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      ‘Like lighting a match’: Trump ramps up rhetoric as legal walls close in

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      Donald Trump understands the camera. He is particular about angles, lighting and his inimitable orange hair. But come this Tuesday, in a New York courthouse, the camera will become his tormentor as Trump, once the most powerful man in the world, is told to provide a mug shot like a common criminal.The first reality TV star to be elected US president, and the first US president to be twice impeached and attempt the overthrow of an election, is now the first US president to be charged with a crime. The 76-year-old faces the humiliation of being photographed, fingerprinted and entering a plea to charges involving a 2016 hush money payment to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels.The impact of that is already being felt. There are signs that the legal perils now engulfing Trump are pushing him to new extremes. Trump has never been a conventional politician, but his divisive brand of populist-nationalism is growing ever more intense and extreme.His 2024 campaign for the White House is embracing a violent rhetoric that could inflame tensions and put America on a path to conflagration. Barricades have gone up around the courthouse in New York. Daniels canceled a Friday television interview out of “security concerns”. Trump’s language on the campaign trail and social media, haranguing his enemies, is laced with race-baiting and antisemitic conspiratorial tropes.“There’s nothing traditional about Donald Trump and there never has been, but we’ve never been in this situation before and what’s different now is how polarised we are,” said Frank Luntz, a pollster who has worked on numerous Republican election campaigns. “This is like lighting a match in the middle of a bonfire that’s been doused with gasoline. I’m afraid that we’re lighting a match and we’re going to see on Tuesday what happens.”For a moment, it had seemed that this time might be different. Trump launched his 2024 election campaign last November at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida with an uncharacteristic low energy, steering clear of his stolen election lies and insisting: “We’re going to keep it very elegant.”He then went unusually quiet before embarking on small-scale campaign events, issuing policy proposals and hiring staff in early voting states. Unlike his ramshackle 2016 effort, his campaign team appeared disciplined. The Hill website observed: “Former President Trump is doing something shocking – he’s running a campaign that is starting to look quite conventional.”But just as hopes that Trump would grow into the presidency were constantly dashed, so this newly orthodox candidate was never going to last. The trigger came two days after he became the first contender to hit the 2024 election campaign trail, delivering unremarkable speeches in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.In a surprise move, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, revived what had seemed be a cold case, an investigation into an alleged $130,000 payment to Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 campaign. Daniels has said she received money in exchange for keeping silent about a sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006, when he was married to Melania Trump.As witnesses testified to a grand jury and the walls closed in, Trump used the threat to raise money and rally supporters as he seeks his party’s nomination to challenge Joe Biden next year. He abandoned all pretence of moderation and reverted to the old demagoguery.At the Conservative Political Action Conference at the National Harbor in Maryland, he spoke in apocalyptic terms of a “final battle” and vowed to supporters: “I am your retribution.” On his Truth Social media platform, he inaccurately predicted his own arrest and called for protests, echoing his charged rhetoric ahead of the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.Luntz commented: “He knows the power of that word ‘protest’. He knows what happened the last time he used that word. This is a deliberate effort to engage people in his situation and I am concerned about the consequences of him using that word.”Trump went on to warn of potential “death & destruction” if he were charged and described Bragg as an “animal” who was “doing the work of Anarchists and the Devil, who want our Country to fail”. He accused Bragg, who is Black, of racial bias and even shared an image – later removed – of himself holding a baseball bat next to a picture of the district attorney. Bragg’s office has been the target of bomb threats in recent weeks.Then, last weekend, Trump held his first campaign rally in Waco, Texas, exactly 30 years after a 51-day standoff and deadly siege there, and began by standing with hand on heart during the playing of a song that features a choir of men imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection singing the national anthem, as footage from the riot was shown on big screens.The ex-president proceeded to describe the “weaponisation of law enforcement” as the biggest threat to America today and vow: “The thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited and totally disgraced.”When on Thursday the grand jury had voted to indict, Trump responded in similar fashion and, significantly, Republicans rallied to his defence. Such is his grip on that party that even potential 2024 rivals felt compelled to defend his claim of a witch-hunt. