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      Proud Boys leader a scapegoat for Trump, attorney tells January 6 trial

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      A defense attorney argued on Tuesday at the close of a landmark trial over the January 6 insurrection that the US justice department is making the Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio a scapegoat for Donald Trump, whose supporters stormed the US Capitol.Tarrio and four lieutenants are charged with seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors say was a plot to stop the transfer of presidential power from Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 election.In his closing argument, the defense lawyer Nayib Hassan noted Tarrio was not in Washington on 6 January 2021, having been banned from the capital after being arrested for defacing a Black Lives Matter banner. Trump, Hassan argued, was the one to blame for extorting supporters to “fight like hell” in his cause.“It was Donald Trump’s words,” Hassan told jurors in Washington federal court. “It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6 in your beautiful and amazing city. It was not Enrique Tarrio. They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald J Trump and those in power.”Seditious conspiracy, a rarely used charge, carries a prison term of up to 20 years.Tarrio is one of the top targets of the federal investigation of the riot, which temporarily halted certification of Biden’s win.Tarrio’s lawyers have accused prosecutors of using him as a scapegoat because charging Trump or powerful allies would be too difficult. But his attorney’s closing arguments were the most full-throated expression of that strategy since the trial started more than three months ago.Trump has denied inciting violence on January 6 and has argued that he was permitted by the first amendment to challenge his loss to Biden. The former president faces several civil lawsuits over the riot and a special counsel is overseeing investigations into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the election.A prosecutor told jurors on Monday the Proud Boys were ready for “all-out war” and viewed themselves as foot soldiers for Trump.“These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what the law or the courts had to say about it,” said Conor Mulroe.Tarrio, a Miami resident, is on trial with Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola. Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter president. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described organizer. Rehl was president of a chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a member from Rochester, New York.Attorneys for Nordean and Rehl gave closing arguments on Monday.Tarrio is accused of orchestrating the attack from afar. Police arrested him two days before the riot on charges that he burned a church banner during an earlier march. A judge ordered him to leave Washington after his arrest.Defense attorneys have argued that there is no evidence of a conspiracy or a plan for the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol. Tarrio “had no plan, no objective and no understanding of an objective”, his attorney said.Pezzola testified he never spoke to any of his co-defendants before they sat in the same courtroom. The defense attorney Steven Metcalf said Pezzola never knew of any plan for January 6 or joined any conspiracy.“It’s not possible. It’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist,” Metcalf said.Mulroe, the prosecutor, told jurors a conspiracy can be an unspoken and implicit “mutual understanding, reached with a wink and a nod”.The foundation of the government’s case is a cache of messages Proud Boys leaders and members privately exchanged in encrypted chats and publicly posted on social media before, during and after the deadly January 6 attack.Norm Pattis, one of Biggs’s attorneys, described the Capitol riot as an “aberration” and told jurors their verdict “means so much more than January 6 itself” because it will “speak to the future”.“Show the world with this verdict that the rule of law is alive and well in the United States,” he said.The justice department has secured seditious conspiracy convictions against the founder and members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers. But this is the first major trial involving leaders of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group that remains a force in mainstream Republican circles. More

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      Closing arguments begin in trial of Proud Boys for January 6 Capitol attack

