Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the Us Department of Justice Against His Critics by Michael Cohen

 

Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the Us Department of Justice Against His Critics

by Michael Cohen

The author of the New York Times number one bestseller Disloyal tells the behind-the-scenes story of what can happen to you -- and what really happened to him -- when a President who believes himself to be above the law decides to go after his critics . . . . <p/>When Michael Cohen's secret payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels on behalf of Donald Trump made Cohen look like a liability to the by-then-President of the United States, the end to their decade-long relationship came swiftly -- with a knock on the door from the FBI. Soon, Cohen would find himself imprisoned -- even though he had plenty of evidence to show he was innocent of most of the charges. <p/>Meanwhile, with the release of the Steele Dossier, Cohen also found himself battling endless news reports citing the Dossier's claims that he'd had clandestine dealings with Russia -- reports that only mounted despite his exoneration by the Mueller Report. <p/>In a story now being echoed in recent breaking news stories about IRS persecution of other Trump foes such as former FBI head James Comey and others, Cohen details -- in his inimitable blunt language, with absolutely no holds barred and naming names -- his attempt to clear his name and tell the truth about Donald Trump. Chillingly, he also makes clear what happens when you try to speak truth to power, and the power knows no bounds.

Campaign shares plans on how Trump will turn himself in

 

TRUMP INDICTMENT

Campaign shares plans on how Trump will turn himself in

 

The campaign shared new details about the former president’s plans to appear at the Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday to face criminal charges.

 

By MERIDITH MCGRAW and WESLEY PARNELL

03/31/2023 06:44 PM EDT

Updated: 03/31/2023 07:13 PM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/31/trump-plans-to-turn-himself-in-00090037

 

Former President Donald Trump is expected to turn himself over to local law enforcement on Tuesday. Plans are in motion for the unprecedented arraignment in New York.

 

According to a rough schedule shared by the campaign, the ex-president plans to depart his private Mar-a-Lago estate midday on Monday and take his private plane to New York.

 

 

He then plans to spend the night at his Manhattan penthouse at Trump Tower and then will head to the courthouse early in the morning on Tuesday. His arraignment is expected to be around 2:15pm, according to a law enforcement official.

 

The campaign says he will spend his weekend at home in Palm Beach, and he plans to return after business at the courthouse is complete. Over the weekend he will keep his usual schedule — which almost always includes an evening dinner on the club’s patio with his family and associates and golf at his nearby clubs.

 

Trump has been indicted on charges related to the Manhattan district attorney’s grand jury investigation into alleged hush money payments to adult actress Stormy Daniels. The exact charges are still under seal.

 

His campaign does not have any other public events planned for Monday and Tuesday. Trump, according to his campaign, will be “back at it” on Wednesday. So far, the only major event on his calendar is a speech at the National Rifle Association conference mid-April in Indianapolis.

 

Since news of the indictment, Trump’s campaign has worked to drum up support with fundraising appeals and the coordination of surrogates and lawyers on T.V. They are bracing for what will likely be a media spectacle as Trump turns himself in.

 

In a sign of Trump’s successful appeals, his campaign announced on Friday that it raised $4 million in the first 24 hours following news of the indictment. A press release from the campaign noted that “25% of donations came from first-time donors” and the average contribution was only $34.

 

The Trump campaign is also keeping tabs of others who are trying to financially benefit off of the indictment. Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump campaign adviser, has been calling candidates and campaigns raising money off the news and telling them to stop, according to a person familiar with campaign discussions.

 

Law enforcement officials in Manhattan braced for potential unrest next week surrounding the arraignment of Trump, beefing up security in and around Lower Manhattan. Officials were discussing blocking off the streets around the courthouse and removing all cars in the case of a bomb threat, according to a law enforcement source.

 

Some 40 press vehicles that have been parked outside the courthouse since last week would make it difficult to secure the area, according to the source, who added the former president planned to arrive via motorcade.

 

Dozens of court officers along with NYPD units were stationed outside Manhattan Criminal Court Friday, where the District Attorney has his office. Inside the courthouse, court officers patrolled almost every floor, with the 15th floor where trials take place, closed off to reporters and the public.

 

“The bottom line is that everyone is working overtime, it’s a stressful situation, there are a lot of crazies out there. A woman pulled a knife on someone the other day, so we are on high alert,” said Dennis W. Quirk, President of the New York Court Officers Association, referring to a Trump supporter who pulled a knife on a family with small children Wednesday. “Our job is to get this done as quickly as we can, and make sure that no one gets hurt.”

