(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Stormier weather ahead: 1st Trump case a likely roadmap for return trips to Indictmentville [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-04 Whether Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg wins or loses his case against Donald Trump, it forces the former president into uncharted territory, including a need to stop talking about the case and the judge. As such, the Bragg case may be a template for other prosecutions to come. On Tuesday afternoon, Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the greatest carnival barker in history, presented himself at the Criminal Courts Building at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan, and was formally arraigned after a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict him following a probe into a hush-money payment of $130,000 made during the 2016 presidential campaign on Trump’s behalf to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, in order to conceal a 2006 Trump affair. Trump pleaded not guilty. The 34 felony counts of the indictment include (among other things) the charge of falsifying business records in the first degree — recording that hush-money payment as a business expense. The charge, ordinarily a default misdemeanor, is elevated to a felony if the act is committed in the furtherance of another crime. The New York Times laid out the ways in which the seemingly small potatoes of a payout to hide a personal dalliance could backfire on the former president: “While hush money is not inherently illegal, the prosecutors could argue that the $130,000 payout effectively became an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, under the theory that because the money silenced Ms. Daniels, it benefited his candidacy,” The Times reported March 9. It’s become almost fashionable to dismiss the importance of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case, calling it the weakest of any Trump investigation. But those analysts and others who’d walk over the Bragg case may be missing the overall. It goes without saying that the Manhattan D.A. wouldn’t waste time prosecuting a case he knew or believed he couldn’t win. Still, there’s value in the Stormy Daniels case and its outcome beyond the zero-sum metric of who won and who lost. ◊ ◊ ◊ The Trump indictment forces the vast judicial machinery of the district attorney’s office and the New York courts into an antagonistic posture against a former president — a target unprecedented in the history of the Manhattan D.A., let alone New York’s history, let alone the nation’s. But this is terra incognita for Trump, too. He’s never visited Indictmentville before; this case pushes him into a defensive crouch he has never assumed. The Bragg case forces him and his minions to vacate the old shopworn strategies (some of them, anyway) in order to prevail where they’ve never had to before: Not in the fickle court of public opinion, but the more granular court of law. He’s already been advised not to speak his mind so combustively about Bragg and Democrats in general as he has in recent days and weeks through his online larynx, Truth Social. OUTRAGEOUS ASSERTIONS and WILD AD HOMINEM BROADSIDES (capitalized for reading from a distance) have been a Trump go-to for years; no telling what he’ll do if his lawyers advise him to shut up — or the judge orders him to do so. ◊ ◊ ◊ But what also bears watching and studying, besides the bill of particulars, will be the approach of the DA’s case against the former president, the scope of the evidence, the angles of attack, the ability to deflect the personal Trumpian assault, the temperament of the prosecution — for want of a better single word, the style of the district attorney’s case. That, and especially Trump’s reaction to the way Bragg and his team go about their business, will be closely watched by a sure-to-be-expanded cast of characters. The inescapable value of the New York case, regardless of whether it’s won or lost by Bragg’s office, is that it establishes a roadmap for future prosecution efforts; a way through the minefield; a template for other prosecutors navigating other indictments, and the strategies behind those indictments, yet to come. That’s hardly idle speculation, of course. Besides the Stormy Daniels case, Trump and his lawyers can look forward to an almost-certain indictment from Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, investigating Trump for attempted interference in the 2020 election (most hilariously and poisonously obvious in Trump’s recorded phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, seeking 11,780 votes, “which is one more than we have”). Then there’s the E. Jean Carroll matter, a harrowing case of alleged rape that’s somehow managed to fly under the media radar, despite a well-known New York civil court date of April 25. And we won’t forget the big one, the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into Trump’s suspected role in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection on the United States Capitol; as well as Trump getting an ill-advised jump start on his Presidential Library by hoarding a trove of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Xanadu. ◊ ◊ ◊ All of these, especially the Georgia and D.C. cases are, by any yardstick, way more legally (and constitutionally) problematic for Trump. But any attempt by Trump to skate on the Stormy Daniels mess, to write it off as so much shoddy bookkeeping, has to confront one inconvenient problem: Michael Cohen. Trump’s former Rottweiler-at-law went to prison for his facilitator’s role in the $130,000 payment to Daniels. Since his sentence ended, he’s been on a freeway to Damascus, doing a decent job of self-rehabilitation in the public eye. The optics of that transformation are bad enough for Trump, but there’s more: Cohen’s three-year prison sentence for his role in the hush-money scheme establishes a plausible predicate for Trump facing a similar outcome. After all, If the underling goes to the slammer for doing the boss’ illegal bidding, how can the boss himself not be subject to the same penalty? Media organizations previously petitioned the judge, acting New York County Supreme Court Justice Juan Manuel Merchan, to release the indictment early — as well as to allow the proceedings to be recorded. Late Monday, Merchan agreed to permit still photographs during the arraignment, but no video recordings. But we don’t have to wait to hear the indictment particulars to know what Trump’s strategy will be: more of the same, telegraphing his every punch on Truth Social, fulminating in ALL CAPS, more fundraising, and plowing forward as though nothing has happened. But at the end of the day, despite the bluff and bluster that have characterized this president and his presidency for five years, Trump has no playbook for what’s about to happen, and what happens after the arraignment. Alvin Bragg doesn’t have one either. But between the two of them, only Alvin Bragg’s got the patience to build one, and the discipline to carry it out. It’s a safe bet that other prosecutors in the other cases will read that playbook, word for word. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/4/2161990/-Stormier-weather-ahead-1st-Trump-case-a-likely-roadmap-for-return-trips-to-Indictmentville Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/