What, you say. That’s right. A few days ago, ex-President Donald Trump messaged on his Truth Social that he would be “indicated” by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last week on Tuesday. Trump has a habit of misspelling words. He meant “indicted.”
Instead, it happened yesterday. Trump had to fly from Florida to New York to become indicted at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse for alleged crimes related to his having won the presidential election in 2016. Judge Juan Merchan had been the judge in the court case about the Trump Organization. Only its CFO Allen Weissellberg was found guilty and will finish his five-month prison term for it next week.
In Judge Merchan’s courtroom yesterday, Trump was indicted by DA Bragg for 34 felonies which were released for the first time to Trump, his lawyers, and the American public. The New York Times had been the first to report that it would be at least 30 charges against Trump.
But the unexpected surprise was that Mr. Bragg categorized all of them as “felony” charges, whereas it was commonly believed nearly all of them would be “misdemeanor” charges, with perhaps one or two as felonies. Misdemeanors are a slap on the hand, but felonies are crimes in New York punishable by one to four years in prison, though the lowest felony category can be a house arrest.
On the other hand, it was commonly believed that Mr. Bragg would be forthcoming with new evidence to support these charges which had not been reported in the media, yet he did not. However, his purpose was to list the felony charges, not provide evidence for them.
The judge did not allow video in the courtroom, but only a few still pictures of Trump. His facial expression was very somber. And he never said anything to the media. All he said in court was giving his answer to all 34 charges, which was “not guilty.
The charges relate mostly to three so-called “catch and kill” stories about Donald Trump that happened shortly before he won the 2016 election. The charges allege that Trump had an agreement with editor David Pecker of AMI, which owned the National Enquirer tabloid in New York City. “Catch and kill” means Pecker would purchase the publishing rights to salacious stories about Donald Trump and make sure they never became public knowledge by the signing of DNAs.
One story was a $30,000 payment to the doorman at Trump Towers who was blurting out that Trump had an illegitimate child. Another was that a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, had a 8 or 10 month sexual relationship with Trump in 2006-2007, thus when Trump’s third wife, Melania, who eventually became First Lady, had an infant child with Trump. The two women made it known indirectly to Trump in 2016 during his presidential campaign that they wanted money or they would go public with their stories. On behalf of Trump, David Pecker paid McDougal $150,000 that summer.
But the third story, and the one that has received so much media attention, was that Sussane Clifford, whose stage name as a porn star is Stormy Daniels, claims she had a one-night stand with Trump at the Celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006, when Melania’s son Barron was four months old. Trump allegedly had his lawyer Michael Cohen pay Daniels $130,000 ten days before the 2016 presidential election for her not to go public with her story. All three of these payment activities, if true, are violations of federal campaign laws–if it can be proved that Trump did it to help him win the presidency–and therefore felonies in the State of New York.
The two stories involving the two women were first reported in the media in 2017, during Trump’s first year as president. He denied knowing either of the two women, calling them liars. Yet pictures were produced showing only Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels together with each others. So, Daniels sued Trump for defamation of character.
When Trump departed from the courtroom to board his airplane to return to Florida that afternoon yesterday, it is being reported he phoned his spiritual advisor Paula White Cain, a Pentecostal. Trump had selected her to give the prayer at his inauguration as president in early 2017.
This was a group call to Cain and other evangelical leaders of her group called Intercessors for America. They had gathered for an Emergency Prayer Call for Trump. He did some talking. And they prayed for him, claiming the indictments were evil and the work of Satan, asking God to protect Donald Trump. One of those on the call was James Dobson of Focus on the Family, a longtime supporter of Trump as president. One member on the call prayed, “Father, our President Donald J. Trump has taken the blows for America. He has taken the blows for us. We lift him up to you.”
One of Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, came in on the call. He chimed in, “If you’re Republican, if you’re conservative, if you’re Christian, watch out. They’re coming for ya’.”
Yeah, they’ve been coming for Rudy. He’s been having to testify in other criminal investigations of the former president. Thus, Rudy may be in legal jeopardy himself since he was perhaps Trump’s biggest supporter in claiming the 2020 election was stolen. I think there was a stolen election–Donald Trump stole the 2016 election by paying off a porn star!
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