Subterms
The Manhattan district attorney’s office unveiled an indictment on Tuesday charging former President Donald J. Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a low-level felony in New York State. The charges are related to reimbursements to Mr. Trump’s former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, for a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels […] More
Former President Donald J. Trump, speaking at his Florida resort at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening hours after his arraignment in New York, cast the case against him as unfair and politically motivated in an unusually short 21-minute speech that focused as much on other grievances and investigations.Standing before his family members, Republican Party officials and allies, Mr. Trump called the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a “criminal,” claiming without evidence that Mr. Bragg had leaked information from the grand jury. And Mr. Trump also called the judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, “a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family.”In the courtroom during his arraignment earlier on Tuesday, Justice Merchan admonished Mr. Trump about his public remarks, urging him to refrain from making statements about the case with “the potential to incite violence and civil unrest.”In his speech, which was carried live by CNN and Fox News, Mr. Trump spent much of his time airing other perceived wrongs against him. He renewed his criticisms of the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago in August, the New York attorney general’s civil investigation into him and his family’s business dealings and the open case in Georgia about his meddling in the 2020 election there.“This is a persecution, not an investigation,” he said of the New York attorney general’s case.Anticipation for Mr. Trump’s remarks had been building all day as cable networks and national media outlets delivered minute-by-minute updates. The former president, meanwhile, declined to speak with reporters in New York and instead saved his remarks for a prime-time address back home in Florida..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.But Mr. Trump seemed to squander his opportunity with a speech that was long on complaints and light on applause lines. Inside the ballroom, the biggest cheer of the night was when he ended his speech by repeating his 2016 campaign motto.His remarks amount to a strategy that has become commonplace for Mr. Trump: blurring the lines between his court battles and political opponents to sway public opinion over his arrest while ginning up enthusiasm — and campaign contributions — from supporters.The ballroom at Mar-a-Lago where Mr. Trump spoke — the same spot where he announced his third White House bid in November — was set up with a wide walkway for Trump allies and relatives to make their entrances. The design also divided the room in a way that made the crowd appear larger than it was. Roughly 350 seats were set up for the audience, which included two of Mr. Trump’s adult children, Tiffany Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as well as Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, both far-right Republicans.The former president spoke roughly seven hours after he left a Manhattan courthouse, where he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges that prosecutors brought against him over his role in coordinating hush-money payments to a porn star. He is the first former president to face the prospect of a criminal trial.Mr. Trump has long aimed to paint himself as a target of politically motivated attacks and claimed the charges against him were baseless. Shortly after being indicted by a grand jury last week, he issued a statement calling the indictment “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history.”His message has resonated with supporters. Since his indictment, Mr. Trump’s poll numbers in the 2024 Republican presidential primary have risen by double digits, even as some longtime supporters have slowed in their rush to defend him. As he was arraigned on Tuesday, a crowd of his supporters gathered in the streets outside the Manhattan courthouse. More
In Lower Manhattan on Tuesday morning, near the courthouse where Donald J. Trump was to be arraigned, Dion Cini, a Trump merchandise entrepreneur from Brooklyn and frequent presence at Trump rallies, waved an enormous flag that read TRUMP OR DEATH.“We’re living in history right now,” he told a scrum of mostly European reporters.But the crowd — for a demonstration convened by the New York Young Republican Club, where Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene would soon speak — was overwhelmingly made up of journalists. Trump supporters were so outnumbered that anyone in Make America Great Again attire was quickly swarmed by cameras.On Truth Social last month, Mr. Trump exhorted his supporters: “WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!” But while his indictment has been met with outrage across right-wing media and social media, the offline response has so far been a far cry from the turnouts at his campaign rallies — much less the tens of thousands he drew to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, for the rally that became a violent attempt to avert the end of his presidency.Pro-Trump organizers and outside observers have pointed to a range of factors to explain the low turnout. They include the relatively short notice of the arraignment, the mixed messages from right-wing media figures and politicians like Ms. Greene — who last month stoked fear that an indictment protest could be infiltrated by “Feds/Fed assets” — and the question of what, exactly, a demonstration would accomplish.But the small crowds are also a testament to a political landscape that has changed since the explosive finale of Mr. Trump’s presidency.