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, called the move “un-American”, while former vice-president Mike Pence told CNN the charges were “outrageous”.Both will have been aware that Trump’s campaign of rage in recent weeks has put him back in the headlines and expanded his lead in opinion polls. DeSantis, promoting a new book, has found himself going backwards. It is little surprise that Trump feels emboldened.Luntz said: “His numbers have gone up five points since this whole thing came about and I’m afraid that it will galvanise and solidify the support that had been leaving him. Donald Trump is the best politician in my lifetime at playing the victim card. There’s no one who comes close to him.”Trump alleges that there are political motivations behind all four criminal investigations he is known to face – including into his retention of classified documents and attempts to overturn his election defeat, and a separate Georgia investigation into his efforts to overturn his loss in that state. One line of attack is reframing January 6 as a heroic defence of democracy.Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “It’s clear that January 6 is a badge of valour for him, given that he’s continued to escalate the violent rhetoric similar to that which he used prior to January 6. He seems to get off on the idea of people engaging in violence on behalf of him.”She added: “He’s like a political vampire with a taste. He got a taste of what that violence can do on his behalf and now he wants more because he feels powerful.”The shift to the right goes beyond posturing. Trump has unleashed a barrage of policy proposals that include punishing doctors who provide gender-affirming care, measures that would make it harder to vote and imposing the death penalty on drug dealers. He appears to be taking the Republican party with him.Staunch allies such as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have risen to prominence in Congress. Republican state legislatures across the country have passed extreme legislation curtailing abortion and LGBTQ and voting rights. DeSantis, seen as Trump’s principal rival for the nomination, has adopted many of the same positions or tried to move even further right.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “I don’t think he’s dragging them anywhere. They’re going willingly and voluntarily. They’re not putting up any kind of struggle. It just tells me intuitively that this is what they want, this is the kind of party that they want to be a part of because they’re doing absolutely nothing to divorce themselves from the extremism that Donald Trump regurgitates every single day.”Police are likely to close streets around the Manhattan courthouse ahead of Tuesday’s expected appearance. In a sign of the increasingly febrile atmosphere, Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator for South Carolina, mocked Bragg’s sense of priorities by writing on Twitter: “How can President Trump avoid prosecution in New York? On the way to the DA’s office on Tuesday, Trump should smash some windows, rob a few shops and punch a cop. He would be released IMMEDIATELY!”A potential trial is still at least more than a year away, meaning it could occur during or after the presidential campaign. While it is unclear what specific charges Trump will face, some legal experts have said Bragg might have to rely on untested legal theories to argue that Trump falsified business records to cover up crimes such as violating federal campaign finance law.Luntz, the pollster, warned: “If you go to kill the king and the king lives, you die. If you prosecute Donald Trump and he is found innocent, there will be no stopping him. If he is found guilty, there’ll be no calming down of his most fervent supporters. Either way, it’s bad for the American democracy.” More

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      The Observer view: Donald Trump deserves to face the full force of justice | Observer editorial