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      Ready for “all-out war”, leaders of the far-right Proud Boys viewed themselves as foot soldiers for Donald Trump as he clung to power after the 2020 election, a prosecutor said on Monday at the close of a historic trial over the January 6 Capitol attack.After more than three months of testimony, jurors began hearing closing arguments in the seditious conspiracy case accusing the former Proud Boys national chairman, Enrique Tarrio, and four lieutenants of plotting to forcibly stop the transfer of power.The Proud Boys were “lined up behind Donald Trump and willing to commit violence on his behalf”, prosecutor Conor Mulroe said. “These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what the law or the courts had to say about it.”The justice department has worked to link the violence of 6 January 2021 to Trump. Prosecutors have repeatedly shown a video clip of Trump telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate with Joe Biden.Tarrio is one of the top targets of the Capitol attack investigation. He wasn’t in Washington but is accused of orchestrating it from afar. Defense attorneys say there is no evidence of a conspiracy or a plan to attack the Capitol.Nicholas Smith, an attorney for the former Proud Boys chapter leader Ethan Nordean, said prosecutors built their case on “misdirection and innuendo”, accusing them of repeatedly playing the clip of Trump to manipulate jurors.“Does that prove some conspiracy by the men here?” Smith asked. “We all know it doesn’t.”Mulroe said a conspiracy can be an unspoken and implicit “mutual understanding, reached with a wink and a nod”.Seditious conspiracy, a civil war-era charge that can be difficult to prove, carries a sentence of up to 20 years. The Proud Boys face other charges too.The justice department has secured seditious conspiracy convictions against the founder and members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers. But this is the first major trial involving the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group that remains a force in Republican politics.The government’s case is founded on messages leaders and members exchanged in encrypted chats and posted on social media before, during and after the January 6 attack. The messages show Proud Boys celebrating when Trump told them to “stand back and stand by”. After the election, they raged online about baseless claims of a stolen election and what would happen when Biden took office.“If Biden steals this election, [the Proud Boys] will be political prisoners,” Tarrio posted. “We won’t go quietly … I promise.”Jurors also saw gleeful messages posted during the Capitol riot when a group marched to the Capitol and some of them entered the building after the mob overwhelmed police.“Make no mistake,” Tarrio wrote. “We did this.”Prosecutors showed videos during closing statements, including one that appeared to show defendant Zachary Rehl spraying police with pepper spray. Confronted with the images earlier in the trial, Rehl said he didn’t remember it and couldn’t tell if it was him. Mulroe said the images show “he did it and he lied under oath about it”.Tarrio, a Miami resident, Nordean and Rehl are on trial with Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola. Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a chapter president. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described organizer. Rehl was president of a chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a member from Rochester, New York.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTarrio was arrested in Washington two days before the January 6 attack on charges that he burned a church’s Black Lives Matter banner. He followed a judge’s order to leave town.Defense attorneys called several current and former Proud Boys, trying to portray the group as a drinking club that only engaged in violence for self-defense.“If you don’t like what some of them say, that doesn’t make them guilty,” Rehl’s attorney, Carmen Hernandez, told jurors.Rehl said the group had “no objective” on 6 January. Pezzola testified that he got “caught up in the craziness” and acted alone when he used a riot shield to smash a Capitol window.The prosecutor told jurors the Proud Boys leaders wanted to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory “by any means necessary, including force”.“You want to call this a drinking club? You want to call this a men’s fraternal organization? Ladies and gentlemen, let’s call this what it is … a violent gang that came together to use force against its enemies,” Mulroe said.Key witnesses included two former Proud Boys who pleaded guilty to riot-related charges and are cooperating with the government in hope of lighter sentences.The first, Matthew Greene, testified that group members were expecting a “civil war”. The second, Jeremy Bertino, testified that he viewed the Proud Boys as leaders of the conservative movement and “the tip of the spear”.The Proud Boys’ defense mirrored arguments made by lawyers for members of the Oath Keepers: that there was no evidence of a plan to attack the Capitol.Prosecutors secured seditious conspiracy convictions against six Oath Keepers, while three were acquitted. Those three, however, were convicted of obstructing certification of Biden’s victory. More

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      Top Trump adviser to be interviewed by special counsel prosecutors