“The right has zero interest in repeating anything that even remotely resembles Jan. 6,” said Dustin Stockton, an organizer of the pro-Trump Stop the Steal rallies that culminated at the Capitol that day.The riot drew its incendiary force from its particular combination of rank-and-file Trump supporters and a smaller cohort of extremists who had found a footing in the Republican mainstream in the Trump years. Those constituencies grew closer in 2020, as Covid-19 lockdowns, racial justice protests and riots and finally Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election drew them together around a common set of grievances — grievances that were converted into a call to action by right-wing media and influencers, Republican politicians and Mr. Trump himself.Jon Lewis, a research fellow in the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, said those conditions would be extraordinarily hard to replicate, even after a development as extraordinary as Mr. Trump’s indictment.“The further away we get from Jan. 6, the more it is being recognized as a unique perfect storm of events, of actors, of circumstances,” Mr. Lewis said.Since Jan. 6, rallies similar to those that gathered large crowds in 2020 have struggled to produce significant turnouts. An annual gun-rights rally in Richmond, Va., which brought tens of thousands of gun owners and militia members into the streets in January 2020, drew only hundreds in late January 2021. The crowds were similarly sparse at Inauguration Day protests in Washington and statehouses across the country days later.Demonstrations against Covid-19 vaccine mandates in late 2021 and early 2022 sought to recapture the energy of the “re-open” protests in the spring of 2020, and did draw several thousand to the National Mall in January 2022. But they mostly evaporated after states eased their Covid-19 policies that spring.Claims of a stolen 2020 election animated many prominent Republican candidates and grass-roots groups in last year’s midterm elections. But the most prominent election deniers lost, and the most significant demonstration over the candidates’ defeats, in Phoenix, drew only a couple of hundred people.A crucial missing element in all of these events was Mr. Trump himself. His ability to draw supporters to the new cause of his prosecution remains to be seen.But participants and observers have also pointed to the chilling effect of the law enforcement crackdowns and congressional investigations since Jan. 6. F.B.I. domestic terrorism investigations have more than doubled since 2020, according to the Government Accountability Office. Under the Biden administration, “you have seen the early signs of a sea change in how the U.S. government is approaching domestic violent extremism,” Mr. Lewis said.High-profile federal prosecutions related to Jan. 6 have swept up the national leaderships of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, some of whom have been convicted of sedition and other serious crimes. Individual rioters, many of whom documented their activities on Jan. 6 on social media, have faced detention and prosecution on lesser charges, or at least visits from federal agents.The result has been a climate of paranoia around the open social media organizing that was critical to the Stop the Steal demonstrations, as well as around large offline gatherings. This is particularly true in Washington, with its large federal law enforcement presence, and New York, where prosecutors have become particularly reviled figures on the right for their legal proceedings against the Trump Organization, the National Rifle Association, the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon and now Mr. Trump himself.Among right-wing organizers, “the overwhelming consensus is D.C. is a no-go zone, and New York has weaponized lawfare against everyone on the right,” said Mr. Stockton, who was raided in 2020 by federal agents for his role in a border-wall fund-raising venture involving Mr. Bannon, who has been charged by Manhattan prosecutors with defrauding contributors. (Mr. Bannon has pleaded not guilty and Mr. Stockton was never charged. Timothy Shea, another participant, was convicted of related federal charges in October.) “Everyone assumes there are traps everywhere.”While denunciations of the charges against Mr. Trump have dominated the conservative and right-wing media for weeks, the question of whether to protest them has been met with less unanimity.While some, like the former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, have called the moment a “time of sorting” and urged Trump supporters to “peacefully protest,” others have warned that the political risk of such a protest’s turning violent far outweighs the potential reward.