New York

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump lawyer hopes Tuesday’s court hearing will stay ‘painless and classy’

      by

      An attorney for Donald Trump has said he hopes the proceedings can stay “painless and classy” at the court hearing scheduled for Tuesday where the former president plans to plead not guilty to charges filed against him after an investigation into hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.Joe Tacopina told CNN’s State of the Union show on Sunday that many of the particulars of the arraignment set for Tuesday were still “very much up in the air” besides the fact that the ex-president would “very loud and proudly say not guilty”.For instance, though he has said he doesn’t expect his client to be handcuffed, he claimed to not even know whether Trump would take the standard criminal defendant mugshot while being fingerprinted at the courthouse. Many people facing charges have found getting a mugshot taken to be humiliating, but some observers believe Trump could seek to put it on merchandise meant to raise funds as he runs for the oval office again in 2024.“Hopefully, this will be as painless and classy as possible for a situation like this,” Tacopina told the show’s host, Dana Bash. “I don’t even know, really, what brings us here.”Tacopina then spent some of the rest of his time with Bash arguing that the payments to Daniels that preceded Trump’s indictment were personal, as he’s done before. He insisted that they were part of a legal settlement, had nothing to do with the 2016 presidential campaign that he won and therefore documentation of them was not filed with the federal election commission.“This was a personal expenditure, not a campaign expenditure,” Tacopina said. “Had it been a campaign expenditure, he would have used campaign funds, and then of course we’d be talking about … the outrage at Donald Trump [using] campaign funds for personal spending. They’d be baying for his scalp. … He’s damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.”It remained unclear Sunday even to Trump’s legal team exactly what he had been charged with – the state indictment that a Manhattan grand jury handed up against him three days earlier was still under a court seal. However, it appears he may face dozens of charges over his role in the payment of $130,000 to Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 that the ex-president denies.The deal to pay Daniels to stay quiet materialized during the presidential race that Trump won over Hillary Clinton as the actor negotiated a deal to go on television and discuss her claims of the purported sexual encounter. Trump’s then lawyer, Michael Cohen, made the payment before pleading guilty in 2018 to federal charges of tax evasion and campaign-finance violations.The federal case that ensnared Cohen – who has since forfeited his license to practice law in New York – did not produce any charges against Trump. It was a separate state grand jury empaneled earlier this year by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg which voted to indict Trump after investigating whether the way in which he repaid Cohen – in $35,000 monthly increments documented as legal expenses – complied with laws governing campaign finances and the keeping of business records.At least one of the charges filed against Trump is a felony, reported the Associated Press, citing people familiar with the matter, which ostensibly increases the risk of prison time the former president might face if he is eventually convicted.Tacopina on Sunday dismissed Cohen as “a pathological, convicted liar”. He also alluded to how Cohen had gone on CNN hours after Trump became the first former US president to be indicted criminally and said he actually didn’t believe he had done anything wrong when he pleaded guilty in 2018.“I have all the documents to show – there was no tax evasion,” Cohen said. “None of this is accurate.”Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, spoke on the air with Bash after Tacopina and said there was “substantial documentation” beyond his client’s word of Trump’s role in the Daniels hush money as well as a similar payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal. McDougal has maintained that she had an affair with Trump in 2006 as well, when he was already married to former first lady Melania Trump. Trump denies McDougal’s claims, too.“There are other documents from other people and other testimony from other people – some of it direct [and] involved in conversations with Mr Trump,” Davis said. “It’s a wrong strategy if he thinks he’s building his whole strategy on personal attacks on Michael Cohen.”Preparations for Trump’s arraignment at Manhattan’s state criminal courthouse at 100 Centre Street have been ongoing for more than a week. Barriers have been put in place to help authorities with crowd control.If Trump enters his plea as planned on Tuesday, he is scheduled to be doing so in a courtroom where defendants accused of murder, attempted terrorism and illegal gun possession are set to appear as well.Reuters reported that the former president intended to spend the night at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Monday night. Trump sent out a statement on Sunday saying he then planned to make remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday evening after the scheduled arraignment. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      American Ramble review: a riveting tale of the divided United States