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      Donald Trump’s senior adviser and legal counsel Boris Epshteyn is scheduled to be interviewed on Thursday by special counsel prosecutors investigating the former president’s retention of classified-marked documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and his role in the January 6 Capitol attack.The investigation Epshteyn is being asked to talk about – potentially both – remains unclear, according to a person familiar with the matter who confirmed the meeting on the condition of anonymity. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.But the interview, which was requested by special counsel prosecutors, marks a moment of potential peril for Trump given Epshteyn has been one of his closest advisers in recent years, with more knowledge about the former president’s legal entanglements than perhaps anyone else.Throughout the Mar-a-Lago documents case, Epshteyn has simultaneously been a member of Trump’s inner circle as a senior adviser on the 2024 campaign, and a member of the Trump legal team as the project-manager-esque person leading the civil and criminal lawyers as the in-house counsel.The dual roles mean Epshteyn is considered to have the most insight into decisions taken by Trump and others as the investigation has progressed – the sort of behind-the-scenes knowledge most prized by prosecutors in high-profile criminal cases.Whether Epshteyn has legal exposure himself remains unclear. But he played a role in the Trump legal team’s botched response to a grand jury subpoena last year that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents before the FBI seized 101 such papers at Mar-a-Lago.In that episode, Epshteyn coordinated the two Trump lawyers who were involved in turning over some classified-marked documents to the justice department and signing an attestation letter certifying compliance with the subpoena, which later turned out to be false.The scheduled interview with Epshteyn was the topic of conversation among some of the Trump lawyers on Wednesday morning, who have made their dislike of working with him known internally, complaining that he acts as a gatekeeper to Trump and gave him poor predictions in the Manhattan hush-money case.But Trump has prized Epshteyn’s personal loyalty to him, and despite asking associates at the start of the year whether he was doing a “good job” after a series of legal defeats in court and having his phone seized by the FBI in the January 6 investigation, has kept him as a trusted member of his inner circle.The documents case has proved tricky for the entire Trump legal team, with prosecutors unusually focused on the behavior of the lawyers.Epshteyn’s interview makes him the fifth Trump lawyer to have formally spoken with justice department officials or testified before the grand jury in Washington hearing evidence about the former president’s potential mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice.The grand jury most recently heard testimony from Evan Corcoran, who led the initial search of Mar-a-Lago after Trump received the subpoena and was ordered to turn over detailed notes, because of the so-called crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege protections.Before Corcoran testified, his co-counsel Tim Parlatore was subpoenaed to testify about additional searches of Mar-a-Lago he led after the justice department believed Trump might have additional classified-marked documents in his possession. Alina Habba and Christina Bobb have also testified to the grand jury. More

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      Lachlan Murdoch knew Fox News claim of stolen US election was false, Crikey will argue in defamation trial

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      Lachlan Murdoch allowed Fox News hosts to peddle the claim that the US presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump despite knowing it was false, Crikey will argue in a defence of contextual truth in its upcoming defamation trial.The 36-page defence, which has been filed by the Crikey publisher, Private Media, in the federal court ahead of an October trial, substantially relies upon events in the US, where Dominion brought a $1.6bn defamation suit against the media company for spreading election lies.Crikey’s defence alleges Murdoch “closely monitored how Fox News Network handled reporting on the election”, according to his Dominion deposition, and that he was “generally aware of the allegations made by Sidney Powell on the Fox News Network at the time they were being made, which were to the effect that the 2020 US presidential election was fraudulently stolen from Mr Trump”.The US jury trial, set to begin on 17 April, centres on whether Fox News knowingly broadcast false claims about Dominion equipment as Trump and his allies sought to overturn the 2020 election.Justice Michael Wigney granted Crikey additional time to add the contextual truth defence on top of its already pleaded defences of public interest and qualified privilege.The defamation proceedings against the independent Australian news site were launched last year over an article published in June that referred to the Murdoch family as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the US Capitol attack.
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      The expanded defence includes the recent admission by Rupert Murdoch that Fox News hosts endorsed Trump’s false claims.“Lachlan Murdoch is morally and ethically culpable for the illegal January 6 attack because Fox News, under his control and management, promoted and peddled Trump’s lie of the stolen election despite Lachlan Murdoch knowing it was false,” the Crikey defence says.“Lachlan Murdoch’s unethical and reprehensible conduct in allowing Fox News to promote and peddle Trump’s lie of the stolen election, despite Lachlan Murdoch knowing it was false, makes him morally and ethically culpable for the illegal January 6 attack.”Murdoch’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, indicated in an earlier hearing she would apply to strike out the contextual truth defence, which she described as vague.“This defence is not rational, it is not arguable, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and it serves no legitimate end in the litigation,” the barrister said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe accused Crikey of including masses of material from the Dominion case in the Australian defamation lawsuit purely as part of its “Lachlan Murdoch campaign”, which she alleges is an attempt to raise funds and increase subscriptions on the back of the lawsuit.Murdoch’s attempt to split the trial and have the imputations determined first was dismissed.Murdoch has argued that he has been “gravely injured in his character, his personal reputation and his professional reputation as a business person and company director, and has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial hurt, distress and embarrassment” as a result of the Crikey article.At the hearing earlier this month, Wigney described the litigant and the respondent as having “a scorched earth policy” in their conduct of the matter.“And I say this with the greatest respect … there does seem to be a hint that this case is being driven more by … ego and hubris and ideology than anything else,” he said. More