“DO NOT PROTEST IN NYC TOMORROW,” the talk radio host John Cardillo, a former New York police officer, wrote on Twitter on Monday. “The Democrats want you to do that. They want people to get out of hand, be arrested, and be able to claim another J6.”And to some people and groups closely associated with the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Trump is a more ambivalent cause than he once was.“Remember what happened last time Trump called a protest? He threw everyone under the bus,” a local Proud Boys chapter in Illinois posted on Telegram last month, amid a series of memes depicting Trump protest organizers as undercover federal agents.But Joe McBride, a lawyer for a number of Jan. 6 defendants who said he has served as an intermediary between their families and Mr. Trump’s circle, said that “there’s certainly a sense of brotherhood” with the former president after his indictment.Karen Lichtbraun, a preschool teacher from New York who attended Tuesday’s demonstration in Manhattan, said the fear of arrest was one reason for the relatively modest turnout. “Look what’s happening with the people who participated in Jan. 6,” she said.But she noted that the rally site in deep blue Manhattan played a role as well.“It’s New York, unfortunately,” she said.Alexandra Berzon More
In 2011, a former U.S. senator was charged in a case that resembled the one being pursed against Donald J. Trump. The prosecution did not end in a conviction.Is paying hush money a crime?In most cases, the answer is no. Hush-money agreements, also known as nondisclosure agreements, have long been used by companies and private individuals to avoid litigation and keep embarrassing information confidential. Harvey Weinstein, the former producer convicted of rape, used such agreements for years to conceal his harassment and assault of women.But the question is thornier when it comes to candidates in the midst of political campaigns, and it has not often been posed in federal or New York State courts.As it relates to former President Donald J. Trump and the porn star Stormy Daniels, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, revealed his answer on Tuesday when he unsealed an indictment of Mr. Trump: A hush-money payment can constitute a crime if made to protect a political candidate.All of the felony counts Mr. Trump is now facing stem from reimbursements to his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, for paying $130,000 to Ms. Daniels in exchange for her silence about the liaison she said she had with Mr. Trump.Having charged Mr. Trump with falsifying business records, Mr. Bragg’s office will have to navigate complicated legal terrain. A conviction would hinge on proving that reimbursements to Mr. Cohen were falsely disguised as legal fees to conceal another crime: perhaps a violation of election laws. The indictment did not, however, charge Mr. Trump with an election law violation; Mr. Cohen has admitted to committing one with the payment to Ms. Daniels.The case bears some similarities to the prosecution of a former United States senator, John Edwards of North Carolina, who was charged in 2011 with federal campaign finance violations for payments to help a mistress during his own presidential run in 2008. The case ended without a conviction.Federal and state campaign laws require reporting of campaign-related payments, and if they are made by third parties coordinating with the candidate, such as Mr. Cohen, they are subject to certain limits. Mr. Cohen’s payment to Ms. Daniels before the 2016 presidential election was well beyond the federal legal limit.The indictment of Mr. Trump charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records in reimbursing Mr. Cohen for the hush money. Mr. Trump, who is once more seeking the Republican nomination for president, has denied sleeping with Ms. Daniels; called the prosecution by Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, political; and said he has done nothing wrong. Appearing in a State Supreme Court on Tuesday, he pleaded not guilty.On its own, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in New York State — but it can be charged as a felony if it is intended to conceal another crime. In this case, the indictment accuses him of falsifying business records; an accompanying statement of facts says Mr. Trump orchestrated a scheme to violate election laws.Proving that element will most likely hinge on whether the hush money is interpreted to have been paid in the service of Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign or for personal reasons, such as shielding his wife, Melania, and youngest son, Barron, from Ms. Daniels’s story..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.That is the sort of transaction that Mr. Trump’s lawyers say took place.