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Beginning today, a whole new era begins for Donald Trump: a period of accountability for alleged criminal behavior in a variety of cases. Up first is a trial in New York that will determine the former president’s culpability in a scheme to hide a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
In a way, it is a new area for everybody because never before has a former president been criminally prosecuted. Once Trump’s various delaying tactics have run their course, it is likely that he will face charges in a total of four cases… hopefully before the end of the year.
The sheer scale of the legal problems the former president faces (he also lost a couple of civil trials already this year) begs the question of the significance of this first case and whether it is the right one at the right time.
And the answer is that it’s probably not.
First of all, this is all a bit obscure and therefore feeds into Trump’s narrative that he is being persecuted and not prosecuted. The public simply isn’t aware of what happened ahead of the 2016 election, when Daniels was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about an affair Trump had with her a decade earlier.
According to prosecutors, the former president then falsified records to hide that he footed the bill for that payment.
To many Americans, that may not sound terribly exciting (apart from the involvement of a porn star). After all, Trump pretends to be a billionaire and can’t he use his money to hide an affair he had with Daniels while his wife was pregnant? They may not understand that this hush money was paid as a way to keep bad news that would have reflected poorly on Trump from reaching voters ahead of the 2016 election.
You can’t blame people for thinking that this does not seem like much of a crime… especially compared to the charges Trump faces in relation to the January 6 insurrection (in Washington, DC), election interference (in Georgia), and the hoarding of classified documents (in Florida).
First of all, the latter three cases revolve around high-visibility events like the storming of Congress and the raid of Mar-a-Lago. Both of these are still very much in the minds of many Americans while the “porn star case” is more of a curiosity.
In addition, it revolves around something that happened eight years ago, so it is fair to ask why the trial is being held now, seven months ahead of the presidential election (of course, one of the reasons is the aforementioned delaying tactics the former president uses to evade accountability).
Finally, all of the other charges are based on very strong evidence. There are recorded phone calls, photos of classified documents stored in bathrooms, witness statements, and endless records suggesting Trump’s guilt.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t solid evidence in the New York case, but it’s more arcane.To put it in other words, the trial beginning today is more like one about some low-level embezzlement scheme (which is why it might even be in the prosecutor’s favor that it is not being televised) while the others are about “sexy” crimes like bank robberies.
And all of this will allow Trump and his supporters to claim that the former president is the victim of selective prosecution for political reasons.
Overall, that is absurd in light of the alleged crimes and the evidence presented. That being said, it is a claim that most applies to this case, which is why those who want Trump to be held to account aren’t thrilled that this trial comes first.
We will see over the next few weeks how things play out. There is a good chance that Trump himself will draw the nation’s attention to this trial by firing off increasingly unhinged social media posts, commenting excessively, and violating a gag order in the process. And, in the end, he may get convicted.
While that would be welcome news to those who believe Trump is a crook who has been getting away with crimes from sexual assault and fraud to staging a coup and obstruction of justice for too long, a conviction here would likely not be “worth” as much as one in the other cases.
And, of course, if the former president is acquitted, that could very well taint the other cases in the public’s eye.
That being said, with Trump’s lawyers working overtime to delay the other trials, this may be the only shot at justice the American people will get this year.