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      In the tumultuous, multifaceted case of Donald J Trump versus the people of the United States, the biggest question is why this former president, political con artist and serial offender is not already in jail. Trump will be charged this week in Manhattan over alleged “hush money” payments to a former porn star. This action, both welcome and overdue, makes him the first US president to be criminally indicted. Yet twice-impeached Trump stands accused of a string of infinitely more serious, well-documented crimes, including a violent attempt to overthrow the government. The continuing mystery is why justice is so long in coming.The full Trump charge sheet reads like a horror novel in which democracy is murdered. In the weeks following his clear-cut defeat by Joe Biden in November 2020, Trump did everything he could to subvert the result, legally and illegally, by making baseless accusations of fraud. This is not in dispute. Not disputed, either, is a taped telephone conversation on 2 January 2021 between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, in which the then president pressed the latter “to find 11,780 votes” – sufficient to cancel Biden’s victory in the key swing state.Why has Trump not been criminally charged in what appears to be an open-and-shut case of shameless election interference? A special grand jury in Atlanta has recommended the prosecution of all involved in the illegal lobbying of Raffensperger. Perhaps the courage shown by Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, in indicting Trump will inspire his Fulton County counterpart, Fani Willis – and other state and federal prosecutors – to follow suit without further delays. If this case had been conducted in a timely manner, Trump might be behind bars now.It is more than two years since Trump incited his supporters to attack the Capitol in order to halt Congress’s ratification of Biden’s victory. The ensuing riot on 6 January 2021 led to deaths and injuries. Yet Trump did nothing to call off the mob until it was far too late. He has since hailed the rioters as heroes. Again, much of this is on the record. Congress has conducted exhaustive investigations. Why has Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, failed to act against the chief instigator as well as the perpetrators of the coup attempt? Only in November did Garland finally appoint a special counsel – which amounts, in effect, to another delay.It is hard to avoid the conclusion that reluctance to energetically pursue these and other crimes, such as Trump’s apparent theft of secret documents found at his Florida home, stems from political timidity at the top. As he showed again last week, Trump is ready and able to use his mafia-like grip on the Republican party and rightwing media to intimidate the entire US body politic. He plays the victim, turns the tables and claims Biden and the Democrats are the lawbreakers. Trump says political enemies have singled him out. Yet the only special treatment he has received is to have been allowed to avoid prosecution for so long.Diffidence over confronting Trump full-on stems in part from an understandable desire to avoid feeding national divisions. The entire Trump saga, akin to tawdry, never-ending reality TV show, is a distraction from pressing issues such as post-pandemic economic revival, the climate emergency and war in Europe. The US should focus on these challenges rather than endlessly indulge the antic ravings of a narcissistic, foul-mouthed, misogynistic crook.Biden would surely wish it so. At the start of his term, he plainly hoped that, by ignoring him, Trump would eventually go away. Yet sadly, here he is again, hogging the limelight. Trump will have his day in court amid blanket media coverage and feared street violence. He will repeat his usual inflammatory lies and slanders, proceedings will be adjourned, probably for months, and meanwhile, this arch-enemy of democracy, decency and justice will try to exploit his “victimhood” to secure the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. In a sense, Trump-ism is eternal. It cares for nothing and no one but itself.The Trump case poses potentially historic challenges for an American republic founded on the rule of law. The idea, peddled by Republicans, that a current or former president enjoys de facto immunity from prosecution is at odds with modern-day concepts of justice. The fact that it appears such a person may stand again for the White House while under criminal investigation, or even following a criminal conviction, points to dangerous flaws in America’s constitutional arrangements. No person, however famous, big-headed or threatening, should be above the law.The aggressive reaction to the indictment of many leading Republicans, and especially Ron DeSantis, Trump’s closest competitor, is dismaying. By parroting Trump’s line about “weaponisation” of the courts, the Florida governor shows himself to be no better or wiser than his egotistic rival. The party as a whole continues to place its interests ahead of the principles for which America stands. Democrats, meanwhile, should avoid talk that exacerbates national polarisation. “Lock him up!” is a tempting slogan, given how Trump used it against Hillary Clinton. But calm, restraint and patience are required. If there’s any justice, Trump’s time in court will ultimately be followed by time served.The manner in which this unprecedented legal drama is handled, and its outcome, could decide America’s immediate political future. It may also have a significant, lasting impact on US influence and moral authority in the global struggle to uphold a democratic, law-based international order. The world is watching – and that, regrettably, is what Trump likes.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk More