“This was a personal expenditure, not a campaign expenditure. Had it been a campaign expenditure, he would have used campaign funds,” one of the lawyers, Joe Tacopina, said on CNN on Sunday.Mr. Trump’s team has pointed to the failed prosecution of Mr. Edwards to bolster its argument that the payment to Ms. Daniels was not a campaign contribution.In that case, prosecutors charged Mr. Edwards with campaign finance violations related to payments that two wealthy campaign donors made for living expenses of Mr. Edwards’s mistress, Rielle Hunter, who had given birth to his child, and for travel expenses as she traveled to evade the media during his 2008 presidential campaign.But Mr. Edwards’s lawyers won an acquittal on one count and a mistrial on five other charges, which prosecutors then dismissed, by arguing that the payments were not related to the election. His lawyers showed that one of the donors continued making payments to help Ms. Hunter after Mr. Edwards suspended his campaign. And he had another convincing motive to keep Ms. Hunter and her child a secret: His wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer.Mr. Bragg’s office might be able to make a stronger case in arguing that the payment to Ms. Daniels was made to influence the election on Mr. Trump’s behalf rather than for personal reasons.For one thing, Ms. Daniels had tried to sell her story of sleeping with Mr. Trump for at least five years, but he had never before agreed to pay for her silence. Mr. Cohen did so weeks before the election, and days after the so-called “Access Hollywood” tape — in which Mr. Trump was heard talking about groping women — was made public, potentially tanking Mr. Trump’s campaign.For another, Mr. Trump met with Mr. Cohen and David Pecker, the publisher of The National Enquirer, at the beginning of his campaign in August 2015 to discuss a strategy for bottling up negative stories. And Mr. Pecker’s company paid to suppress the story of another woman, the Playboy model Karen McDougal, less than three months before Ms. Daniels received her payment.Both Mr. Pecker and Mr. Cohen have testified before the grand jury that indicted Mr. Trump, and would be expected to do so at a trial.Jeff Tsai, a San Francisco lawyer and former federal prosecutor who worked on the Edwards case, said in an interview that because of the “elasticity” of whether money is primarily spent to help a campaign or for personal reasons, the facts in a particular case are extremely important.“Jurors will have to decide as to whether or not these funds, putting some of the salacious details aside, are fundamentally being used for campaign purposes,” Mr. Tsai said.One successful case brought by the Justice Department on the theory that hush money payments can violate election laws was against Mr. Cohen himself, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges in 2018 in connection with the Daniels and McDougal payments, while saying his actions had been directed by Mr. Trump. But because Mr. Cohen did not go to trial, the prosecution’s case was not tested before a judge or jury.Kate Christobek More
Al expresidente se le acusó por su papel en el pago a una estrella porno a cambio de su silencio. Se espera que el martes se entregue a las autoridades de Nueva York.Se espera que Donald Trump, el primer presidente estadounidense acusado de un delito, se entregue a las autoridades en Manhattan el martes, y comparezca en la sala del tribunal por la tarde.Aunque Trump fue acusado la semana pasada, la audiencia del martes marcará la primera vez que se revelen los cargos en el caso, que se enfoca en la participación del expresidente en el pago de dinero para silenciar a una estrella de cine para adultos, Stormy Daniels, quien dijo que había tenido una aventura con él.Un grupo de seguidores de Trump, entre ellos la congresista Marjorie Taylor Greene de Georgia, han planeado u mitin en las afueras del tribunal para protestar contra el fiscal de distrito de Manhattan, Alvin L. Bragg, quien presentó los cargos. Los funcionarios encargados de hacer cumplir la ley de varias agencias se han estado preparando durante semanas para la posibilidad de que haya protestas o escándalos.Bragg ha estado indagando en los pagos por silencio desde el verano pasado, pagos que fueron realizados por Michael D. Cohen, solucionador de problemas de Trump en aquel entonces. Los fiscales formaron un gran jurado en enero, y los jurados votaron para acusar a Trump la semana pasada. Si bien los hechos son dramáticos y la acusación resulta explosiva, el caso contra Trump podría descansar en una teoría legal que no se ha sometido a prueba. No será sencillo asegurar una condena.Esto es lo que sabemos, y no sabemos del caso penal contra Trump:¿Por qué se acusó a Donald Trump?Los fiscales podrían alegar que el pago a Daniels en efecto se convirtió en una donación indebida a la campaña de Trump, asumiendo que el silencio de Daniels lo benefició.T.J. Kirkpatrick para The New York TimesLos cargos contra Trump aún no se han divulgado, aunque dos personas con conocimiento del asunto dijeron que hay más de dos decenas de cargos en la acusación.Se espera que los cargos surjan de un pago que se le hizo a Daniels, quien en octubre de 2016, durante las últimas semanas de la campaña presidencial, intentaba vender su historia de una aventura con Trump.En un principio, los representantes de Daniels contactaron a The National Enquirer para ofrecerle derechos exclusivos de la historia. David Pecker, el editor del tabloide y aliado de Trump, había acordado buscar notas que pudieran ser dañinas para Trump en la campaña de 2016 y en un momento incluso acordó comprar la historia del amorío de otra mujer con Trump y nunca publicarla, una práctica conocida como “atrapar y matar”.Pero Pecker no compró la historia de Daniels. En lugar de ello, él y el principal editor del tabloide, Dylan Howard, ayudaron a gestionar un acuerdo separado entre Cohen y la abogada de Daniels.Cohen pagó 130.000 dólares y Trump luego le rembolsó el dinero desde la Casa Blanca.En 2018, Cohen se declaró culpable de varios cargos, entre ellos crímenes federales de financiamiento de campaña relacionados con el dinero pagado por el silencio de Daniels. El pago, según concluyeron los fiscales federales, equivalía a una donación impropia a la campaña de Trump.En los días posteriores a la declaración de culpabilidad de Cohen, la oficina del fiscal de distrito abrió su propia investigación penal sobre el asunto. Si bien los fiscales federales se centraron en Cohen, la investigación del fiscal de distrito se centraría en Trump.