The Justice of Donald Trump in the Run-Up to the 2016 Indictment: A Brief History of Trump and the Charges Against Stormy Daniels

History will unfold live before millions of television news viewers on Tuesday as former President Donald Trump travels to Manhattan Criminal Court to be arraigned after last week’s unprecedented indictment.

Trump is set to arrive at the courthouse in downtown Manhattan Tuesday afternoon, where his arrest will be processed by the district attorney’s office and he will be brought to the courtroom to hear the charges against him.

In what will be extraordinary scenes, Trump will return to New York after a grand jury voted to indict him last week in a case involving a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. His appearance will be followed by Secret Service agents as he begins his campaign for the White House. Trump plans to make a make a speech when he gets back to Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night in which he will seek to leverage political advantage out of a perilous, personal legal crisis.

In the run-up to Tuesday’s appearance, Trump’s legal team gave a preview of a robust defense that will unfold against a backdrop of a furious political campaign. Already, his leading loyalists are seeking to use the power of the new GOP House majority to try to interfere in Bragg’s prosecution. In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said the ex-president’s team would loudly and proudly declare he is not guilty and signaled an attempt to try to prevent the case ever from reaching trial.

All of the cases have been denied by Trump. But once more, America’s political and legal systems, under a near-constant stress test since he came down the escalator in Trump Tower to launch his campaign in 2015, will be put under enormous pressure that is likely to only deepen the country’s internal estrangement.

Some legal experts, without having seen the still-sealed indictment, have questioned whether a case that appears to revolve around infringements of accounting practices and possible campaign finance violations is sufficiently serious to merit the historical step of indicting an ex-president who is already running again.

Trump worked hard in each of those instances to degrade and invalidate the process, to treat them as illegitimate in order to blunt the findings. He is now doing the same with his indictment, arguing it is a witch hunt and a political prosecution meant to deny him a second term in office.

“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.

Michael Cohen is a pathological liar. He’s lied to banks, the IRS, Congress,” Tacopina said. Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, warned on “State of the Union” that a Trump defense shredding Cohen’s reputation would not work. “My old friend Joe Tacopina … (has) a wrong strategy if he thinks he’s building his whole strategy on personal attacks on Michael Cohen,” Davis said.

While public opinion will be critical in shaping the political impact of the New York case, the prosecution itself will be insulated. Acting New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, who will preside over Trump’s arraignment, is immune to his political pressure. Trump’s attacks on the judge could backfire in a legal arena. And even a former president can’t disregard the choreography of a court case and rules of criminal procedure.

The indictment returned last week by a grand jury against Trump is also expected to be unsealed Tuesday, providing the public – and Trump’s legal team – with the first details about the specific charges he will face. The investigation pertained to the payment made to Stormy Daniels during the presidential campaign.

The shadow campaign is based on the idea that he could offer the same policies as Trump but without the chaos or distraction of the ex-president. An indicted GOP nominee could become a liability for the Democrats in the general election in November 2024. Asa Hutchinson announced on Sunday that he would run for president, just a day after he called on Donald Trump to step aside.

In a statement on Thursday, Trump showed that he will respond to this brush with political fate in the same way he has lashed out at previous threats in his business and political career – with fury and by seeking to use his political power to stir up huge disruption and partisan anger.

“I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” he said. “The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. The only way we are going to make America great again is for our movement and our party to defeat every single one of the Democrats in office, and we are going to throw every single one of them out of office.

His approach means that this Tuesday is likely to be just the start of a new, dramatic and divisive chapter in Trump’s political career and another extreme test for America.

The extraordinary moment will present newsrooms with a slew of coverage conundrums and test how well outlets have adapted to reporting on Trump since he left office in disgrace and largely vanished from the public view.

The article was first published in theReliable Sources newsletter. The daily digest is about the evolving media landscape.

► Margaret Sullivan: “Use what we’ve learned since 2015 about covering Trump (if we really have learned!) and adjust accordingly. The newsworthiness of the moment must be weighed against the likelihood of him spreading his predictable lies. Fact-checking later is not as effective as putting his statements in context. We should remember that we are in the business of truth and democracy.

► Bill Grueskin: “My advice: Ignore the courthouse circus, and focus on the merits of the DA’s case. Is there new evidence? Are there new witnesses? What does the indictment tell us that we didn’t already know about Trump’s payment to Stormy Daniels? And what about that is provably illegal?”

► Jack Shafer: “Editors and producers should stop looking over their shoulders worrying about what the ox peckers might say about their camera angles, the number of hours they spend on the booking, the number of column inches they burn on the prosecution and trust their own journalistic instincts and training. Follow the story. Inform your readers and viewers.”

Trump’s return from his own investigations: Preparing for the next court battle in the case of a long-term impeachment trial

And there are increasing signs that this new reality – which will come with hefty financial commitments in legal fees and locks on Trump’s calendar – could be multiplied at a time when he’s already facing the intense demands of another White House bid.

CNN reported Monday that Smith’s prosecutors are looking into how Trump classified the records around Mar-a-Lago and if anyone witnessed him with them. The new details coincide with signs the Justice Department is taking steps consistent with the end of an investigation.

While Trump’s comments will signal how he intends to fight the charges against him in the political arena, the former president is also preparing for the fight in court: He added a new attorney, Todd Blanche, to serve as lead counsel on his defense team on Monday.

His expression was reserved and grim, beneath the usual swoop of dyed hair and thick foundation. For the moment, he was just another defendant, dependent on a judge to determine his next move. And while Trump will work hard in the coming hours and days to offer a different reading of those images — and media outlets will be tempted to help him out by focusing on the spectacle — they depict not a departure from regular order, but rather its return.