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      Mar-a-Lago events suspended as Trump huddles with ‘shaken’ advisers

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      Weekend events at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, were suspended on Friday as the former president was “huddling” with his attorneys after being blindsided by the grand jury indictment handed up against him after payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels.Trump, the New York Post reported, is meeting with advisers who were said to be “shaken” by the news of dozens of criminal charges related to a $130,000 payment given to Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Gregory Clifford.“It won’t be business as usual,” a source told the Post. “They expected this but there is shock now that it’s happened.“It’s real now. And they are worried about a surprise.”Separately, a source told the outlet that Trump had been “a little nervous and somber” about the indictment, but he has since “become more upbeat and thinks public opinion is on his side and that this will help him win the election”.Trump received formal notification of the charges, which have yet to be unsealed, stemming from a grand jury empaneled by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. Confirmation of the indictment came on Thursday after reports suggested that the grand jury would not sit again until May.On 23 March, Trump indicated that he believed he had beaten the rap when he shared a now-deleted post on his Truth Social network of himself holding a baseball bat next to a photo of Bragg and later warned of the potential for “death and destruction” if he was charged.Days later the charges were filed, and now Trump is due to enter a plea in the case at a hearing in New York on Tuesday afternoon. Trump is expected to plead not guilty.An attorney for Trump, Joe Tacopina, told NBC’s Today show that his client would not consider taking a plea deal after becoming the first former president to be criminally charged.“There’s no crime,” Tacopina argued.Preparations for the ex-president’s arraignment at Manhattan’s criminal courthouse at 100 Centre St have been under way for 10 days, with barriers being erected for crowd control.The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, told agents that the agency will take “the necessary steps” to protect Trump from harm, including placing agents in a “bubble formation” to separate him from the public.But Cheatle also said the service had not sought any special accommodations in the court’s standard procedures for processing and arraignment. The former president will nonetheless find himself in company he probably did not anticipate.Indictments and criminal trials scheduled for Tuesday at the same courthouse include: burglary for taking paintings from a West Village townhouse; a thwarted terrorist attack on a Jewish community; the illegal selling of firearms; murder for a deadly East Harlem hammer attack; murder and attempted murder for attacking multiple homeless men; murder and criminal possession of a weapon for shooting into a car in East Harlem; and a grand larceny case involving sim-card swapping.New York police have issued a memo instructing all officers to wear their uniforms and prepare for mobilization, according to local news reports. That came after Bragg acknowledged in a memo to the DA’s 1,600 staff members that the office had been receiving offensive and threatening phone calls and emails.Bragg said the safety of his staff remained a top priority, and he thanked them for persevering in the face of “additional press attention and security around our office”.Trump will not be handcuffed at his arraignment or subjected to a “perp walk”, and discussions are still being held about whether his booking photo will be publicly circulated. Trump reportedly “wants the mugshot out” because it could harness donations to his presidential campaign.“The funds will start flying in,” a source told the Post.Melania Trump is not expected to join her husband on his trip to New York, where he will reportedly stay at his triplex in Trump Tower. She plans to “lay low”, according to reports.Trump’s daughter Ivanka issued a statement on her Instagram page on Friday saying “I love my father, and I love my country. Today, I am pained for both.” More

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      Will Trump indictment make white evangelicals ditch ‘imperfect vessel’?