 

Remarks from the former president ahead of the indictment along with more recent calls for protest from Republican leaders added to concern.

 

“New York put your MAGA hats on. Under our constitutional rights, we WILL support President Trump and protest the tyrants. I’ll see you on Tuesday,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in a tweet Friday.

 

Greene’s tweet came after Trump called on supporters to protest the indictment and predicted “potential death & destruction” if he was charged for his alleged role in a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

 

Additional reporting from Erica Orden and Alex Isenstadt.

Trump facing imminent criminal charges over 'hush money' allegations

Michael Cohen on Trump: He can put on fake bravado but ‘he’s petrified’

After indictment, Trump will play the victim – and the tactic will work for many Republicans

 

Analysis

After indictment, Trump will play the victim – and the tactic will work for many Republicans

David Smith

in Washington

Trump has followed a pattern since 2016 – the bigger the alleged crime, the louder he airs grievances and claims he’s being persecuted

 

Fri 31 Mar 2023 06.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/31/donald-trump-indictment-victim-tactic-republicans-2024

 

Comedian Chris Rock gazed out at the audience at an awards ceremony in Washington earlier this month. “Are you guys really going to arrest Trump?” he asked bluntly. “This is only going to make him more popular!”

 

Donald Trump has not yet been arrested but is now the first person to occupy the Oval Office to then be charged with a crime. It also raises the prospect of the Republican favorite for the 2024 presidential race to be running for the White House while also being criminally prosecuted – something likely to bring even more chaos to America’s already deeply fractured political landscape.

 

It emerged on Thursday that a Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Trump over a hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

 

 

Florida-based Trump is now expected to surrender himself on Tuesday to the Manhattan district attorney (DA) to be fingerprinted and photographed for a mugshot – something guaranteed to delight his many opponents, appall his fans and divide the United States even more.

 

30 March 2023 is therefore a day for the history books. It offered an affirmation of the Magna Carta principle that no one, not even the onetime commander in chief, is above the law. The 45th president of the United States is set to stand trial and, if convicted, could find himself behind bars instead of running for re-election.

 

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said on the MSNBC network: “Tomorrow, in terms of American history, we will be waking up in a different country. Before tonight, presidents in this country were kings.”

 

But while the law is clear, the politics are murky. A criminal charge or even conviction does not prevent someone running for the White House, and Trump is currently leading in opinion polls for the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

 

In the pre-Trump universe, an indictment over a hush money payment to an adult film star would have been career-ending. Candidates have withdrawn from election races for much less.

 

But since 2016, Trump has been a political judo master, turning the weight of opponents and allegations against them to his own advantage. The bigger the alleged crime, the louder he airs grievances and the more he plays the victim – and so far the Republican party has been mostly willing to indulge him.

 

That is the role he will play with an indictment hanging over him. At a campaign rally in Waco, Texas, last weekend, he claimed: “The Biden regime’s weaponization of law enforcement against their political opponents is something straight out of the Stalinist Russia horror show.” He suggested that it is the most serious problem facing America today.

 

In a statement on Thursday following his indictment, Trump said: “This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history… The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable - indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference.”

 

Trump will now doubtless set about putting the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, on trial in the court of public opinion. He has already used dehumanising and racist language. A social media post, later removed, showed a photo of Trump holding a baseball bat and apparently looming over Bragg, raising fears of violence against him.

 

America’s tragedy is that the tactic will work with many Republicans. That Bragg is a Democrat from New York will trigger a Pavlovian response in Trump’s favor. That the case is seven years old, based on an untested legal theory and has Michael Cohen, a convicted criminal, as a key witness will provide further ammunition.

 

This pattern came into a focus earlier this month when Trump falsely predicted his own arrest. Republicans leaped to his defence and he reportedly raised $1.5m in three days; on Thursday night he quickly sent out another fundraising email.

 

The drama put Trump back where he wants to be: at the centre of the news cycle. Not coincidentally, it also gave him a boost in the Republican primary polls, extending a lead over Ron DeSantis, even as the Florida governor was on a book tour trying to promote his own brand. Everyone was talking about Trump.

 

So it was that, after news of the indictment emerged on Thursday, Republicans again came to his aid. Trump ally Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives, accused Bragg of “irreparably” damaging the country “in an attempt to interfere” in the election.

 

JD Vance, a Republican senator for Ohio, described the indictment as “political persecution masquerading as law”, “blatant election interference” and “a direct assault on the tens of millions of Americans who support him”.