¿Qué pasa después?Trump llegó a Nueva York el lunes luego de viajar desde su propiedad de Mar-a-Lago en Florida y pernoctó en la Trump Tower.Se espera que se dirija el martes al sur de Manhattan para entregarse en la oficina de la fiscalía de distrito de Manhattan, antes de ser procesado en el edificio de los tribunales penales de Manhattan.¿Cómo se va a entregar Trump?Trump será guiado a través de los pasos de rutina del procesamiento de arresto por delitos graves en Nueva York.Si bien lo normal es que los acusados arrestados por delitos graves sean esposados, no está claro si se hará una excepción para un expresidente. La mayoría de los acusados están esposados a la espalda, pero a algunos acusados de delitos de cuello blanco que se considera que representan un menor peligro se les aseguran las manos al frente.Es casi seguro que Trump esté acompañado en cada paso por agentes armados del Servicio Secreto de EE. UU, desde el momento en que sea detenido hasta su comparecencia ante un juez en el imponente Edificio de Tribunales Penales. La ley requiere que estos agentes lo protejan en todo momento.La seguridad del tribunal la brindan los oficiales de la corte estatal, con quienes el Servicio Secreto ya ha trabajado antes. Pero el principal vocero de la agencia federal, Anthony J. Guglielmi, dijo que no podía comentar sobre las medidas que habría para Trump.Después de que sea procesado, es casi seguro que será puesto en libertad previo compromiso con el tribunal, porque es probable que la acusación solo contenga cargos de delitos graves no violentos; según la ley de Nueva York, los fiscales no pueden solicitar que se detenga a un acusado bajo fianza en tales casos.Entonces, ¿qué es lo que Trump habría hecho mal?Michael Cohen, otrora el solucionador de problemas de Trump, se declaró culpable en 2018 de varios cargos, entre ellos a delitos federales de financiamiento de campaña a partir del dinero pagado por el silencio de Daniels.Jefferson Siegel para The New York TimesCuando se declaró culpable en el tribunal federal, Cohen señaló a su jefe. Dijo que había sido Trump quien lo instruyó para que sobornara a Daniels, algo que los fiscales luego corroboraron.Los fiscales también cuestionaron los cheques que Trump le emitía mensualmente a Cohen para reembolsarlo. En documentos judiciales indicaron que la empresa de Trump “contabilizó falsamente” los pagos mensuales como gastos legales y que los registros de la compañía mencionaban un acuerdo de anticipos con Cohen. Si bien Cohen era un abogado y se convirtió en el abogado personal de Trump luego de que este asumió el cargo, no hubo ningún acuerdo de este tipo y el rembolso no estaba relacionado a ningún servicio legal brindado por Cohen.Cohen ha dicho que Trump estaba al tanto del acuerdo falso de anticipo de honorarios, una acusación que podría constituir la base del caso contra el expresidente.En Nueva York, falsear registros de negocios puede constituir un delito, si bien uno menor. Para que el delito ascienda a delito grave, los fiscales del equipo de Bragg deben mostrar que la “intención de defraudar” de Trump incluía la intención de cometer u ocultar un segundo delito.En este caso, el segundo delito podría ser una infracción a la ley electoral. Si bien el dinero que se paga a cambio de silencio no es por sí mismo ilegal, los fiscales podrían argumentar que los 130.000 dólares en efecto se convirtieron en una donación indebida para la campaña de Trump, bajo la teoría de que benefició a su candidatura al acallar a Daniels.¿Será un caso difícil de probar?Podría ser difícil condenar a Trump o enviarlo a prisión. En primer lugar, los abogados de Trump seguramente atacarán la credibilidad de Cohen mencionando sus antecedentes penales. Los fiscales podrían contraatacar diciendo que el excolaborador de Trump mintió hace años por su jefe y ahora está en una mejor posición de brindar detalles de la conducta de Trump.El caso contra Trump también podría girar sobre una teoría legal que no ha sido probada.Según los juristas, los fiscales de Nueva York nunca antes han combinado un cargo de falsificación de registros comerciales con una infracción a la ley estatal electoral en un caso relacionado con unas elecciones presidenciales, o con alguna campaña federal. Debido a que es un terreno legal inexplorado, es posible que un juez lo desestime o reduzca el cargo de delito grave a un delito menor.Incluso si el cargo procediera, equivale a un delito menor de nivel inferior. Si al final Trump fuera declarado culpable, enfrentaría una sentencia de máximo cuatro años, y no sería obligatorio pasar tiempo en prisión.