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      As Donald Trump blustered his way through his one-term presidency, dogged by accusations of sexual assault, tainted by a fascination with authoritarian leaders, and widely reviled for his apparent fondness for racists, America’s white evangelical Christians largely stood firmly by his side.Evangelical leaders justified their support for Trump by comparing him to King Cyrus, who in the biblical telling liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity, despite himself being a Persian ruler who did not believe in the god of Israel.Trump, like Cyrus, was seen as an “imperfect vessel”, according to evangelicals. That meant God was using him for the greater good – in this case to hand political and cultural power back to white conservative Christians, who had watched in horror as the United States became more diverse and less religious.But King Cyrus had never been formally indicted in relation to hush money payments to an adult film star. As of Thursday, Trump has, becoming the first former US president to be criminally indicted.With Trump, who was also the first president to be impeached twice, now expected to be formally charged in the sordid saga, will these white evangelicals finally turn away from their man?No, said Robert Jones, the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute and author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.“The evidence from the public opinion data suggests that it will not make much difference,” Jones said.“When we look back at his favorite ability over time, you know, I think there have been any number of these bright lines, where people thought: ‘Oh, this will be the thing that causes white evangelicals to abandon this candidate.’ But we just don’t see that much movement.”Trump’s favorability with white evangelicals has hovered at around 70% since 2016, according to PRRI polling, even as an Access Hollywood tape emerged showing Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, even as he failed to denounce white supremacists who had rallied in Charlottesville, and even when the story of hush money payments to Stormy Daniels first broke, in 2018.None of it made any difference. In the 2020 presidential election, 75% of white evangelicals voted for Trump – hardly a huge drop-off from the 81% who pledged for him in 2016.A common interpretation of that support has been that evangelicals were making a calculated decision – they “held their nose” and voted for Trump, and in return got conservative supreme court justices who could, and did, overturn the Roe v Wade decision, removing women’s constitutional right to abortion in the US.But that’s not right, Jones said.“It was never really about abortion. I think that that line is, frankly, a propaganda line for evangelical leaders to try to justify their support for Trump,” he said. “It was a more palatable reason for them to support Trump than what the data indicate the reasons actually were.”The data showed that, actually, evangelicals really liked “the whole world view” Trump brought, Jones said. The slogan “Make America Great Again”, found a particular appeal.“The most powerful word in that mantra was the last one,” Jones said. “What it did is it evoked this powerful sense of nostalgia for an America that many white conservative Christians saw slipping away.”Jones pointed out that in Trump’s 2016 election campaign, “he was railing against Muslims and immigrants much more than he was railing against abortion”.“At every rally he was talking about ‘build the wall’ to keep Mexican immigrants out of the US. He was going to ban travel from Muslim-majority countries. I think it was those kinds of appeals that communicated this worldview that the country was rightfully owned by white Christians, and he was going to protect that view of the country.”John Fea, author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump and a professor of American historian at Messiah College, said there was already evidence that Trump’s legal woes will have little impact on his popularity.“You would think you know that paying hush money to a porn star might rile some white evangelicals,” Fea said. “I would say it will have little impact at all on white evangelicals. We’re already seeing that through their social media feeds and through their statements on Facebook,” Fea said.“They clearly see this as a witch-hunt. They see this as a politically motivated prosecution. Almost to a man and a woman that’s how they’re interpreting this.”For decades, white Christians made up a majority of Americans, enjoying the influence that majority allowed – politicians were nearly always white and Christian, as were most top business leaders.But their numbers began to decline through the 1990s, and by 2017, when PRRI conducted a survey on “America’s changing religious identity”, only 43% of the population identified as non-Hispanic white and Christian, and only 30% as non-Hispanic white and Protestant.That sense of decline and of waning control over the country, as white evangelicals watched a black man elected president and same-sex marriage be legalized, continues to contribute to Trump’s support among white evangelicals, Jones said.“Make America Great Again, to white evangelicals means: ‘Make America Christian Again’. Up until this point the Christian right’s agenda has always been tied to a candidate that they see as a ‘candidate of character’,” Fea said.