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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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      Gasp heard on Fox News as Donald Trump indictment announced – video

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      The news that Donald Trump had become the first former US president to face criminal charges drew an audible gasp on Fox News, as broadcasters and viewers processed the extraordinary development. ‘We have just gotten word that former president Donald Trump has been indicted,’ the host begins, while a stunned gasp is audible from off-camera. ‘What?’ asks another incredulous voice, as the presenter explains to Fox News’s afternoon audience that Trump will be charged in relation to an alleged ‘hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels’ More

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      Donald Trump supporters surround Mar-a-Lago home after indictment – video

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      Supporters of Donald Trump gathered outside his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida to show their support for the former US president after he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury. The case is centred on a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. 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 More

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      Hush money to a porn star: of course this was how Trump was indicted | Moira Donegan

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      Stormy Daniels didn’t seem to know what she had. In 2011, when The Apprentice was still getting decent ratings and Donald Trump had drawn attention to himself for racist claims about the birthplace of Barack Obama, Daniels – also known as Stephanie Clifford – started asking around to see who she could sell her story to. Daniels, for years a successful porn performer, had met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. According to her, he invited her to his hotel room, offered her work on his TV show and then had sex with her. The two remained friendly afterwards; Trump invited Daniels to the launch of his Trump Vodka brand the following year. It’s the kind of thing you suspect that these two people would have written off as a funny story. Instead, it’s the impetus for one of the most politically volatile prosecutions in the nation’s history: the first criminal indictment of a former president, which was issued on Thursday by a federal grand jury in New York.Stormy Daniels and the illegal, fraudulent machinations that the Trump campaign allegedly undertook to pay her off during the height of the presidential campaign in 2016 have always struck me as the most quintessential of Trump’s many scandals. Trump denies Daniels’ allegations, but in retrospect, with the hindsight of what we’ve come to learn of him, the scene she recounts is almost unbearably true to his character: the gathering of low-rent celebrities, the paltry quid pro quo, the golf, and the sad, adolescent fantasy of sex with a porn star. The whole story drips with Trump’s defining attribute: the desperate and insatiable need to have his ego gratified. Which is why to me, at least, it seems obvious that Daniels is telling the truth.Back then, she offered the interview about it to Life & Style magazine. The piece never ran, but they paid her $15,000. It’s not a lot of money, when you put it in the context of what has happened since, but Daniels seems to have made the same assumption that the rest of us did: that Trump would remain on the C-list, making needful and desperate bids for the attention of the tabloids. Back then, you’d have to have been crazy to think that he could have been president.When it became clear that he might be, Daniels did what any savvy businesswoman would have done: she upped her price. After the Access Hollywood tape broke in October of 2016, Trump’s treatment of women – his leering use of them as props for his ego, his boorish demonstrations of virility for the benefit of other men and, suddenly, a flow of uncannily similar allegations of harassment and assault – gave Daniels another opening.She approached the National Enquirer, which tipped off the Trump campaign. Michael Cohen, Trump’s sweaty and exhausted lawyer and fixer, offered to pay her $130,000 to shut up and go away, which Daniels was happy to accept. Cohen fronted the money himself; initially, he seems to have taken out a line of credit on his own house. Why go through this labyrinthine route? Why have the lawyer pay personally – an unusual and inappropriate arrangement – especially in an amount that was large for Michael Cohen but should have been small for his alleged billionaire of a boss?The theory of the case, and the one that has always been most plausible, is that Cohen, and not Trump, initially paid Daniels off because if Trump had paid her, that payment would have been subject to scrutiny – from campaign finance regulators and from the public. And in the waning days of what was a chaotic and flailing election, this was scrutiny that the Trump campaign could not afford.The Stormy Daniels affair is not the most serious of Trump’s alleged crimes, and so it can seem anticlimactic, and even a little ridiculous, that this is the only bit of his wrongdoing that he has been indicted for. A grand jury in Georgia is investigating a phone call he made to the secretary of state there in the wake of the 2020 election, seemingly imploring the official, Brad Raffensperger, to facilitate election fraud in his favor; at the justice department, a series of investigations into the January 6 riot, which disrupted the transfer of power and left five people dead, are proceeding at a glacial pace. He was impeached for it; he was also impeached for holding military aid to Ukraine hostage so he could try to dig up dirt on Joe Biden’s son.Trump also seems to have taken dozens or hundreds of classified documents with him to his tacky resort at Mar-a-Lago, throwing them into boxes like someone stuffing their pockets with tiny shampoo bottles before they leave a fancy hotel. But none of that is what he’s being held accountable for: he’s being held to account for trying to launder his hush money to a porn star.Trump will no doubt claim that the indictment against him on these comparatively trivial grounds is politically motivated, and he’s already got some support from Democrats in making that claim. David Axelrod, the former Obama strategist, characterized the Daniels charges, not unreasonably, as the “least meaningful” of Trump’s offenses. “If he’s going to be indicted in any of these probes, this [is] the one he probably would want first to try and color all of them as politically motivated.”But if anything, what seems politically motivated is the fact that Trump has not been indicted on criminal charges already: his criminality and corruption are so profligate and unconcealed that the failure to charge him – a failure which until Thursday was unanimous among prosecutors across the country – seemed manifestly a result of fear. “No one is above the law” is something prosecutors like to say a lot; but the large-scale impunity for the rich and powerful indicates that they don’t quite believe it.Now that’s changed, at least in a small way. It’s yet to be seen whether any other prosecutors will discover the courage to charge Trump. For now, he’s only been charged on the stupidest and lowest matter possible. Maybe that’s appropriate: Trump the man always seemed a little too small and stupid, his effect on history dramatically outsized to the banality of his character. This isn’t the Trump indictment we wanted, but it might be the one we deserve.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Reactions to Trump’s indictment run the gamut, cynical to sublime