¿Cómo reaccionó Trump a la acusación?Trump respondió en un comunicado, en el que decía que el voto del gran jurado de Manhattan era “una Persecución política e Interferencia Electoral del mayor nivel de la historia”.El comunicado de Trump se hacía eco de lo que ha sido un esfuerzo extraordinario y vertiginoso para tratar de evitar que Bragg lo acuse.Sin embargo, el comunicado fue notable por su tono agresivo contra la fiscalía, y un indicio de lo que podría estar por venir.“Los demócratas han mentido, hecho trampa y robado en su obsesión de intentar ‘Atrapar a Trump’, pero ahora han hecho lo impensable”, escribió Trump. “Acusando a una persona completamente inocente”.Presentó la investigación que resultó en la acusación como la más reciente en una larga retahíla de indagaciones penales que ha enfrentado, ninguna de las cuales ha resultado en cargos.Michael Gold More
Photo by Dave Sanders for The New York Times, Reuters and The Associated Press More
Hours after Donald Trump appears in court, his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, will be the honoree at a dinner 10 blocks from Trump Tower.Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll look at one of those coincidences in scheduling that can only happen in New York. We’ll also look at whether a court ruling might prompt prosecutors to abandon difficult cases.Mark Kauzlarich/The New York TimesToday New York will be focused on the arraignment of a former president, the first proceeding of its kind in American history.But other things are on the day’s agenda besides Donald Trump’s scheduled appearance for booking, fingerprinting and entering a plea in court. This evening a private club on East 66th Street will continue a tradition dating to the 1870s with a black-tie dinner.The honoree will be Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidency to Trump in 2016.The timing is a coincidence, said John Sussek III, the president of the Lotos Club. The date was chosen around the beginning of the year, long before the grand jury hearing the case against Trump voted on the indictment that brought Trump to Manhattan from Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Florida.“We have had princes and princesses, senators and congressmen,” Sussek said, noting that one recent honoree was Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leader in the federal response to the pandemic. Another past honoree was Robert Morgenthau, a predecessor of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, whose office brought the case against Trump.The criteria, Sussek said, “are essentially an individual who has made great contributions in whatever field or fields they’re in. It’s recognition of their accomplishments in society.”The club, which took its name from the lotos-leaf-eaters in a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, has held state dinners since the 1870s. Its early members included Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, who took a nap during the 12-course meal lauding him. Also on the club’s membership roll in its early years was John Hay, who held a job that Clinton later took; he was secretary of state under President William McKinley and President Theodore Roosevelt.Democrats and Republicans have been cheered at state dinners, as the club calls gatherings like the one tonight. Former President Harry Truman, a Democrat, and former President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, were each hailed at state dinners after leaving the White House. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court was celebrated at one in 1996, a couple of years after President Bill Clinton nominated her to the court.Over the years, the club has invited people with no political connections, including the Yankees star Joe DiMaggio, the astronaut John Glenn and at least two musical theater teams: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (of “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific,” among others) and John Kander and Fred Ebb (of “Cabaret” and “Chicago”).Lotos gives state dinner honorees lifetime memberships ($4,800 a year for regular resident members). Clinton will also be presented with a small bust of Ginsburg by the sculptor Zenos Frudakis, a Lotos member who did the larger busts of Twain and Ulysses S. Grant at the club.“You may recall what Donald Trump said in 2016, that if we voted for Hillary Clinton we’d have a criminal president under constant investigation and who would soon be indicted,” Sussek said in the speech he planned to deliver tonight. “And you know what? Trump was right. I voted for Hillary Clinton and ended up with a criminal president under constant investigation and has now just been indicted.”WeatherIt’s a partly sunny day near the high 60s. Expect a chance of showers at night, with temps around the low 50s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Thursday (Passover).The latest New York newsJustin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockTrump indictmentTrump in New York: Donald Trump arrived in New York on Monday, kicking off a 24-hour visit that will culminate with a polarizing arraignment in the city where he grew up and rose to the fame that catapulted him to the presidency.Jan. 6: Trump’s arraignment differs from the Capitol riot, but law enforcement’s response is informed