      by

      In spring 2021, Neil King trekked 330 miles from his Washington DC home to New York City. He passed through countryside, highways, towns and churchyards. His 25-day walk was also a journey through time. He looked at the US as it was and is and how it wishes to be seen. His resultant book is a beautifully written travelog, memoir, chronicle and history text. His prose is mellifluous, yet measured.In his college days, King drove a New York cab. At the Wall Street Journal, his remit included politics, terror and foreign affairs. He did a stint as global economics editor. One might expect him to be jaded. Fortunately, he is not. American Ramble helps make the past come alive.In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, King stops at the home of James Buchanan, the bachelor president from 1857 to 1861, who sympathized with the south and loathed abolition. Ending slavery could wait. Of the supreme court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, Buchanan highly approved.Also in Lancaster, King visits a townhouse once owned by Thaddeus Stevens, the 19th-century Republican congressman and radical abolitionist. At the start of the civil war, Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, viewed the conflict as the vehicle for preserving the Union. He opposed slavery but opposed secession more. For Stevens, slavery was an evil that demanded eradication.Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, King describes how the ancestors of one town greeted Confederate troops as heroes while another just 20 miles away viewed them as a scourge. Forks in the road are everywhere.King pays homage to the underground railroad, describing how the Mason-Dixon Line, the demarcation between north and south, free state and slave, came into being. Astronomy and borders had a lot to do with it. All of this emerges from the scenery and places King passes on his way.Imagining George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, he delivers a lesson on how such rivers came to be named. Names affixed to bodies of water by Indigenous peoples gave way to Dutch pronunciation, then anglicization. The Delaware, however, derived its moniker from Lord De La Warr, a “dubious aristocrat” otherwise known as Thomas West.Yet joy and wonder suffuse King’s tale. He smiles on the maker’s handiwork, uneven as it is. American Ramble depicts a stirring sunset and nightfall through the roof-window of a Quaker meeting house. Quiet stands at the heart of the experience. The here and now is loud and messy, but King ably conveys the silent majesty of the moment. The Bible recounts the Deity’s meeting with the prophet Elijah. He was not in the wind, a fire or an earthquake. Rather, He resided in a whisper.King recalls an earlier time in a Buddhist monastery. Warned that surrounding scenery would detract from solitude and commitment, he nevertheless succumbed. King is nothing if not curious.The quotidian counts too. He pops cold beers, downs pizzas and snarfs chicken parmesan. A wanderer needs sustenance. He is grateful for the day following the night. Predictability is miraculous, at times invaluable.King is a cancer survivor and a pilgrim. He is a husband and father, son and brother. Life’s fragility and randomness have left their mark. His malady is in remission but he moves like a man unknowing how long good fortune will last. His voice is a croak, a casualty of Lyme disease. He is restless. Life’s clock runs. He writes of how his brother Kevin lost his battle with a brain tumor.King puts his head and heart on the page. His life story helps drive the narrative, a mixture of the personal, political and pastoral. But it is not only about him. He meets strangers who become friends, of a sort. At times, people treat him as an oddity – or simply an unwanted presence. More frequently, they are open if not welcoming. As his walk continues, word gets out. Minor celebrity results.The author is awed by generosity, depravation and the world. He is moved by a homeless woman and her daughter. Traversing the New Jersey Turnpike presents a near-insurmountable challenge. A mother and son offer him a kayak to paddle beneath the traffic. He accepts.A Colorado native, King is at home in the outdoors. Nature is wondrous and sometimes disturbing. Rough waters complicate his passages. He studies heaps on a landfill. He meets a New Jerseyan with pickup truck adorned by Maga flags. The gentleman bestows beer, snacks and jokes. King divides the universe into “anywheres” and “somewheres”. He puts himself in the first camp and finds placed-ness all around.American Ramble captures the religious and demographic topography that marks the mid-Atlantic and north-eastern US. Here, dissenters, Anabaptists, German pietists, Presbyterians and Catholics first landed. King pays homage to their pieces of turf. His reductionism is gentle. He appreciates the legacy of what came before him. Landscapes change, human nature less so, even as it remains unpredictable.“When I crossed the Delaware two days before,” he writes, “I had entered what I later came to call Presbyteriana, a genteel and horsey patch settled by Presbyterians and Quakers.” Princeton University stands at its heart.E pluribus unum was tough to pull off when the settlers came. It may even be tougher now. King quotes Nick Rizzo, a denizen of Staten Island, New York City’s Trumpy outer borough: “We are losing our ability to forge any unity at all from these United States.”Rizzo joined King along the way. In the Canterbury Tales, April stands as the height of spring. It was prime time for religious pilgrimages, “what with Chaucer and all, and it being April”, Rizzo explains.“Strangers rose to the occasion to provide invaluable moments,” King writes. Amen.
      American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal is published in the US by HarperCollins More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Who is Alvin Bragg, the DA who got a grand jury to indict Donald Trump?

