Trump Camp’s ‘Bravado’ over Indictment ‘Baloney,’ As Some Predict Surprises With the Charges
Former president's supporters have no basis for outrage, critics say
As the clock ticks inexorably towards Donald Trump's planned surrender to authorities Tuesday, to face criminal indictment for alleged crimes, the former president could face some surprises once the charges against him are unsealed in a Manhattan courtroom, according to various legal analysts and political commentators.
The public outrage by many of Trump's supporters is unwarranted, they add.
Trump is expected to turn himself in Tuesday, in New York, to face charges brought by a grand jury and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He is the first sitting or former president to face such a criminal indictment in US history.
Although many have assumed that the charges against Trump will revolve around his scheme to pay hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels to cover up their extramarital affair ahead of the 2016 presidential election, the truth is that those charges still are not public.
“We will know in two days, and I think we should all await finding out whether they are felonies which is reported. And that means that some of the false records were elevated because they were done to prevent disclosure of or as part of another crime,” Jill Wine-Banks, a prosecutor during the Watergate scandal and today a prominent TV legal analyst, said Sunday. “And we will just have to wait and see what those are, but they will be very important to know.”
There is s a wider scheme at play, which potentially includes model Karen McDougal, another woman with whom Trump is said to have been involved with, according Asha Rangappa, an American lawyer, former FBI agent, senior lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and a commentator on MSNBC and CNN. “Well, Ayman, I don’t think it is any secret that this I centering on the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, and I think that what the prosecutor’s office had honed I on was how those payments were reimbursed to Michael Cohen.
“Now remember that Michael Cohen took out a home equity loan he paid Stormy Daniels, this is after she tried to shop that story to the National Enquirer, and they passed and they told Michael Cohen, you know, you can take care of this as part of a larger agreement, by the way, to bury stories that might be detrimental to Donald Trump in advance of the election,” Rangappa said in an on-camera appearance with MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin, referring to Trump's former attorney and fixer, Cohen, who already served time in prison for his role in the hush-money scheme. “Karen McDougal also had a story that they buried but when Trump paid this back, what he did was he concealed them as legal fees to Michael Cohen. In multiple installments, and that is how they would be on the books, so this will center around a falsification of business records. Whether they are able to bum that misdemeanor up to a felon by linking it to an attempt to further conceal another crime? It is really the big question here.”
There could be some real surprises in the charges, according to Chris Christie, an ex- prosecutor and former Republican governor of New Jersey.
“But I do think we're making a lot of presumptions based upon, you know, media talk and talk from defense lawyers who -- you got Joe Tacopina to admit this morning, he has no idea what’s in the charging document,” Christie said Sunday, in an appearance on ABC News, referring to Trump's attorney in the New York case. “He hasn't seen it. So, I do think there may be some surprises in these for us, because the one thing I loved when I was the U.S. attorney, George, was, only I knew what I knew. And that’s the secrecy of the grand jury system. And then you have to, as the prosecutor, put your proofs forward.
“And unlike what Nancy Pelosi said on Twitter this week, Donald Trump doesn’t have to prove his innocence,” Christie added, referring to the former Democratic speaker of the US House. “In fact, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he’s guilty. So, the number of charges doesn’t really surprise me at all, but the fact that everyone’s presuming they know what’s in there, when we don’t, I think some people could be surprised on Tuesday.”
Christie, and others, also criticized the public outrage coming from Trump's supporters over the indictment.
“Because, George, you’ve got limited resources as a prosecutor and you’ve got prosecutorial discretion. Unlike the European system where they say, ‘There’s a crime, you must charge it,’ here prosecutors are allowed to use the discretion that, ‘I don't think this is an appropriate use of my resources, given everything I have in front of me,’” Christie said. “On the other hand, all this bravado from the Trump camp is baloney.
“He is going to be charged officially on Tuesday. He’s going to have to be mugshotted, fingerprinted, and he’s going to face a criminal trial in Manhattan and he’s not going to be able to avoid it. You can't make that a good day under any circumstances,” he added.
Conservative, “Never Trumper,” commentator SE Cupp, was even more pointed.
“These are people who are outraged by this indictment. They were not outraged by Trump’s attempt to overturn a democratic election. There were not outraged by the violence on January 6. They were not outraged by an illegal phone call to the Georgia secretary of state and illegal phone call to [Ukrainian President] Volodymyr Zelenskyy,” Cupp said, referring to the scandal which set off Trump's first impeachment, of two, as president. “They’re not outraged by multiple credible accusations of sexual harassment, assault and rape.
“They’re not outraged by Trump’s sexist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic rhetoric. They’re not outraged by his white nationalism. They’re not outraged by his defense of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazis. They’re not outraged by all that stuff,” Cupp added. “So, with all due respect, no one should care that these people are outraged by this indictment.”
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