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      For Democrats, Donald Trump’s indictment was proof that no one, not even a former president, was above the law. For Republicans, it was the culmination of a years-long political witch-hunt designed to take down Donald Trump.The unprecedented move by a Manhattan grand jury triggered a wave of predictably partisan responses, reflecting a nation deeply divided over Trump and his presidency, which ended after his failed attempts to cling to power culminated in a deadly assault on the US Capitol. News on Thursday that Trump had become the first ever former US president to face criminal charges drew an audible gasp on Fox News, as broadcasters and viewers processed the extraordinary development.Though the charges remain under seal as of late Thursday, the case centered on payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims from the porn star Stormy Daniels and the former model Karen McDougal that they had extramarital affairs with Trump. A spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed the indictment and said prosecutors were working with the president’s legal team to coordinate a surrender.Trump, who is running again for president, reacted angrily in a lengthy statement that denounced the grand jury vote as “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history”.He framed the indictment as part of a long litany of investigations he has faced since he “came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower” to announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015. He was the first president to be impeached twice, first over his efforts to pressure Ukraine’s president into announcing a criminal investigation into Joe Biden, and later for his role inciting the violence that unfolded in his name on 6 January 2021.“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable – indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” he said. “Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done.”Trump ratcheted up his attacks on the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, accusing him of “doing Joe Biden’s dirty work” while failing to prosecute crime in New York. Many top-ranking Republicans followed Trump’s lead.The notional field of 2024 Republican presidential candidates have treaded carefully around Trump’s legal woes even as they prepare to challenge him for the nomination.Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is seen as Trump’s strongest potential opponent should he declare his candidacy as is expected, called the indictment “un-American” and assailed Bragg as a “Soros-backed” Manhattan prosecutor who was “stretching the law to target a political opponent”.He added that as governor of Florida, where Trump has lived since leaving the White House, he would not oblige an extradition request should Trump refuse to surrender voluntarily, which the former president is expected to do on Tuesday.Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s UN secretary and is now running against him for the nomination, has attacked the investigation. So too has Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president who is contemplating a run for president.“I think the unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage,” Pence said. “And it appears for millions of Americans to be nothing more than a political prosecution.”The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, said in a statement that Bragg had “irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election”.“As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump,” McCarthy said. “The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account.”Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, one of Trump’s fiercest allies in Congress, tweeted simply: “Outrageous”. Jordan has sought to use his perch atop the powerful House judiciary committee to attack the legitimacy of the various investigations into the former president, while pointing his gavel at the Biden administration.Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Trump loyalist, suggested the House retaliate by impeaching Biden “now that the gloves are off”.“Enough of this witch-hunt bullshit,” she concluded.Republican Lindsey Graham, the senior senator from South Carolina, issued a statement calling the indictment “one of the most irresponsible decisions in American history by any prosecutor”. “The chief witness for prosecution is a convicted felon, Michael Cohen, whose previous lawyer said he is untrustworthy. Upon scrutiny, this case folds like a cheap suit.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe White House declined to comment on the indictment of Biden’s predecessor and potential opponent in 2024. But many Democrats, including those who had sought to hold Trump accountable for his conduct as president, sounded a note of satisfaction after years of insisting that no one was above the law.Nancy Pelosi, who presided over the House as speaker during both of Trump’s impeachments, said: “The grand jury has acted upon the facts and the law. No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence. Hopefully, the former president will peacefully respect the system, which grants him that right.”Democratic leaders were more muted in their response. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said there should be “no outside political influence, intimidation or interference in the case” and urged calm in response to the indictment.California congressman Adam Schiff, the Democrat who led the prosecution in Trump’s first impeachment trial, said Trump’s “unlawful conduct” was unprecedented in American history.“A nation of laws must hold the rich and powerful accountable, even when they hold high office. Especially when they do. To do otherwise is not democracy,” Schiff said.Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a watchdog organization in Washington, called Trump the “most corrupt president in American history”.“He has spent his entire political career dodging accountability for his wanton disregard for the law. It is finally catching up to him,” its president, Noah Bookbinder, said in a statement. “The charges in New York are the first ever brought against him, but they will not be the last.”This is not the only legal challenge Trump is facing. He remains the subject of three separate criminal investigations, involving his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that culminated in the January 6 assault on the US Capitol as well as handling of classified documents that he improperly kept after leaving the White House.Clark Brewster, a lawyer representing Daniels, said Trump’s indictment was “no cause for joy”.“The hard work and conscientiousness of the grand jurors must be respected,” he said. “Now let truth and justice prevail. No one is above the law.”Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and a key witness who testified that he arranged the payments to Daniels on Trump’s behalf, said he took “solace in validating the adage that no one is above the law, not even a former president”.“Today’s indictment is not the end of this chapter, but, rather, just the beginning,” said Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges related to his role in arranging payments for Daniels and McDougal ahead of the 2016 presidential election.Meanwhile, Yusef Salaam, who was exonerated in the infamous Central Park jogger case more than a decade after Trump placed full-page newspaper ads in several New York newspapers calling for the death penalty for him and four other Black and Latino teens wrongly accused of raping a white woman, issued a one-word statement: “Karma”. More