One criminal prosecution is onerous enough. Trump hasn’t been charged in any of the other cases, but a multi-front defense in multiple cases would represent an extraordinary storm. It would disrupt the ex-president’s ability to dictate his political schedule and control his fate. When Robert Mueller was looking into Russia, and Trump was looking into his own impeachment, the president exploited his popularity with Republican voters to find fault with the accusations against him. He pressured most GOP senators, who knew they would pay with their careers if they voted to convict him in an impeachment trial.

The 2020 election was similar to the one in 2020 when the will of voters prevailed, because Trump had tried to have votes thrown out and results changed because of the fact based standards of evidence.

What would have happened to Trump if he weren’t a media circus? A tribute to the late-night fervor of the new york mayor

There was a late-night ruling in which the request for broadcast cameras was turned down. Five still photographers will be allowed to take pictures of Trump and the courtroom before the hearing begins.

But the irony of the ex-president complaining about being the subject of a media circus was rich indeed. Without his salesman’s talent for whipping up media circuses, he’d have never have been president. Trump built his mythology in New York by constantly giving fodder to the city’s tabloids with his famous celebrity feuds, colorful personal life and business failures. His presidential campaign and his single-term presidency were rife with scandal and lawlessness, thanks to his often unchained social media posts.

Trump will be taken through back hallways and elevators to the courthouse, which is in the same building as the district attorney’s office. He will walk through a public hallway to the courtroom where he will be arraigned.

The New York Sessions of January 6: Trump vowed to destroy the Deep State unless he reclaimed his citizenship in the First Amendment

Editor’s Note: Nicole Hemmer is an associate professor of history and director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the Study of the Presidency at Vanderbilt University. She is the co-author of the book “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s”. She has her own views in this commentary. More opinions on CNN.

News helicopters hovered as a string of SUVs zipped down the FDR Drive in Manhattan. There was a crowd of people at the Manhattan Criminal Court. All were awaiting the arrival of the defendant.

The court is unusual, with thousands of New Yorkers passing through each year, but the process of turning himself in and appearing before a judge was something most people wouldn’t notice.

As he entered the court, he delivered first a wave and then raised a fist to his supporters. But any sign of defiance had vanished by the time of his arraignment and not-guilty plea.

The time in office of Trump was marked by total disregard for the rules. The man who used to brag that he could shoot a person on Fifth Avenue and walk away scot-free seemed to know the truth of his status before most Americans. While journalists and analysts explained how Trump flouted laws like the Emoluments Clause and the Presidential Records Act, Trump simply continued on, sensing that, as a resident of the White House, he was someone who the law could not touch. It didn’t.

While Republicans in Congress refused to play a part in the efforts to hold Trump accountable, processes like impeachment and congressional hearings were used to reveal bad acts but not correct them.

The first and second impeachments involved necessary debate and public exposure, but each started with a foregone conclusion: that the vast majority of Republicans would never turn on Trump. The January 6 Committee played out along similar lines, with Republican leaders refusing from the start to engage in a process that might end with a referral of charges against the former president.

Trump lashed out at the indictment at his opening campaign rally in Texas, which was a place known for being a symbol of government overreach. If reelected, he said he would destroy the deep state because he would defeat the criminals who were corrupting the justice system.

Since news of the indictments broke, he has been working with his team to decide how best to present himself, according to the New York Times. Should he wave to the crowd or not? Should he smile or stay solemn? If he asked for a mugshot, should he avoid it?

These questions were posed to both lawyers and campaign aides, since it’s clear that Trump will use the images as part of his presidential bid. Already his campaign is promoting t-shirts with digitally-created mugshots, and his campaign emails burst with warnings that after “they” come for the president, they’re coming for his voters next.

They can attempt to stop me all they want, but they can’t crush the spirits of 74 million patriotic people who want to make our country great again.

This is something that all of the G.O.P. would have to consider. Again. Because, if Mr. Trump’s prime-time, post-arraignment remarks on Tuesday were any indication, this is going to be a central theme of his third presidential run — one that promises to relegate everyone else in the party, including those considering a 2024 run themselves, to being minor players in this latest, tawdriest season of “The Trump Show.”

It was not one of Mr. Trump’s more compelling speeches. The Mar-a-Lago crowd, while friendly, wasn’t the kind of roaring mass of fans from which Mr. Trump draws energy, and the former president sounded heavily scripted. The address was really offensive in its attacks on the justice system as a whole and on the individuals leading the investigations of Mr. Trump. (Seriously, what was with all the wife bashing?) He sniped about the “racist in reverse” officials out to get him. He went on a bizarre riff about how President Biden had hidden a bunch of documents in Chinatown. And his repeated attacks on the “lunatic” Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the federal investigations of Mr. Trump, suggest that whole business is really chafing the former president’s backside.

Get ready for more of this magic. The investigations will eat at Mr. Trump and distract him as he is involved in the legal troubles. A hefty chunk of his campaign is likely to be an extended whine about his ongoing martyrdom, constantly putting other Republicans in the awkward position of having to defend him. And they won’t really have any choice as he whips his devoted followers into a frenzy over his persecution — and, of course, by extension, theirs.

We’ve seen that happen. Republicans have been lining up to trash the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. It was in no way surprising to see Representative Lauren Boebert comparing the indictment of Mr. Trump to the actions of Mussolini and, yes, Hitler. One would have expected more from the governor since he is thought to be the biggest threat to Mr. Trump’s ambitions. Weak, Ron. Very weak.