Your Indictment news for March 30, 2023
Hi there,
Here we go: Former president Donald Trump was indicted today. I know that as the person who literally set up a mailing list for this very purpose I should not be surprise. But... surprise!
For those of you who received my impeachment updates for both of Trump's impeachments, welcome back. For those of you that are new, it's great to have you here.
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OK, enough intro, it's the big day, so let's go.
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Previously: Let's catch you up on 16 years real quick. In 2006, then-reality TV star Donald Trump met adult film star Stormy Daniels at a celebrity golf tournament where Daniels slept with Trump in what she would later call "the least impressive sex I ever had." Flash forward to 2016, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president and Stormy Daniels is shopping her story to tabloids, but instead it's bought, for $130,000, in a hush-money purchase facilitated by Trump's lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen. Cohen himself took out a home equity line of credit to cover the payment, wired to Daniels 10 days before the 2016 Presidential election and was later paid back over numerous installments by the Trump Organization. Flash forward to 2018, when Michael Cohen is arrested for tax evasion, lying to investigators about Trump's businesses in Russia and—most important for this moment in time—violating campaign finance laws for that $130,000 payment to Daniels, which federal prosecutors argued was a illegal contribution to Trump's campaign. Cohen later plead guilty, meaning that the case was never taken to trial, and served a three year sentence, most of which was spent in home confinement due to the pandemic. Almost immediately after Cohen's guilty plea, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance began to investigate the hush-money payments at the state level, eventually widening the scope to include the Trump Organization's business practices. Vance's investigations eventually lead to the Trump Organization being found guilty of tax fraud and falsifying business records. His investigation of the Daniels payments, however, seemed fade into the background and, eventually, when new Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg took over in January 2022, it was reported to be a "zombie" case that most presumed to all but dead. That is until January of this year when Bragg convened a new grand jury to once again investigate the payment of hush money to Daniels, which brings us to today...
Today, Thursday, March 30, 2023
Donald Trump, the former President of the United States, has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury. He becomes the first president in US history to ever be charged with a crime. According to the Washington Post, "the indictment was filed behind closed doors at the Lower Manhattan courthouse after the clerk’s office was closed for the day," and comes about two months after Bragg impaneled a grand jury to investigate the circumstances around the 2016 payment by Trump to adult star Stormy Daniels which previously lead to the 2018 conviction of his former lawyer Michael Cohen. There's a long way to go from here, but this moment is truly unprecedented. (Source: Washington Post)
So what are the charges? As of now we don't know. Grand jury proceedings are secret and the indictment is sealed until a judge unseals it at an arraignment. What we do know is that the charges will almost certainly focus on the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels and the falsifying of business records that came afterwards. Now, paying hush money isn't illegal, and falsifying business records is usually a misdemeanor offense, and this seems like it would be a whole lot of effort if that's where it stopped. But the real question is whether or not those business records were falsified to conceal another crime, like, say, campaign finance violations, at which point the crime could be prosecuted as a felony offense. According to the Wall Street Journal, "any successful prosecution would likely require evidence establishing that Mr. Trump tried to hide the repayment to Mr. Cohen with false book entries" and that those entries were made with an "intent to defraud." Of course, we'll know much more soon. (Source: Wall Street Journal)
Negotiations are already underway to facilitate the arrest of Donald Trump. According to Politico, the "Manhattan district attorney’s office asked for Donald Trump to surrender on Friday," but Trump's team turned them down, claiming that the Secret Service "needed more time to prepare." While it's not expected that Trump will resist arrest (can you imagine???), Florida Governor Ron DeSantis did Tweet that law enforcement would "not assist in an extradition request." It likely won't come to that, however, and the current expectation is that Trump will surrender next week, possibly Tuesday. (Source: Politico)
Now it's important to remember that there's a long way between an indictment and a conviction, and that a conviction of Donald Trump is by no means guaranteed. One thing that is guaranteed is, barring a guilty plea by Trump (which, stares), this process will be brutally slow. According Reuters, the "average criminal case in New York takes more than a year to move from indictment to trial" and this case is anything but average. Which could mean that if a trial happens at all it could happen during the last months of the 2024 presidential race or, very possibly, after. So that means these updates could stretch... cries (Source: Reuters)
Of course, this isn't the only investigation into Donald Trump that could potentially lead to indictments. There's the investigation in Fulton County Georgia into his attempt at overturning the 2020 election results there as well as two federal investigations overseen by Special Counsel Jack Smith, one looking into Trump's many 2020 election shenanigans and the other into his handling of classified documents post-presidency. So indictment dot fyi could become indictmentS dot fyi. Laughs nervously. (Source: PBS Newshour)
What's coming next: At some point in the next week Donald Trump will be arrested and processed (complete with mug shot and fingerprints). Shortly after his arrest, he will have an arraignment hearing at which point we'll know the charges against him and he will plead guilty or not guilty (guess which) and then the legal maneuvering will truly begin.
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And that's where things stand right now. If you were a part of the impeachment newsletter, you'll know that this came out every single day that the impeachment happened. The cadence of an actual trial is going to be different than that, so I can't exactly tell you how frequently this will come out, but I'd expect at least in these early days it'll be daily or close to it. But one thing I can tell you is that you will only get updates about the indictment (no newsletter creep here) and your email address will be shared with no one. I will always respect your inbox.
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I'm glad you're here,
Dan