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      Trump ‘dug himself a hole’ on classified documents and role in January 6 – Barr

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      Donald Trump “has a penchant for engaging in reckless and self-destructive behavior” and is facing a serious threat of a federal indictment over his handling of classified documents and his supporters’ deadly January 6 attack on the US capitol, his former attorney general William Barr said on Sunday.“He’s dug himself a hole on the documents and also on the January 6 stuff,” Barr said of the former president during an interview on ABC’s This Week. “That was reckless behavior that was destined to end up being investigated. So it doesn’t surprise me that he has all these legal problems.”A US justice department special counsel, Jack Smith, is investigating whether Trump obstructed an inquiry into his handling of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.Smith is also investigating Trump’s role in the January 6 attack. Trump told a mob of his supporters to “fight like hell” that day as Congress prepared to certify his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, and many of them then stormed the US Capitol in an assault that has been linked to nine deaths, including the suicides of police officers who defended the building and were traumatized.One of Trump’s lawyers, Jim Trusty, also appeared on several Sunday television programs to defend the former president. He said during an appearance on ABC’s This Week he was 100% certain Trump did not have classified documents in his possession, despite federal investigators’ assertions to the contrary.Barr, who has sought to rehabilitate his public image after serving as one of Trump’s closest allies, also attacked the one criminal case opened against the former president, which is contained in charges filed by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.Trump faces 34 felony charges related to allegations he falsified business records to cover up hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016, which Bragg’s office maintains was part of a plot to either get around state and federal election laws or to deceive tax authorities.“I found what’s been put out very opaque,” Barr said on This Week. “And I think if [Bragg] has a good case he would specify exactly what his case is, but he’s trying to hide the ball.”Trusty also pushed back on the charges.“It is an absurd situation and multiple prosecutors passed by this,” he said. Bragg’s predecessor Cyrus Vance has said his office was asked to “stand down” on the charges by federal prosecutors who opted against pursuing a case against Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrusty also called the Manhattan grand jury indictment against Trump a “rancid ham sandwich”, a phrase that alluded to the folksy colloquialism that grand jury indictments imply little about a person’s guilt or innocence because prosecutors “could indict a ham sandwich” if they wanted to.In addition to the special counsel and Manhattan prosecutors, Trump also faces potential criminal charges in Georgia, where prosecutors are examining whether he violated state law by attempting to overturn the election.A civil trial is also scheduled to begin in New York on 25 April on allegations that Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist, in late 1995 or 1996. It’s not known whether Trump will testify in the case, and he could face considerable political damage if he’s found to be liable over Carroll’s claims. More

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      Mike Pence will not appeal order to testify to January 6 grand jury

