Former US president Donald Trump is embroiled in no fewer than four different criminal probes from three different levels of government. Photo / Haiyun Jiang, The New York Times
Former US president Donald Trump is embroiled in no fewer than four different criminal probes from three different levels of government. Photo / Haiyun Jiang, The New York Times
Opinion
EDITORIAL
The charges laid against Donald Trump seem an underwhelming case compared to the other allegations that have swirled around the polarising former US president.
But maybe it’s just the start.
A Manhattan grand jury has voted this week to indict Trump on charges involving payments made duringthe 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter. It’s the first criminal case against a former US president.
The district attorney’s investigation centred on money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who he feared would go public with claims that they had extramarital sexual encounters with him. Daniels claims she was paid by Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Cohen claims Trump directed him to make the payment and pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and other charges related to money given to Daniels and McDougal.
Stormy Daniels, accompanied by attorney Michael Avenatti, after speaking to the media outside a federal court in 2018. Photo / AP
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has repeatedly attacked the investigation as politically motivated. He is expected to surrender to authorities this week, although the details are still being worked out.
The indictment has been described as a “jolt” to Trump’s bid to retake the White House in 2024, but it is not the end of it. The US Constitution requires a candidate to meet only three criteria: to be a natural-born US citizen; be at least 35 years old; and to have been a US resident for at least 14 years.
Other restrictions don’t apply to Trump, such as being unable to run again after being president twice already, being impeached and convicted (he’s been impeached twice and acquitted), or being a former Confederate soldier.
If the criteria seem a low bar, Trump’s famous hairdo has never brushed it. He is embroiled in no fewer than four different criminal probes from three different levels of government. These include Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s now successful indictment over the hush-money payment scheme.
A select grand jury in Atlanta is investigating Trump’s and his allies’ efforts to overturn his election loss in Georgia in 2020. In Washington, a Justice Department special counsel is looking at the 2020 election aftermath and the removal of presidential documents to his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida.
Donald Trump during his election night party at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, in November 2022. Photo / Josh Ritchie, The New York Times, File
In New York, Attorney General Letitia James is suing Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging an expansive fraud lasting more than a decade that the former president used to enrich himself. That trial is set for October.
Former magazine writer E. Jean Carroll has alleged Trump raped her in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and defamed her when he denied it (saying she wasn’t his type). The trial over Carroll’s initial lawsuit has been delayed, while the defamation trial is set to begin in late April.
And, of course, the House select committee has investigated Trump’s actions before and on January 6, 2021, especially efforts to use the levers of government to overturn the election. Additionally, several members of the US Capitol Police and Washington DC Metropolitan Police are suing Trump, saying his words and actions incited the riot.
As with the Stormy Daniels case, Trump claims each investigation is based on unfounded allegations and either politically or personally motivated.
The indictment over the hush money certainly faces an uphill battle. Trump’s lawyers have argued the statute of limitations has run out and are likely to claim the clock stopped when he left New York to become president in 2017. However, the indictment is likely to invigorate the other investigations, some of which appear on paper to be more likely to result in a conviction.
An indictment and even a conviction would not stop Trump from running again but, in prosaic terms, it should keep more of the dominant independent bloc on the side of the Democrats if he’s the Republican nominee.