“What happens with Trump is you’ve got a guy who’s going to deliver on all his promises, who’s going to fight for you, but he’s not a man of integrity. So do you side with integrity of character or do you side with the policies? And we learned in 2016 that the policies are much more important.”There is some evidence that the abandonment of integrity has gone beyond just the choice of political candidate.A 2021 survey by PRRI found that white evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to agree with the sentiment: “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”White evangelicals were also the only religious group to majority oppose undocumented immigrants becoming citizens, while a majority of white evangelicals also believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.The apparently unbreakable bond between evangelicals and Trump is an affinity that has been brewing for a long time, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, and a professor of history at Calvin University.Conservative evangelicals gained power through the 1950s and in the early cold war era, when their views on “traditional” families and cultural behaviors was largely matched by the rest of the country.But in the 1960s the civil rights movement, the feminist movement and the anti-war movement began to change how Americans thought about each other and about politics. Rather than change with their countrymen and women, evangelicals instead “doubled down” on their Christian conservatism, Du Mez said:“In a way that is oppositional, against fellow Americans and feeling like they have this special duty, this obligation as a faithful remnant, to restore America, to restore American greatness and to restore kind of traditional morals. That resentment mobilizes evangelicalism for generations.”The election of Obama, and the changes that happened under his watch, created a “perfect storm”, Du Mez said, and proved a real trigger, as white evangelicals felt they were under threat and in crisis.“This is where they’ve really started talking about religious liberty, and how they are embattled and they need a champion.“So it actually works in Trump’s favor that he is not the kind of Sunday school poster boy. He’s not a man who exemplifies traditional Christian moral values. The fact that he doesn’t: his ruthlessness, his crassness, the fact that he will ‘do what needs to be done’. That makes him perfect for the moment.”The rank and file seem to be on board with Trump, then, but some high-profile evangelical leaders have so far been less enthusiastic about Trump than they were in 2016 and 2020.Robert Jeffress, the pastor of a Dallas megachurch who campaigned with Trump in 2016 and 2020, has said he will “stay out” of the Republican primary. Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of the Family Leader, tweeted in November that it was “time to turn the page” on Trump. Everett Piper, a conservative commentator and the former dean of the Christian Oklahoma Wesleyan University, wrote “Trump has to go” in a 2022 column.That has prompted anger from Trump, who in January said it was “a sign of disloyalty” that faith leaders had yet to publicly back his 2024 campaign, and claimed anti-abortion messaging was responsible for Republicans’ poor performance in the 2022 midterms.But the support of evangelical bigwigs might not matter, Du Mez said. In 2015 and 2016 key Christian figures were originally horrified by Trump, before coming round when it became apparent he would win the Republican nomination.“The leaders were supporting people like Rubio and Cruz. And it didn’t matter. Because Trump’s appeal is a populist appeal,” Du Mez said.“If the leaders try to redirect that support, they are the ones who are going to be on the outs.”As Trump prepares to appear in court in New York, and as his legal woes elsewhere grow, one thing can make him rest easy. Whatever he says, and apparently whatever he does, white evangelicals will always have his back. More

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      The Guardian view on Trump’s indictment: he’ll fight the law. Who will win? | Editorial

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      Donald Trump has built his career on brazenness. A man without shame, he has hurtled on apparently unstoppably, through serial scandals, two impeachments, electoral rejection and an armed insurrection by his supporters. Now he is setting another grim precedent, as the first former US president in history to be charged with a criminal offence. Half a century after the first investigation into his business dealings, a New York grand jury has voted to indict him. But even if he cannot bluster or bully his way out, he will keep fighting the law, and the law may not win.That the case relates to paying hush money to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels is at once apt and disconcerting. Apt, in that its tawdriness and banality encapsulate the man. Disconcerting, in that it appears almost inconsequential beside the damage he has wrought upon the nation. He still faces multiple other civil and criminal cases: on the latter score alone, he is being investigated in relation to potential mishandling of classified documents; attempts to overturn his loss in Georgia in the 2020 