Trump’s Criminal Case Is Going to be Totally Wild

Former President Donald Trump has finally been charged with a crime. Whatever happens next is going to be totally bonkers. 

That’s because Trump’s criminal jeopardy has finally slammed into his political career like a burning freight train hitting a diesel truck, after years of near-misses and narrow escapes. 

Trump now stands accused of at least one felony in the state of New York, after a grand jury in Manhattan voted to make him the first ex-president in U.S. history to ever be criminally indicted.

Trump has shown every sign of planning to use the fight with prosecutors to supercharge his presidential campaign, and to rally his base under the claim that he’s being politically persecuted. The upshot is that the presumptive frontrunner of the GOP presidential primary will now face a months-long criminal process, and likely a wild trial, during the peak of his campaign to recapture the White House. 

This unprecedented situation raises questions that can’t easily be answered—because there is simply no clear precedent in U.S. history. 

But now, Trump, and the rest of the country, are all headed into this weird new place together. 

A precedent has just been shattered. 

Sex, money and criminal charges

The details of Trump’s felony indictment remain sealed, but the indictment was confirmed by Trump’s attorneys in a statement on Thursday afternoon.

“President Trump has been indicted,” Trump lawyers Susan Necheles and Joe Tacopina wrote in an emailed statement. “He did not commit any crime. We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in Court.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been probing whether Trump broke the law in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. The charges are widely believed to revolve around allegations that Trump falsified business records in connection to funds that were reimbursed to Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen, after Cohen arranged the payoff to Daniels.  

Trump insists he didn’t break the law—although now, he’ll have to prove that in court. He also denies Daniels’ claims that the pair had a sexual affair in 2006. 

Daniels, however, declared herself ready to testify at Trump’s trial on Wednesday night. 

“I’m not afraid,” she told participants in a live Q&A conducted on her OnlyFans account Wednesday night. “I will not back down.”

Trump is expected to be arraigned in the coming days, in a process that he has reportedly mused about turning into a spectacle. Security barriers began going up in downtown Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, ahead of possible disruptions for the historic moment.

Wallace: There has been a story developing as we've been on the air. News has broken over the last 45 minutes out of New York City, three law enforcement sources telling NBC news that additional security measures are once again put in place.. pic.twitter.com/gNZQkjlksK

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 30, 2023

No exit

Whatever happens next, Trump already made history by becoming the first former president in U.S. history to be charged with a crime. 

The last time the U.S. came close, a decision was made that the country couldn’t handle such a shock to the system. 

The closest comparison is with former President Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace following the Watergate scandal in the 1970s and yet managed to avoid a criminal trial at the last moment. Several of Nixon’s closest aides were indicted, convicted, and sentenced to prison in a series of events following a bungled burglary at the headquarters of Democratic National Headquarters. 

But Nixon was saved by a well-timed presidential pardon from his successor, Gerald Ford. 

Ford argued that pardoning Nixon was really saving the country from being dragged down under the weight of a criminal case against a former president. 

At the time, Ford said: “If we had had this series—an indictment, a trial, and a conviction and anything else that transpired after that—that the attention of the president, the Congress and the American people would be diverted from the problems that we have to solve. And that was the principal reason for my granting of the pardon.” 

Trump, of course, has a history of provoking chaos. Trump predicted in mid-March that he could be charged with a crime soon, and called on his followers to “protest!” Since then he has raged against Bragg, calling the first Black man ever elected District Attorney in New York county an “animal” and a “racist.” 

This isn’t the first time Trump has seemed to toy with the idea of sending his followers to sow chaos in the streets if he’s indicted. 

All the way back in January of 2021, Trump told a rally: “If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt.” 

Those remarks prompted Fulton County DA Fani Willis, who is also eyeing Trump for a possible criminal charge in Georgia, to call for FBI security to help protect her team. She has since handed out bulletproof vests to her staffers, according to the New York Times. 

Bragg’s office recently received a threatening letter containing white powder and the words: “ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The letter was addressed to Bragg and mailed from Orlando, Florida on Tuesday, according to NBC News.

The white powder turned out not to be dangerous. But the concern is that it may be a harbinger of the kind of chaos that could arrive when an aggressive ex-president battles not only for his political future, but also for his freedom. 

Yes, Trump can still be elected president

Contrary to widespread popular belief, the criminal charges against Trump do not mean that he cannot become president.

Trump can keep running a national campaign even if he’s convicted and sentenced to prison, according to most Constitutional scholars. 

There’s historical precedent in Eugene Debs, the socialist who ran for president from inside Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in 1920 and scored almost a million votes. Debs was serving time for speaking out against the draft during the first world war.  

What might happen if Trump actually wins the election from inside a prison cell, however, is hard to imagine.