      by

      Alvin Bragg’s official biography describes him as a “son of Harlem” who became Manhattan district attorney after “a lifetime of hard work, courage and demanding justice”.In obtaining a grand jury indictment against Donald Trump over his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in 2016, the Democrat has now carved himself a place in history, as the man behind the first vote to criminally indict a former president.Now 49, Bragg is a Harvard-educated former assistant New York state attorney general and assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York.In 2021, he was elected as the first Black Manhattan DA and only the fourth permanent occupant of the post in 80 years.In office, his biography says, he has focused on “protecting everyday New Yorkers from abuses by the powerful, and correcting past injustices by vacating wrongful convictions”.The biography also highlights the creation of a Special Victims Division, handling “extremely sensitive cases in a trauma informed and survivor centered manner”, and an expansion of a Hate Crimes Unit.Bragg has prominent critics, however. Chief among them is Mark Pomerantz, an experienced New York prosecutor who joined an investigation of Trump begun by Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr, but resigned in February 2022.In his resignation letter, Pomerantz said Trump was “guilty of numerous felony violations” in his business and political affairs and called Bragg’s initial decision to stop pursuing an indictment “a grave failure of justice”. The two men exchanged shots in the press.Last month, Pomerantz published a book in which he described efforts to make Trump’s hush money payment to Stormy Daniels a viable path to prosecution.Pomerantz called the Daniels payment a “zombie case” because it would not die. A month later, it emerged that Bragg was homing in on a Trump indictment in the very same case.Bragg’s official biography now highlights a six-count indictment against the Trump ally Steve Bannon for fraud, and the conviction of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization chief financial officer, for tax evasion.Bragg has also faced criticism for his approach to crime, not least from the New York City police commissioner, Keechant Sewell.In early 2022, Bragg issued a memo instructing prosecutors to avoid seeking prison time for all but the most serious crimes. In a city where crime is always a key political issue, and in an atmosphere of heightened concern fueled by the disruptions of the Covid pandemic, Sewell told NYPD officers she was “severely troubled”.Bragg said the memo had been misunderstood. After a meeting, he and Sewell agreed that “police and prosecutors would weigh the individual facts and circumstances of each case with a view toward justice and work together to keep New Yorkers safe”.Later in 2022, the issue of crime and punishment in New York flared forth again. After a Hispanic Harlem shopkeeper stabbed a Black assailant, Bragg charged the shopkeeper with second-degree murder. After an outcry, the charges were dropped. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Donald Trump indicted on criminal charges in hush money payment case – live

      by

      Donald Trump and his legal team were reportedly not given advance warning that an indictment was coming down.But they have now been informed of the decision, the Associated Press has confirmed.We have not heard yet from the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, whose office is in charge of that case.A lawyer for Trump said moments ago that the former president has now been told that he’s been indicted. It has not been made public what the charges are or whether such charges will be of misdemeanor or felony status. The grand jury will have filed the indictment under seal.Observers believe this has taken the president’s team, at least in the moment, by surprise, where they are gathered at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida.Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the indictment of Donald Trump, the former president and current presidential candidate, on criminal charges related to his hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Numerous US media outlets are reporting that the grand jury in New York has voted in the last few minutes to indict Trump.It is a historic move. No former president has ever been criminally indicted. We are waiting for details to emerge and for reactions from Trump or his legal team.Daniels says she had a short sexual affair with Trump in 2006. Trump denies that.Trump also denies wrongdoing, despite admitting reimbursing the $130,000 payment made by his then lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, as election day approached in late 2016.Trump claims to have been a victim of extortion, and says, via lawyers, he initially lied, saying he knew nothing of the payment, because it involved a non-disclosure agreement.News of the Daniels payment broke in early 2018, when Trump was president. Cohen later pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, contributing to a three-year custodial sentence.Trump faces wide-ranging legal jeopardy, also including investigations of his election subversion at federal and state levels, a civil suit over his business affairs in New York and a defamation trial arising from a rape allegation by the writer E Jean Carroll.He denies all wrongdoing. In the Manhattan hush money case, as in the investigation of his election subversion in Georgia, where an indictment is thought to be imminent, Trump claims to be the victim of prosecutorial racism.According to Mark Pomerantz, a New York prosecutor who worked under Bragg, as the Manhattan DA continued an investigation begun by his predecessor, the Daniels payment came to be seen as a “zombie case” that simply would not die.It has now risen to bite Trump, potentially roiling the race for the Republican nomination to face Joe Biden at the polls next year.Stay with us for rolling coverage. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Donald Trump indicted over 2016 hush money payment – report

