My first thought Tuesday, April 4, watching criminal defendant Donald Trump trudge toward the courtroom, was how different he looks when he’s not on the rally circuit shoveling slop to his saps. This time he had nobody to succor him emotionally – buttressed, as he was, by a grand total of no family members. He looked like a neutered bull.
And how sweet it was to see this lowlife brought low. Yeah, we can certainly carp if we want about the charges, but who among us would consider it small beans to be hit with 34 felony counts, each of which carries a maximum four years behind bars? Who among us would want to be formally accused by a prosecutor of orchestrating “criminal conduct” and “white-collar crime,” and forced to spend untold months and perhaps years trying to beat the rap?
I want to play in a rock band called 34 Felonies.
The charges unsealed April 4 relate only to the criminal defendant’s assault on democracy in 2016. The gonzo indictments, detailing his assaults on democracy in 2020 and his 2021 document thefts, loom ever larger on the horizon. Those likely indictments will be the entrees on the MAGA menu, and none of his imbecilic posts on social media (calling special counsel Jack Smith “a Radical Left Lunatic,” et cetera) are likely to reverse the downward trajectory of his golden years.
So let’s nibble yesterday’s appetizer.
From People v. Donald Trump‘s Statement of Facts: “The defendant … repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election … In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York. The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme.”
It’s a crime to falsify business records; indeed, Bragg recently won criminal convictions against the Trump Organization for tax fraud. Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former Manhattan chief assistant DA, has assessed the new Trump fraud indictment: “There’s nothing novel or weak about this case. The charge of creating false financial records is constantly brought by Mr. Bragg and other New York DAs. In particular, the creation of phony documentation to cover up campaign finance violations has been repeatedly prosecuted in New York. That is exactly what Mr. Trump stands accused of.”
It’s also a crime under New York election law “to conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means” (Bragg’s words).
And it’s a crime, under federal election law, to financially benefit a candidate by donating sums of money that far exceed the law’s donation caps. Michael Cohen, who served a stint in jail for doing Trump’s bidding, helped Trump pay $130,000 to hush up Stormy Daniels and hoodwink voters on ’16 election eve – essentially giving Trump an in-kind campaign contribution.
It was all about concealing sex scandals for the purpose of winning the election. A close reading of the indictment makes it clear that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has the requisite texts, emails, documents, and witnesses to prove the charges. One potential star witness, who has already ‘fessed up in a “non-prosecution agreement,” is National Enquirer bigwig David Pecker, who functioned for years as a Trump fixer. Pecker’s company has already admitted, on the record, that it helped Trump pay off women to ensure that they “did not publicize damaging allegations … before the 2016 presidential election and thereby influence that election.”
In fact, it was Trump’s own Justice Department that prosecuted and convicted Cohen. The sentencing memo on Cohen basically previewed the current case against Trump: “Cohen acted with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election. Cohen coordinated his actions with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature and timing of the payments” to Stormy Daniels. “In particular … he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.” (Take a wild guess who that was.)
The new court documents basically spell out how the illegal scheme worked: Cohen paid Stormy out of his own pocket to muzzle her and gaslight the voters. Trump agreed to reimburse him. In 2017, shortly after the criminal defendant’s inauguration, Cohen set up an LLC shell company. That’s where the reimbursements were sent, over a span of nine months, all of it characterized as “legal expenses.” The DA has copies of the checks.
In fact, Cohen was nicely rewarded far beyond the 130-grand he put up for Stormy. The court documents state that Cohen and the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer (who’s now an inmate on Rikers Island) “agreed to a total repayment amount of $420,000. They reached that figure by adding the $130,000 payment to a $50,000 payment for another expense for which (Cohen) also claimed reimbursement, for a total of $180,000. The chief financial officer then doubled that amount to $360,000 so that (Cohen) could characterize the payment as income on his tax returns,” thereby giving Cohen an extra $180,000 to take home “after paying approximately 50% in income taxes.” Sweet deal.
The indictment details and the Statement of Facts are dead serious, but there is one hilarious passage. Naturally, it features His Fraudulency in the starring role. On the eve of the 2016 election, “The Defendant directed (Cohen) to delay making a payment to (Stormy) as long as possible. He instructed (Cohen) that if they could delay the payment until after the election, they could avoid paying altogether, because at that point it would not matter if the story became public … (Cohen) attempted to delay making payment as long as possible.”
True to his nature, the guy who was notorious for stiffing contractors in Atlantic City was sorely tempted to stiff his porn gal too. Character is destiny.
He never learns. The other night, while visiting Sean Hannity’s fanboy cocoon, the Fox host brought up the stolen classified documents case and posed this question: “I can’t imagine you ever saying, ‘Bring me some of the boxes that we brought back from the White House, I’d like to look at them.’ Did you have the right to do that?” Trump’s response: “There’s nothing wrong with that! … I would do that!”
It’s easy – too easy – to conclude that Trump’s serial crimes and mere presence are proof that this nation is going down the tubes. But I think most of us are still sufficiently sane. The latest national poll reports that 60% of Americans support the indictment. In Nashville the other day, 7,000 young people and schoolchildren marched for an end to gun violence. And in a Wisconsin Supreme Court election the night of April 4, a surge of progressive voters swung the bench leftward, giving them 4-3 control of the highest court for the first time in 15 years – which likely ensures that the voting rules in that swing state won’t be rigged in 2024 for Trump or one of his mini-me’s.
I know it’s simplistic to say that “the system works.” But I can’t help but think that somewhere in the Kremlin, Trump’s war criminal bromance buddy has learned of the indictment and is saying, “Make me to understand. How the DA not fall from window?”
Because that’s not how it works here.
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2023
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