election; and obstructing the transfer of power, as part of the justice department’s probe of the January 6 insurrection. Many would rather have seen charges brought against him on one of these grounds.The indictment is still sealed, but reportedly includes more than two dozen counts. While Mr Trump has admitted authorising a $130,000 payment on the eve of the 2016 election, he still denies an affair with Ms Daniels, claiming to be a victim of extortion. Though his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges relating to the money, the case looks far from straightforward legally. That has fuelled concerns that it may be unsuccessful and could even strengthen him. Yet by breaking the taboo on indicting a former president, some think, it could encourage other prosecutors to take action.Any charges would play to the martyr myth of Mr Trump’s supporters: he is already exploiting the case in fundraising and it is expected to boost him in the Republican primaries. His rival, Ron DeSantis, was quick to denounce the indictment; Fox News, which had distanced itself from Mr Trump in recent months, fell back into line. But the tackiness of this matter makes it perhaps less potent than an election-related case – and it’s unlikely to help him in the general election with former supporters who stayed at home or peeled off to Joe Biden in 2020.The former president, barefaced as ever, has decried the charges as “election interference”, accused the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is Black, of being racist, and drawn on antisemitic tropes. His incendiary rhetoric is not only vicious but dangerous. He had already written of “potential death and destruction” if he were indicted. His supporters have amply demonstrated their propensity for violence. But he has also demonstrated his propensity to hype the threat of force.To shy away from bringing charges because they will increase divisions and might unleash violence would be wrong. As both businessman and politician, Mr Trump has spent a lifetime seeking to avoid legal consequences for his conduct. To allow him to sidestep them for fear of his reaction and that of his supporters would be to bolster his message that truth and the law are for little people, and that lies and might will triumph. That would surely be a far greater blow to American democracy.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      A 2006 encounter and cash for silence: how the Trump-Stormy Daniels case unfolded

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      The Stormy Daniels affair, which this week made Donald Trump the first US president ever to be criminally indicted, first reached the White House in February 2017.“So picture this scene,” Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, said in congressional testimony two years later. “One month into his presidency, I’m visiting President Trump in the Oval Office for the first time.“It’s truly awe-inspiring, he’s showing me around and pointing to different paintings, and he says something to the effect of … ‘Don’t worry, Michael, your January and February reimbursement cheques are coming. They were FedExed from New York and it takes a while for that to get through the White House system.’”“As he promised, I received the first cheque for the reimbursement of $70,000 not long thereafter.”But what Cohen has described as “a biblical-level sex scandal” involving those cheques, which reimbursed a hush money payment to a porn star, had actually begun years before and has finally come to a head years later with Trump running for the White House again.How did it all happen?Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is a star in the world of adult film. In 2006, when she was 27, she attended a celebrity golf event in Utah, where she met Donald Trump. Then 60, he was a New York real estate billionaire and a reality TV star, via the NBC show The Apprentice.According to Daniels’ memoir, Full Disclosure, she spanked Trump with a copy of Forbes magazine featuring him on the cover. He said she reminded him of his daughter, Ivanka, and floated a slot on The Apprentice. Trump also reassured Daniels that he and his wife, Melania, who has just given birth to a son, slept in separate beds.“Oh fuck,” Daniels thought. “Here we go.”They had sex.According to Daniels, the two met again – once repairing to a Beverly Hills hotel room to discuss Trump’s fear of sharks. But they never had sex again.In 2011, Trump flirted with running for president and Daniels tried to sell her story, but Cohen threatened to sue, quashing a magazine interview. A gossip website picked up the thread but no one pulled it.In 2015, Trump did run for president. In 2016, as he dominated the Republican primary, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, sold her own Trump affair story to the National Enquirer. It was a “catch and kill” deal, worked out by Cohen and David Pecker, the chairman of American Media. The story never ran.In October 2016, a month before election day against Hillary Clinton, Trump’s campaign was upended by the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump bragged about groping women. As more women accused Trump of misconduct, an agent for Daniels contacted the Enquirer.Cohen worked out a deal: Daniels would get $130,000 in return for silence. In a CBS interview in 2018, Daniels said she accepted