      by

      Donald Trump has been indicted in New York, over a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election, the New York Times reported on Thursday.The paper cited four people with knowledge of the matter.No former US president has ever been criminally indicted. The news is set to shake the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in which Trump leads most polls.Trump also faces legal jeopardy over his election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress; his attempts to overturn the 2020 result in Georgia; his retention of classified records; his business dealings; and a defamation suit arising from an allegation of rape by the writer E Jean Carroll, which Trump denies.Daniels claims an affair with Trump in 2006. Trump denies the affair but has admitted directing his then lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay Daniels $130,000 for her silence.Cohen was also revealed to have arranged for $150,000 to be paid to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who claimed to have an affair with Trump.That payment was made by David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper, which squashed the story.Trump has admitted reimbursing Cohen with payments the Trump Organization logged as legal expenses.Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and was president from 2017 to 2021. News of the payment to Daniels broke in January 2018.Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law, contributing to a three-year prison sentence handed down in December 2018.Investigations of the Daniels payment have dragged on. Earlier this year, Mark Pomerantz, an experienced New York prosecutor who resigned from Bragg’s team then wrote a book, called the payment a “zombie case” which would not die.Earlier this month, Cohen testified before the grand jury in the Manhattan hush money case. Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway, former White House aides, reportedly spoke to prosecutors, as did Daniels, Pecker and Jeffrey McConney, senior vice-president and controller of the Trump Organization.Trump did not testify. He denies wrongdoing, claiming the payments represented extortion.Earlier this week, a Trump lawyer, Joe Tacopina, told MSNBC Trump had simply taken advice from his lawyer, Cohen, which was “not a crime”. Tacopina also said the payments to Cohen were simply “legal fees”.Trump’s lawyers are expected to seek to delay the case.Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said Trump would in all likelihood not head swiftly to court.Writing for MSNBC, Weissmann said: “Beyond Trump’s notorious abuse of the legal system by throwing sand in the gears to slow things down, a criminal case takes time.”He added: “There is no end of motions that can be filed to delay a trial, which could easily cause the litigation to be ongoing during the Republican primary season [in 2024] – something a court could also find is reason to delay any trial date.“Indeed, even in a more quotidian case, having a trial within a year of indictment would be quick.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s verbal assaults pose risks to prosecutors and could fuel violence