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      What does Donald Trump’s indictment say about US democracy? | Jan-Werner Mueller

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      So it finally happened. Trump has been indicted. For Democrats and scattered anti-Trumpers on the right, it will probably feel not nearly as satisfying or generate as much schadenfreude as they imagined. In fact, it might seem positively anticlimactic.After all, Trump did not get indicted for his political crimes and misdemeanors. Other investigations may still catch up with him. But the fact that there is no choreographed political theater is precisely how democracies tend to work: messy, piecemeal, ensuring that there is no impunity.Trump sycophants like Elise Stefanik and Andy Biggs complain that the country is becoming authoritarian and like “the third world”. Never mind the underlying racism of such pronouncements – the absence of spectacle proves that they are wrong, as does that fact that countries who fare far better on global democracy rankings than the US have not hesitated to go after former leaders for wrongdoing.Former German president Christian Wulff was indicted on corruption charges – and cleared. Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was indicted for bribing a judge and for campaign finance violations; he was convicted and sentenced to prison (his appeals are pending). Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, a kind of Trump before Trump, was sentenced to four years in prison. In France, it would have once been unthinkable that a president – who, on one reading of the original, rather royalist conception of the Fifth Republic, embodies the country as a whole – could be treated like an ordinary criminal. But that is the point: the law cannot allow for exceptions; in both democracy and according to the rule of law, we are meant to be equals.To be sure, it can easily seem like, in the end, there are different rules, and different punishments, for different people: Berlusconi never saw the inside of prison; for reasons of age, his sentence was commuted to four hours a week of work with dementia patients. If appeals fail, Sarkozy would in the end only have to suffer house arrest with an electronic monitoring bracelet for his illegal campaign spending. Berlusconi has picked up his political career again and today sits very comfortably in the Italian senate. But this is again typical for democracies: there are no comprehensive show trials or even just cathartic moments; yet – unlike in countries congresswoman Stefanik would associate with the “third world” – there is no complete impunity either.Prosecutions send a signal that going into politics is not a path to avoiding justice. Berlusconi, who was in legal trouble for decades, clearly hoped that parliamentary immunity would save him from the consequences of scandal after scandal. But being popular and being innocent are not the same thing; and any good democratic system will discourage a flight forward into politics so as to avoid proper accountability. Trump also appears to have assumed that declaring his candidacy for 2024 would render indictments less likely – and it’s crucial to prove such assumptions wrong.Of course, given the clear and present danger Trump has been posing to the republic already for years, there were two moments when he could have been removed from politics once and for all; in both instances, when successful impeachments might have banned him from holding office permanently, cowardly Republicans stood in the way. Some of them might be secretly relieved that the justice system is doing the work for them now. Yet, in all likelihood, the pattern of duplicity will continue: on the one hand, clandestine hope that Trump is irreparably damaged as a presidential contender, or at least that his capacity to shape the Republican party into a personality cult is diminished; on the other, loud proclamations of loyalty and accusations that Democrats are “weaponizing” the government.No matter what Democrats say, or what a Democratic district attorney does, Republican accusations will be levelled at maximum volume and with maximum vituperation. Trump is making “retribution” central to his politics. Framing democratic contests as matters of revenge is as dangerous as it gets – but it is hardly Democrats who started it.Desires for revenge and resentments are bountiful resources for a political machine which makes a handsome profit on the side: Trump is already monetizing the indictment, just as he profited from the big lie about the election. As authoritarian populist leaders around the world have discovered, shared grievances and making everyone feel like a victim can create solidarity. This would happen no matter how well choreographed indictments are, or what Democrats say or do not say.Ironically, one factor that may undermine this political-financial business model of martyrdom is the sheer tawdriness of the hush money saga. Trump at the time evidently no longer trusted his self-assessment that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and the base would still come out for him. Hard to believe that people, after the Access Hollywood tape, would have cared about yet another, rather conventional, scandal. As subsequent years were to prove, his followers, especially evangelicals, have not been particularly exercised about his personal life.There is perhaps poetic justice in the possibility that the man who bet on being the ultimate outsider breaking all conventions may have his comeuppance as a result of a very old-fashioned scandal.
      Jan-Werner Mueller is a Guardian US columnist More