The First Ex-Presidents to Be Charged with a Crime. Donald J. Trump, The People of the State of New York, and the 2020 Democratic Causal Case

This week, Donald Trump will be in the public eye as he becomes the first ex-president to be charged with a crime.

Donald J. Trump will turn himself in on Tuesday in Manhattan, the location where he built his legend as a popular culture figure and real estate magnate, but which could now engineer his downfall, because of a group called The People of the State of New York.

A grand jury indicted Trump last week in a case involving a $130,000 payment to actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, and the president will return to New York. His appearance, accompanied by Secret Service agents, will come as he fires up his 2024 campaign for the White House. On Tuesday night, when he returns to Mar-a-Lago he plans to make a speech that will try to leverage political advantage from his personal legal crisis.

While Trump’s characteristically aggressive attacks on Bragg, the judge in the case, and the Biden Justice Department might be effective in a political context, there’s no guarantee they’ll work in court. Bragg does have an exacting task in that he must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump committed crimes. The former president is in a position where the rules of evidence and schedule of a court may not be taken into account by his usual ways of attack, delay and obfuscation.

Yet a criminal indictment takes Trump into unique political territory. His return to the spotlight in these circumstances is another twist in an exhausting saga which featured a double impeachment and a mob attack on the US Congress during an unruly four-year presidency that pushed the nation to the point of exhaustion.

The case that appears to involve violations of accounting practices and the possible violation of campaign finance statutes may not be sufficiently serious to merit a grand jury’s indictment of an ex-president who is running again.

The motion to dismiss will come, because there is no law that fits this, and the prosecutor overstepped his powers by attempting to charge a federal election crime. Since the charges against Trump haven’t been made public, it’s impossible to assess his claims. CNN reported last week that Trump would face more than 30 counts of business fraud.

“Had he not been running for office right now, for the office of the presidency – which, by the way, the polls have shown since this has been announced, his numbers have gone up significantly – had he not been running for presidency, he would not have been indicted,” Tacopina said. Bragg has made no public comment on the case since the indictment came down last Thursday.

The credibility of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer who was sentenced to prison on charges relating to lying to Congress, could be a central witness in any trial of Trump.

The political sensitivities of the case and Trump’s past advocacy of insurrection in the Congress made for a high level of security in New York. So far, however, Trump’s calls for protests have not drawn many of his supporters onto the streets.

CNN has reported that Trump was caught off guard by the grand jury’s decision to indict him, according to a person who spoke directly with him. He was bracing for an indictment but began to doubt reports of a charge being weeks away.

DeSantis, who has yet to declare a run, is running a shadow campaign rooted in the premise that he could offer Trump-style policies without the chaos or distractions of the ex-president. And many Republicans are already concerned that an indicted GOP nominee could be a liability in a general election in November 2024. Asa Hutchinson, the former Gov. of Arkansas who called on Trump to step aside because of the indictment, announced his own candidacy for president on Sunday.

In a statement on Thursday, Trump said that he will use his political power to stir up big disruptions and partisan anger as he has done before in the business and politics of his career.

“I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” he said. The American people know exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing. Everyone can see it. Our movement, our Party, and the Democrats are going to unite, and we are going to defeat Biden, so that we can win the election and make America great again.

This Tuesday is likely to be the start of a new and divisive chapter in Trump’s political career and another extreme test for America, because of his approach.

Fresh off a historic arraignment, former President Donald Trump is still very much running to regain office in 2024. The land is being laid for weeks and months to come.

The Charge of the Charged State Attorney General Vin Bragg: Trump’s actions against the 2020 election and what he’s doing with Republicans

We’ve watched this show before with Trump. He’s been impeached before. It didn’t really change anything. Not much moves the needle when it comes to Trump’s base, and he’s trying to capitalize here. He has been raising funds for this. His campaign says Trump has raised more than $7 million in the few days after the indictment. He’s predictably making a pretty big show of it.

It’s really put them in a box. Trump has really gotten them to line up lockstep behind him. Republicans on Capitol Hill mostly blasted this New York prosecutor vin Bragg. They’re using the same language that Trump used about this being politically motivated. Everyone in the Republican Party isn’t included in this picture. Very few people speak out against Trump. The former Arkansas Governor denounced Trump in a new race. He says the criminal investigations against Trump, when taken together, are very serious and that Trump should not be running.

The federal government, along with entities in New York and Georgia are conducting investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But take this for context about how Trump is doing with Republicans. Sarah Longwell is a Republican. In the focus group she ran this past week, there was no one who said they would vote for Rondales over Trump. So Trump really does appear to be strengthening his grip on the base.