      by

      Donald Trump’s demagogic attacks on prosecutors investigating criminal charges against him are aimed at riling up his base and could spark violence, but show no signs of letting up as a potential indictment in at least one case looms, say legal experts.At campaign rallies, speeches and on social media Trump has lambasted state and federal prosecutors as “thugs” and claimed that two of them – who are Black – are “racist”, language designed to inflame racial tension.He has also used antisemitic tropes by referring to a conspiracy of “globalists” and the influence of billionaire Jewish financier George Soros.Trump’s drive to undercut four criminal inquiries that he faces is reaching a fever pitch as a Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry looks poised to bring charges against Trump over his key part in a $130,000 hush money payment in 2016 to adult film star Stormy Daniels with whom he allegedly had an affair.In his blitz to deter and obfuscate two of the criminal investigations, Trump has resorted to verbal assaults on two Black district attorneys in Manhattan and Georgia labeling them as “racist”, even as he simultaneously battles to win the White House again.In a broader attack on the four state and federal investigations at a Texas rally on Saturday Trump blasted the “thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system”, while on his Truth Social platform last week he warned of “possible death and destruction” if he’s charged in the hush money inquiry.But now Trump’s incendiary attacks against the federal and state inquiries is prompting warnings that Trump’s unrelenting attacks on prosecutors could fuel violence, as he did on January 6 with bogus claims that the 2020 was stolen from him and a mob of his backers attacked the Capitol leading to at least five deaths.“Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, amplified through his social media postings and his high decibel fearmongering in Texas, pose clear physical dangers to prosecutors and investigators,” said former acting chief of the fraud section at the justice department Paul Pelletier. “With Trump’s actions promoting the January 6 insurrection serving as a cautionary tale, the potential for violent reactions to any of his charges cannot be understated.”Ex-prosecutors see Trump reverting to tactics he’s often deployed in legal and political battles.Trump’s invective say experts won’t deter prosecutors as they separately weigh fraud, obstruction and other charges related to January 6 and other issues, but echo scare tactics he’s used before as in his two impeachments, and may help Trump’s chances of becoming the Republican nominee by angering the base which could influence primary outcomes.“None of these accusations about the motives of prosecutors, however, will negate the evidence of Trump’s own crimes. A jury will focus on the facts and the law, and not any of this name calling. The Trump strategy may work in the court of public opinion, but not in a court of law,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan.That may explain why Trump has received more political cover from three conservative House committee chairs, who joined his effort to intimidate Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, by launching investigations to obtain his records and testimony, threats that Bragg and legal experts have denounced as political stunts and improper.The legal stakes for Trump are enormous, and unprecedented for a former president, as the criminal inquiries have been gaining momentum with more key witnesses who have past or present ties to Trump testifying before grand juries, and others getting subpoenas.Two investigations led by special counsel Jack Smith are separately looking into possible charges against Trump for obstructing an official proceeding and defrauding the US government as he schemed with top allies to block Joe Biden from taking office, and potential obstruction and other charges tied to Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office.Further, Fulton county Georgia district attorney, Fani Willis, has said decisions are “imminent” about potentially charging Trump and others who tried to overturn Joe Biden’s win there in 2020 with erroneous claims of fraud.Much of the probe’s work has involved a special grand jury that reportedly has recommended several indictments, with a focus on Trump’s high pressure call on 2 January 2021 to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger beseeching him to just “find” 11,780 votes to help block Joe Biden’s win there.Trump has denied all wrong doing and denounced the inquiries as “witch hunts”.Little wonder though that Trump’s squadron of lawyers has lately filed a batch of motions in Georgia and Washington DC with mixed success to slow prosecutors as they have moved forward in gathering evidence from key witnesses and mull charges against Trump.“Blustering in court or in the media about the supposed bias or racism of the Fulton county and Manhattan county prosecutors will not convince a court to remove a democratically-elected prosecutor, and certainly the Republicans in the House of Representatives have no legal authority ability to influence the course of criminal justice in New York state proceedings,” said Fordham law professor and ex-prosecutor in New York’s southern district Bruce Green.Green stressed: “None of Trump’s moves, such as calling prosecutors racists, are likely to throw any of the prosecutors off their game: prosecutors tend to be focused, determined and thick-skinned.”Likewise, ex-US attorney in Georgia Michael Moore told the Guardian the Trump attacks on the two black prosecutors are “completely baseless. The charges of racism against the prosecutors is more of an indication of the weakness of his claims than most anything else he has said.”Moore scoffed too at the moves by Trump’s House Republican allies.“It’s rich to me that the Republicans in the House claim to be the party of limited government, but as soon as they get in power and look like they might lose another election, they immediately use their big government power to meddle in a matter that purely belongs to the local jurisdiction.”NYU law professor Stephen Gillers sees similar dynamics at play in Trump’s tactics.“Trump cannot stop the judicial process, although he can try to slow it. But he can undermine its credibility through his charges and by mobilizing his supporters. I see what he’s doing now as aimed at them, just as he tried to discredit the election returns in their eyes and anger them with baseless charges over the “steal”.The weakness of Trump’s legal moves was revealed in two court rulings in DC requiring testimony before grand juries from former top aides including ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the January 6 inquiry, and one of his current lawyers Evan Corcoran in the classified documents case.The two rulings should give a good boost to the special counsel in his separate investigations of Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss on January 6 when Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s win about which Meadows must now testify, and Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar a Lago after he left the White House about which Corcoran has to testify.As the four investigations intensify, more aggressive moves by Trump and his lawyers to derail potential charges in Georgia, Manhattan and from the special counsel are expected before, as well as after, any charges may be filed.“If I were on the prosecution teams in Manhattan or Georgia, I would expect Trump to assert every defense he can think of, including accusing the prosecutors of misconduct,” McQuade said.A judge on Monday ordered Fani Willis to respond by 1 May to the Trump team’s motion seeking to bar her from further investigating or charging Trump, and wants all testimony from some 75 witnesses, including Meadows and Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, before the special grand jury rejected.The judge’s order was in response to a Trump legal motion that McQuade said “appears to be baseless”.Former Watergate prosecutor Phlip Lacovara told the Guardian that Trump’s lawyers are deploying different legal tactics in the investigations.“The Georgia strategy is partly a strategy of delay,” in which the Trump team is “raising dozens and dozens of objections, many of which are specious, in the hope that one will be sufficient to work on appeal and to keep him out of jail,” Lacovara said.In Manhattan, he added, they’re trying “to create the impression that this is a highly visible political stunt to exclude Trump from running”.That tactic could help in “trying to pollute the jury pool” since a hung jury would be good for Trump. “All he needs is one juror who believes this is all a concocted plot.”Former DoJ officials and experts expect Trump and his lawyers will keep up a frenzied stream of hyperbolic attacks and legal actions.“This is more of what we saw during the election,” said former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer who served in the George HW Bush administration. “He throws up gibberish and obstruction.” More