Donald Trump’s reaction to the justice that accuses him is like that of the scorpion in the fable to the frog that helps him cross the river. “It’s my nature,” says the arachnid to the batrachian when halfway through it bites him with all the consequences. It seems that the former president of the United States cannot help but respond with insults to everyone who questions him. Not even when it is a representative of the law who is prosecuting him and can add charges if he insists on his offenses.
Hours after becoming the first US president to be arrested and charged criminally in New York, specifically on 34 counts of forgery related to the $130,000 bribe to porn actress Stormy Daniels in the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said at the Mar-a-Lago (Florida) residence that “the criminal is the district attorney” who accuses him, Alvin Bragg, who, in his opinion, should “immediately impeach himself.” for having leaked reports of the imputation.
In an unusually short intervention of only 30 minutes, when his speeches usually last no less than two hours, Trump also lashed out at the magistrate who sees his case, Juan Merchan, and even at those close to him. “He is a judge who hates Trump, like his family; with a wife who also hates me and a daughter who works for Kamala Harris,†he said.
The former president had already attacked those who tried him from the Prosecutor’s Office and the Manhattan court, but this time he did it after having been accused and warned: by the prosecutor and even by some of his lawyers, Joe Tacopina , who a few days ago distanced himself from his client’s first insults to Bragg, whom he called “animal”.
On Tuesday, Trump focused on the special prosecutor overseeing investigations into his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol and the hiding of classified documents at the Florida residence. “We have this Jack Smith lunatic who threatens people every day through his representatives,” he said.
Lawyers who comment on the legal cases against Trump agree that the Republican risks another imputation for defaming or slandering the prosecutors and judges who are investigating him. But the most likely thing is that, if he continues to pull the rope, the magistrate will issue against him what in the US is called a “gag order”, a ban or restriction on one or more parties to the process to prohibit them from talking about it.
The former president described the charges against him as “an insult to our country”. He added that they constitute “a persecution, and not an investigation”, as well as an “electoral interference” to block his path to re-election in 2024. And he repeated what he had written hours earlier on his network, Truth Social, during the journey from Trump Tower to the courts in Manhattan: “I never thought that this could happen in America”.
But the message that Trump emphasized the most is that “there is no case” against him because the accusations do not hold up. On top of that, the former president, in addition to insisting on his recourse to insult, denial and rebuke, was pressing a key that some lawyers do not consider completely out of tune. Because the cause can be difficult to sustain before a court, and there are certain doubts about its legal construction.
The charges stem from a $130,000 cash payment Trump lawyer and mediator Michael Cohen made to Stormy Daniels on behalf of the then-presidential candidate. According to the prosecutor, the politician and tycoon reimbursed Cohen the money with “eleven checks with false purposes” disguised as professional minutes. In total, there were “34 false entries in New York business records†in order to hide the down payment. And every falsehood constitutes, according to Bragg, a serious crime.
The problem is that the alleged forgery charges are, in principle, under New York law, misdemeanors… Unless it can be proven that they were committed in connection with a larger offense. And in this sense Bragg suggested two possibilities: one related to the “conspiracy” that Trump “orchestrated” to avoid a loss of votes, which would entail a serious violation of electoral laws, and another option alluding to the aim of hiding the operations from the tax office.
The former president “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified the state’s business records to hide crimes that concealed harmful information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential elections,” the letter says regarding the electoral side. Regarding a possible tax crime, he adds that “the participants in the fraud took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the refunds.”
And the prosecutor will have to provide more data on the basis of the imputation of 34 serious crimes of forgery based on the commission of this major crime that has not yet been finalized.
The next hearing with all parties was set for December 4. The prosecutor proposed that the trial begin in January 2024: in the midst of the primary campaign, which begins in January. And it remains to be seen how and when the other cases against Trump progress, such as those of the attempt to falsify the 2020 elections in Georgia, the assault on the Capitol and the concealment of secret papers.
Calendars can collide. The earthquake continues its course.