 

But the most telling reaction came from DeSantis himself. This could have been the moment for him to break from Trump and prove statesmanlike, calling for dignity and unity in a solemn moment for the nation. Instead he went full Maga.

 

DeSantis said: “The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head. It is un-American.” Blowing an antisemitic dog whistle, DeSantis twice linked Bragg to philanthropist George Soros, adding that Florida would not assist in “an extradition request” to send Trump to New York.

 

The spineless responses suggested that, in the short term at least, the indictment will provide a rallying cry for Trump and help rather than hurt him in the 2024 Republican primary. In the for-us-or-against-us binary of American politics, the party base will be for him and against the perceived Democratic elites and the deep state.

 

Yet again, he has thrust America into the political unknown, a twilight zone where precedents do not apply and everyone has to respond on the fly. Can the Manhattan court assemble an impartial jury, and will the timing of the trial collide with the Republican primary?

 

Then, what about the other major legal perils threatening Trump: over the January 6 insurrection, over election interference in Georgia and over the mishandling of classified documents? These cases are arguably more clear-cut and consequential – but not necessarily in the eyes of Republicans. Will he recklessly incite unrest among his supporters?

 

The lesson of the Trump era is that most predictions are wrong. The only certainty is that Thursday will go down as the day when Trump’s age of impunity, in which he was never legally held to account, is over. The man who rose to power leading chants of “Lock her up!” is about to get a taste of his own medicine.

Lawrence: Key Trump case detail confirmed thanks to Jim Jordan's rank stupidity

News of indictment catches Trump and his team off guard

 

News of indictment catches Trump and his team off guard

 

Sources say ex-president and aides believed prosecutors were reconsidering action and were taken by surprise by announcement

 

Hugo Lowell

@hugolowell

Fri 31 Mar 2023 07.30 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/31/news-of-indictment-catches-trump-and-his-team-off-guard

 

Donald Trump and his top advisers were caught flat-footed by the news of his indictment by the Manhattan grand jury over hush money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, having expected no charges until at least the end of April and potentially never at all.

 

The former president reckoned – along with his aides – that recent reporting about the grand jury taking a break from next week meant prosecutors in the district attorney’s office were reconsidering whether to seek an indictment over the matter.

 

But that optimism proved to be misplaced when Trump was alerted at Mar-a-Lago to the indictment by his advisers, some of whom had decided to return to Washington after growing tired of waiting with him for several weeks for charges to materialize.

 

The former president issued a pugilistic statement in response to the news and lashed out at the prosecution as political and an effort to hurt his 2024 presidential campaign, before appearing for dinner as usual alongside the other guests at this Florida resort.

 

But in private, Trump was more subdued as he took in the significance of becoming the first sitting or former president to be charged and the changed reality of operating under the threat of an eventual criminal trial, several sources close to him said.

 

The private response showed that for all his outward bravado – including claims that he wanted to be arrested and handcuffed for a “perp walk” because he wanted to project defiance if he was ever indicted – deep down, Trump has always feared the prospect of being criminally charged and its consequences.

 

The charges remain sealed, but are expected to touch on $130,000 that Trump made to Daniels through his then lawyer Michael Cohen in the final days of the 2016 elections campaign. Trump later reimbursed Cohen with $35,000 checks, and Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges over the money.

 

Trump’s mood towards the hush money investigation has fluctuated in recent weeks – from criticising the prospect of criminal charges, to growing impatient and insisting they should charge him already, and then going back to attacking the investigation with vehemence.

 

After the first rally of his 2024 campaign in Texas, Trump told an NBC News reporter he was not frustrated by the case despite appearing quite frustrated.

 

“I’m not frustrated by it. It’s a fake investigation,” Trump said. “This is fake news, and NBC is one of the worst. Don’t ask me any more questions.”

 

Trump became more optimistic this week, believing – based on no actual evidence – that reports about the grand jury taking a break for most of April could mean the district attorney was having doubts about prosecuting the hush money case and that it was “all over”.

 

Some of Trump’s advisers took that as an opportunity to get out of Palm Beach, where they had been waiting with him for weeks for an indictment to arrive.

 

Shortly after 5pm on Thursday, his 2024 campaign advisers learned from a New York Times alert that Trump had been indicted, catching them off guard in part because they assumed they would hear about it first from the Trump lawyers, who had themselves assumed they would confidentially hear it first from prosecutors.

 

Though Trump had indicated that he expected to be one of the first people to be told if he was charged in the hush money case, the sources said, when the news actually arrived, Trump appears to have been one of the very last people to find out.