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      The former vice-president Mike Pence will not appeal an order compelling him to testify in the US justice department investigation of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, attempts which culminated in the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.The order was handed down last week. A spokesperson for Pence announced the decision on Wednesday, clearing the way for Pence to appear before a grand jury in Washington.Other Trump administration officials have testified in the investigation, as well as in an investigation of Trump’s retention of classified documents. Pence would be the highest-profile witness to appear before a grand jury.His closed-door testimony could offer a first-hand account of Trump’s state of mind in the weeks after he lost to Joe Biden and further expose a rift in Trump’s relationship with his former vice-president.Lawyers for Trump objected to the subpoena on grounds of executive privilege, an argument rejected by James Boasberg, a federal district court judge in Washington. Boasberg did accept arguments by Pence’s lawyers that for constitutional reasons he could not be questioned about his actions on January 6.Lawyers for Pence argued that because he served that day as president of the Senate, overseeing the certification of electoral college results, he was protected from being forced to testify under the “speech or debate” clause of the US constitution, which protects members of Congress from questioning about official legislative acts.On Wednesday, Pence’s spokesperson, Devin O’Malley, said: “Having vindicated that principle of the constitution, vice-president Pence will not appeal the judge’s ruling and will comply with the subpoena as required by law.”Lawyers for Trump could still appeal the executive privilege ruling.The justice department investigation, under the special counsel Jack Smith, is just one form of legal jeopardy faced by Trump, even as he continues to enjoy big leads in polls regarding the Republican presidential nomination.The former president was indicted in New York this week on charges related to a hush money payment to a porn star who claims an affair.Trump also faces a Georgia state election subversion investigation, the federal investigation of his retention of classified documents and civil suits in New York over his business practices and a defamation case arising from an allegation of rape.Trump denies all wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of political witch-hunts.Pence, who is expected to announce his own run for the presidency, was almost a victim of the mob Trump sent to the Capitol on 6 January 2021, seeking to block certification of Biden’s win. As rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” and erected a makeshift gallows, Pence was sent running for safety.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand people have been arrested and hundreds convicted, some of seditious conspiracy.Pence has publicly addressed his interactions with Trump after election day and up to and including January 6, not least in a book, So Help Me God, seemingly meant to prepare the ground for a presidential run.As he tries to balance his own ambitions with Trump’s dominance among Republican voters, Pence has sought to distance himself from his former president.Last month, Pence told the Gridiron dinner in Washington: “President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Lachlan Murdoch ‘culpable’ for January 6 insurrection because of Fox News ‘lies’, Australian defamation case hears

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      Media mogul Lachlan Murdoch was culpable for the violent insurrection of the US Capitol after the 2020 presidential election because of lies told through Fox News, a judge has heard.In the federal court on Tuesday, barrister Michael Hodge KC said that while many media sources fuelled a conspiracy theory that Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump, Murdoch could still be held responsible.“He controls Fox Corporation. He permitted for the commercial and financial benefit of Fox Corporation this lie to be broadcast in the United States,” Hodge told Justice Michael Wigney.“We say that gives rise to culpability where you are allowing and promoting this lie and that lie is the motivation for the insurrection.”Hodge is representing Private Media, which publishes Crikey, as well as political editor Bernard Keane, editor-in-chief Peter Fray, chairman Eric Beecher and chief executive Will Hayward.They are seeking additional time to file their defences to Murdoch’s defamation suit over an opinion piece published in June last year and reposted in August referring to him as an “unindicted co-conspirator” with Trump over the false election claims.The publisher is seeking to add a contextual truth defence on top of its already pleaded defences of public interest and qualified privilege.
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      The proposed defence, yet to be approved by the federal court, includes personal communications between the Murdoch family revealed via separate US defamation proceedings brought against Fox by voting equipment company Dominion which claims it was falsely accused of conducting mass voter fraud.In one SMS, Rupert Murdoch tells his son Lachlan and Fox board member Paul Ryan about Trump’s “conspiracy nonsense” and refers to Fox talk show host Sean Hannity.“Wake up call for Hannity who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks but has been scared to lose viewers,” Rupert Murdoch wrote.Lachlan Murdoch, in the defamation case against Crikey, claims the articles conveyed a meaning that he illegally conspired with Trump to “incite a mob with murderous intent to march on the Capitol” in Washington DC on 6 January 2021.Murdoch’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC called the proposed contextual truth defence vague, saying it did not say how her client was culpable for the state of mind of about 2,000 people who stormed the Capitol building on 6 January.Other Murdoch-owned publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and even Fox itself had reported that Biden won the election and had disagreed with Trump’s claims.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This defence is not rational, it is not arguable, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and it serves no legitimate end in the litigation,” the barrister said.She accused Crikey of including masses of material from the Dominion case in the Australian defamation lawsuit purely as part of its “Lachlan Murdoch campaign”.The media executive has previously alleged that Crikey has run this campaign against him to boost subscribers and gain financially.“They are happy to martyr themselves in this litigation to seek more money on the GoFundMe me campaign … to turn the case into something that resembles an inquiry and they don’t care if they win or lose,” Chrysanthou said.She urged the judge to reject the defence, saying it would mean a three-week trial scheduled to begin 9 October would have to be vacated.Wigney was due to deliver his judgment on Tuesday afternoon. More

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

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