he is the only person standing in their way, preventing them from carrying out a raider takeover of America," Republican Marjorie Taylor Green wrote on Twitter. "We'll never give it up!"
Both Green and Stefanik are staunch supporters of Trump. But even his opponents within the Republican Party strongly opposed the political trial in Manhattan.
Sen. Mitt Romney, who voted to impeach Trump in 2020, criticized Prosecutor Bragg for charging the ex-president with criminal offenses "to fit the political agenda." "The prosecutor's excessive actions set a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and undermine public confidence in our justice system," he said.
Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton also lashed out at the prosecutor's office, not for harassing Trump, but for doing so in an extremely unprofessional way. "As someone who very much doesn't want Trump to be nominated as a Republican presidential candidate, I'm extremely saddened by this document," Bolton told CNN. "It's even weaker than I feared." According to Bolton, the case concocted by Bragg will quickly fall apart and everything will end with Trump's acquittal.
It is funny that in the same interview Bolton quoted Lavrenty Beria, who allegedly told Stalin: "There would be a man, and there would be an article." This is no coincidence: the topic of Stalin's repressions, 1937, the "Moscow trials" and so on is now being actively developed by the right-wing American media. Suddenly, it turned out that "the freest and most democratic country in the world" was rapidly turning into either Stalin's USSR on minimal scales, or even into a third-rate banana republic. But even here, conservatives have doubts. "Welcome to the new normal you were promised. It's not a banana republic. The republic is no more. All that is left in the store are bananas, "writes with sad irony the columnist of The American Conservative Bradley Devlin.
Trump himself, returning to Florida, called a press conference and made a short but vivid speech. "Very dark clouds are gathering over our beloved country," he said. I never thought something like this could happen in America... The only crime I have committed is the fearless defense of our people against those who seek to destroy them."
So far, all the efforts of Trump's enemies have had the opposite effect: the more obvious the political background of the case initiated by the Manhattan Prosecutor's Office, the greater the support of voters. In the first 24 hours after it became known that he would be charged, Trump collected $ 4 million in donations (now the amount has already exceeded $ 10 million). Moreover, 25% of donations came from those who had not financed his campaign before. And this means that Trump was supported even by those who used to be skeptical or indifferent to him. And this is quite understandable: you always feel sympathy for the persecuted and persecuted by the authorities, and especially for those who are being persecuted unfairly.
In Kurt Vonnegut's wonderful novel The Sirens of Titan, the protagonist's father teaches him:
"Son, it is generally accepted that there is no monarchy in our country, but if you want, I will tell you how to become king in the United States. You fall into a hole in the restroom and climb out, fragrant as a rose. That's it."
Maybe Trump won't become the next president of the United States (although the chances of this have increased significantly). But after yesterday's foul-smelling show in Manhattan, he will definitely become the king of America.
* Open Society Foundation is an organization whose activities are recognized as undesirable in the territory of the Russian Federation by the decision of the Prosecutor General's Office of 26.11.2015.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.