by lessons learned on Jan. 6, as well as the nationwide protests against police violence.CrimeA cold-case detective’s quest: Jasmine Porter’s 4-year-old son watched as a man killed her in their Bronx apartment in 1996. In 2020, a police investigator began trying to crack the case.Arrests made for murders and robberies: Three men were arrested and charged in connection with a series of killings and robberies at Manhattan gay bars.More local newsConstruction workers dead: Two workers were killed at Kennedy International Airport when they were buried under construction rubble inside a trench, officials said.Yeshiva University scrutiny on funding: A lawmaker asked a state inspector to look at millions given to Yeshiva University, which has argued it is a religious institution, not an educational one, to justify its ban on an L.G.B.T.Q. club.The suburbs and the housing debate: Gov. Kathy Hochul is promoting a housing plan that she says could create 800,000 new homes across the state over the next decade. Officials from Westchester County and Long Island are resisting the effort.Could a recent ruling give prosecutors a reason to abandon difficult cases?Christopher Lee for The New York TimesA recent decision by New York State’s highest court invalidated a rape conviction. Advocates for sexual assault survivors worry that the ruling could give prosecutors a reason not to bring sexual assault charges when the victim and the defendant know each other and there are no other witnesses.My colleague Maria Cramer writes that the 4-to-2 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals could also give defendants a reason to do everything they can to resist investigations and run out the clock.That is because the court threw out the first-degree rape conviction of Andrew Regan, noting that it took 31 months to obtain a warrant for a DNA sample. Judge Rowan Wilson wrote in the majority opinion that prosecutors had violated Regan’s rights to speedy prosecution, as guaranteed by a state law intended to prevent prosecutors from slow-walking cases without good reason.The court acknowledged that vacating his conviction could create “a genuine risk that a guilty person will not be punished, or, as in this case, not finish out his full sentence.” Regan was in the ninth year of a 12-year sentence when the ruling was handed down last month.The case began in 2009, when two couples went drinking after attending a wedding. At the end of the night, one of the four, a 22-year-old woman, invited her boyfriend and the other couple to stay at her home in upstate Norwood, N.Y.The woman went to sleep alone but woke during the night to find the other man, Regan, crushing her beneath him, according to court documents. She woke her boyfriend and told him she had been sexually assaulted, and they called the police. Regan was interviewed and released. At a hospital, a nurse collected evidence with a rape kit.The investigation dragged on for four years, in part because prosecutors in St. Lawrence County said they did not know how to obtain a warrant to get a DNA sample from Regan, something he repeatedly refused to provide. The police had taken a DNA sample from the woman’s boyfriend after she reported the assault and found that it did not match the semen on her underwear. Regan told the police he had not had sex with her.The prosecutors struggled for at least a year over how to obtain his DNA, a straightforward procedure that involves submitting an affidavit to a judge. The woman said that in the years that followed the incident, she had called the district attorney’s office in St. Lawrence County or the police at least once a month to find out what was happening with the case. She said that new investigators were assigned to the case at least three times, but no one provided a clear explanation for the delays.Gary Pasqua, who became the St. Lawrence County district attorney in 2018, said he did not believe that the ruling would set a precedent — even though Judge Madeline Singas wrote in a dissenting opinion that the decision would “be weaponized against victims.”She said the court “fails to appreciate the practice implications of the precedent they are creating: If law enforcement negligently delays rape investigations, women’s voices will continue to be stifled, rapists held unaccountable and jury verdicts discarded.”METROPOLITAN diaryDirtDear Diary:At Prince StreetI suck a smalltart found in apocket nest oftobacco and lintfrom last winter.The train pulls in.A woman isfolding a mapmouthing the routeto herself,girls in dark lipsticksget on, talkingloudly of rats,drowning the chime.The doors shudderthen close, openand shut once more.I’m nodding offby 34thand top out atTimes Square, each spotlighted a show:saxophone playerin shorts blows outworkable riffscasting for earswith a brass pole.A conductresstelling stories.An old sailorconsiders fakeson black velvet.Further up agospel singerin beads and gown,a man rentinga telescope aimedat the moon.— William ClarkIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More
