Day 1 of Donald Trump’s precedent-shattering “hush money” trial is in the books. For the first time, a former President is on trial for a committing a felony.
Rather than have us attempt to distill what happened today, here are links to the trial coverage from four of our preferred news sources. Read at least two of them and you’ll have a good overview of the day’s events:
New York Times: Day 1 of Trump’s Criminal Trial: Five Takeaways The former president faces felony charges of falsifying business records to cover up a sexual scandal involving a porn star.
CNN: Day 1 of Trump New York hush money trial
Politico: Day 1 of Trump’s trial: 9 potential jurors and a motion for contempt
AP News: Trump’s historic hush money trial gets underway; 1st day ends without any jurors being picked
One significant side-note: Trump was dismayed to learn that he won’t be able to take a day off from the trial whenever he would like.
Behind the headlines
If you’ve followed this case at all, you’ve probably heard statements (from both ends of the political spectrum) suggesting that this case, based on actions that took place in 2016 just prior to the Presidential election, is the weakest of all the cases for which Trump is currently being prosecuted.
Some have gone further and asserted that the alleged crimes are at most misdemeanors and should not have been “bumped up” to a felony. A few (almost exclusively on the right) have argued that the case should never have been charged at all — and note that prosecutors had dropped earlier investigations into this matter (supposedly because they believed they did not have a strong enough case).
Not so! Not at all. Here’s our rebuttal:
• The case is not about paying money to a porn star in exchange for her silence about an affair she had with Donald Trump. That’s undeniably sleazy but not, by itself, illegal. The illegality comes from (a) making these payments in order to hide information from the public that would have been critical to the upcoming Presidential election and then (b) disguising the payments so that there would be no record of what had actually transpired. Taken together, these actions justifiably constitute a felony: creating illegal financial records in furtherance of the crime of election interference.
• Michael Cohen went to jail for doing exactly what Trump is now accused of doing. If Cohen’s conviction was justified — which it was — then Trump should be found just as guilty. Indeed, Trump was famously listed in Cohen’s indictment as “Individual 1” — a co-conspirator.
• Finally, contrary to the assertion that prior prosecutors dropped the case because they felt it rested on shaky legal claims or insufficient evidence, the truth is that they dropped the case because of its strength and likely success. The resolution of this apparent paradox comes from the revelation that that prosecutors were under intense pressure to drop the case — by none other than Donald Trump and his Attorney General, Bill Barr. They manipulated the Justice Department (including the firing of prosecutor Geoffrey Berman) to make sure that Trump was never held accountable for his crimes! And they would have succeeded — except for Alvin Bragg’s determination. For a more detailed “exposé” of what really happened here, watch this week’s episode of the Rachel Maddow show:
It’s past time to “Lock him up.”
What you can do
Everything Indivisible East Bay is doing right now is with the goal of defeating Trump in November. So join us in any of the actions we have on our Events Calendar.