the deal because she was afraid for her family, including her young daughter.Cohen worked out the deal with Trump and Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization chief financial officer now imprisoned for tax fraud. Cohen paid $130,000 but was reimbursed $420,000 in payments recorded as “legal expenses”, including a bonus and $50,000 for a payment to a firm that produced rigged polls.In congressional testimony, Cohen said: “Mr Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a home equity line of credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign. I did that.”In April 2018, the Wall Street Journal broke the Daniels story. Cohen claimed it never happened. Trump also lied, saying he was unaware of the deal. A month later, he admitted paying Cohen “a monthly retainer not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign”, concerning “a private contract between two parties known as a nondisclosure agreement”.Trump denies having sex with Daniels.But Trump also disappointed Cohen, failing to give him a White House role. And as the federal investigation of links between Trump and Russia continued, Cohen landed in an uncomfortable spotlight. In April 2018, FBI agents raided his office in New York.“Am I El Chapo all of a sudden?” Cohen would write later of the moment.He wasn’t a Mexican drug lord but he was a prize eagerly sought by the law: the man who knew where the bodies were buried in Trump’s world. Cohen flipped.In August 2018, he pleaded guilty on eight federal counts including tax evasion and campaign finance violations linked to the Daniels payments. In December 2018, he was sentenced to three years in prison. The same month, Daniels was ordered to pay Trump $300,000 over a dismissed defamation suit filed by her then (now disgraced) attorney, Michael Avenatti.But the story continued. In February 2019, in testimony to the House oversight committee, Cohen described the Daniels affair and much more.In New York, investigations of Trump’s financial affairs continued. One Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, bequeathed an investigation to another, Alvin Bragg. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to tax fraud and was jailed. No Trump indictment emerged.Mark Pomerantz, an experienced prosecutor working for Bragg, resigned and criticised the DA for not moving against Trump, who Pomerantz said was guilty of “numerous” felonies. This February, Pomerantz released a book in which he described the Daniels payment as a “zombie case”, because it would not die.Shortly after that, it emerged that Bragg was moving towards an indictment arising from the Daniels payment, reportedly involving falsification of business records, tax fraud and campaign finance violations.On Thursday, news broke of an indictment, reportedly on 34 counts, covering the cheques Trump sent to Cohen.Trump denounced the charge, complaining of political persecution.Cohen told CNN: “It’s a lot of counts, no matter how you want to slice it. Thirty-four is a lot of counts.”Daniels said: “Thank you to everyone for your support and love! I have so many messages coming in that I can’t respond … also don’t want to spill my champagne.” More

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      Trump will not be put in handcuffs for court date, lawyer says

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      Donald Trump’s lawyer insists the former president will not be put in handcuffs after a New York grand jury voted on Thursday to indict him over hush money payments made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.Speaking on ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday, a lawyer representing Trump, Joe Tacopina, said the indictment was shocking to Trump and his team.“I feel like the rule of law died yesterday in this country, and it’s not something I’m happy about,” Tacopina said. “This is unprecedented in this country’s history. I don’t know what to expect other than an arraignment.”Tacopina outlined what could happen: the courthouse will close as Trump arrives, Trump will appear in front of a judge and plead not guilty. His team will file motions against the indictment, arguing against “the legal liability of this case”.“I’m sure they’ll try to get every ounce of publicity from this thing,” Tacopina said. Referring to Trump and prosecutors, he added: “The president will not be put in handcuffs. I’m sure they’ll try to make sure they get some joy out of this by parading him.”Secret Service and New York state and city police are not “going to allow this to become a circus, at least as much as humanly possible”, Tacopina predicted. According to a memo seen by NBC, New York police have been told to report for duty on Friday and be prepared for “unusual disorder”.Since the indictment was still under seal on Friday morning, it was unclear how many charges Trump faces for the payment made to Daniels, for which he reimbursed his then lawyer Michael Cohen, who ended up going to prison for crimes partly related to the case, and has turned on his former boss and testified for the prosecution to the grand jury.Reports say Trump is facing at least 30 counts of business fraud. This is the first time a former US president has ever been criminally indicted.Though it is unclear whether Trump will be handcuffed, he is expected to be fingerprinted and photographed. More