If Donald J. Trump seems a little on edge lately, so does the city where he made his name.The former president, after largely eluding legal accountability of any kind for decades, has now been indicted by a grand jury in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.So far Mr. Trump has handled the investigation, which has looked into whether he broke laws while paying hush money to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election, exactly as one might imagine: with the minimum amount of class and the maximum use of racist slurs. Not only has he made sure everyone knows Mr. Bragg is Black, he has also suggested he is subhuman.“HE IS A SOROS BACKED ANIMAL,” the former president told his followers on Truth Social while waiting for the indictment, using anti-Black racism as well as antisemitism to describe Mr. Bragg. Mr. Trump also called for widespread protests before he was indicted and predicted “death and destruction,” forcing law enforcement agencies to prepare for possible violence in the streets on Tuesday, when he is expected to be arraigned.All of this has made New York City, his former hometown, a bit anxious, too. The wait for Mr. Trump’s arraignment and any backlash that may come from it has the city unnerved.Few Americans have seen Mr. Trump shimmy his way out of a jam more often than New Yorkers. We’ve seen him bounce back from bankruptcy six times, and he has never been truly held to account for his long history of excluding Black people from the rental properties that helped make him rich. We’ve seen his political fortunes soar despite credible claims of sexual assault and tax fraud. We’ve watched up close his gravity-defying, horrifying metamorphosis from a tacky real estate developer and tabloid fixture into a C-list celebrity and, finally, a one-term president with authoritarian aspirations.Given that history, the idea that Mr. Trump will soon be fingerprinted and booked in a New York courthouse has left many in disbelief. A kind of collective angst over the Trump prosecution has settled over New York City, where many deeply disdain him but seem unconvinced he will ever truly be held to account.During a recent stage performance of “Titanique,” the hit musical comedy and glitter-filled parody of the 1997 film about the doomed ship, Russell Daniels, the actor playing Rose’s mother, let out a kind of guttural scream. “It’s not fair that Trump hasn’t been arrested yet!” Mr. Daniels cried. Inside the Manhattan theater, the audience roared.In Harlem recently, the Rev. Al Sharpton held a prayer vigil for Mr. Bragg, who received threats after Mr. Trump used his social media platform to share a menacing photograph of himself with a baseball bat juxtaposed with a photo of the district attorney, in a clear hint of his violent mind-set.“We want God to cover him and protect him,” Mr. Sharpton said, referring to Mr. Bragg. “Whatever the decision may be, whether we like it or not, but he should not have to face this kind of threat, implied or explicit. Let us pray.”New Yorkers, weary and still recovering from the pandemic Mr. Trump badly mismanaged, are also now bracing themselves for the possibility of demonstrations by the former president’s supporters. In the hours after the indictment on March 29, N.Y.P.D. helicopters hovered over the courthouses of Lower Manhattan and officers set up barricades along largely empty streets. The Police Department ordered all roughly 36,000 uniformed members to report for duty amid bomb threats and the arrest of one Trump supporter with a knife.The inevitable spectacle began on Monday, when television helicopters tracked every inch of Mr. Trump’s motorcade from LaGuardia Airport to Manhattan, as if he were visiting royalty. The courthouse area downtown is expected be largely closed to traffic on Tuesday. All Supreme Court trials in the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building will be adjourned early. There are also police lines and TV trucks around Trump Tower, where the former president stayed on Monday night. Meanwhile, Republican groups and Trump supporters are planning or sponsoring rallies nearby, one of which will be addressed by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who will bring her destructive rhetoric up from Georgia.Of the four known criminal investigations Mr. Trump faces, the Manhattan case is seen by some legal experts as the least serious, in part because it may involve allegations of campaign finance violations before his presidency rather than attempts to abuse his office by overturning the results of an election or inciting supporters to effectively overthrow the United States government. Fair enough.Still, it’s a poetic irony that the former president will face his first criminal indictment in New York City, the town where he sought to burnish his “law and order” credentials. In 1989, Mr. Trump took out a notorious ad in several newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty when a group of Black and Latino teenagers were accused of the sexual assault of a jogger in Central Park. After serving prison sentences that varied from six to 13 years, the teens were exonerated.“What has happened to the respect for authority, the fear of retribution by the courts, society and the police for those who break the law, who wantonly trespass on the rights of others?” Mr. Trump wrote in the 1989 ad. “How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits?”Over many years, New York has learned a painful lesson. Mr. Trump and his many misdeeds are best taken seriously.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
