The Trump Ides of March
Perhaps, according to what's a brewin' at the Manhattan District Attorney's office:
Donald Trump’s ex-personal lawyer Michael Cohen testified for three hours Monday to a Manhattan grand jury investigating the former president, and will return Wednesday to answer more questions from prosecutors about a hush-money payment to a porn star that he arranged for Trump.“Michael has spent a long and productive afternoon,” Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis told reporters outside Manhattan Criminal Court, NBC News reported.Davis added that Cohen plans to return Wednesday afternoon to “complete his testimony.” The lawyer declined to go into detail about what Cohen told prosecutors.
What does a completed Michael Cohen testimony mean? To put it simply, it means that the already empaneled Grand Jury could indict Trump as early as this afternoon. Watch former federal prosecutor Harry Litman break it down with Nicole Wallace:
"Once Cohen is done, all that's left to do is request an indictment from the grand jury. So after Wednesday I think it's then very much a hold your breath waiting game not a matter of weeks but a matter of days or even hours. " @harrylitman w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/v5O3muSjIP
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) March 13, 2023
For those of us who have yet to lose faith in the American justice system, this is potentially the first in a series of indictments for the former Oval Office Usurper. While the content of the indictment may not blow us all away (the Stormy Daniels affair is hardly a revelation) what it may very well end up doing is putting Trump away on a charge that can be easily proven. You don't have star witness Michael Cohen meet with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg over 20 times and not have a rock solid case. While the penalty is relatively benign, what it would mean if that if convicted, Trump would potentially serve jail time and the GOP would be forced to potentially nominate a convicted felon. A quick synopsis of the charge can be found here:
The investigation relates to a $130,000 payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in late October 2016, days before the 2016 presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair.
In a lengthy response on his Truth Social account Thursday night, Trump said in part, “I did absolutely nothing wrong, I never had an affair with Stormy Daniels.”
Hush money payments aren’t illegal. Prosecutors are weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying the business records of the Trump Organization for how it reflected the reimbursement of the payment to Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-fixer who said he advanced the money to Daniels. Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in New York.
Prosecutors are also weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying business records in the first degree for falsifying a record with the intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal another crime, which in this case could be a violation of campaign finance laws. That is a Class E felony and carries a sentence of a minimum of one year and as much as four years.
That's it, kids. All it takes to get Trump behind bars for one to four years is a one-time hush money payment to an adult film actress. Yes, we all want the hammer thrown on Trump for his lifetime of crime. And we very well might get it. There are ongoing cases with District Attorney Fanni Willis in Georgia, federal prosecutors and the IRS regarding the Trump Organization, and the Department of Justice case with special prosecutor Jack Smith moving at breakneck speed under the watchful eye of Merrick Garland. Trump will cry witch hunt for all of them but the likelihood is that his fateful decision to come down that escalator on June 16, 2015 will ultimately be seen as the day that set everything in motion. The Manhattan DA's case is simply the first domino to fall. Hubris is a hell of a drug and if Al Capone can end up in jail for a lifetime of crime simply for refusing to pay his taxes then there's no reason that Trump can't end up in jail for a single payment to keep his affair a secret.
We'll get him. It might not be today but the writing is on the wall. Alvin Bragg. Fanni Willis. Jack Smith. Merrick Garland. All of them are career professionals and all of them understand the importance of getting this right. Nobody is above the law, despite what they might believe. All it takes is one of these cases to get Trump locked up and that's all she wrote. The cases will be historic. Trump will fight them with every resource he has. Right wing media will cry tears of persecution. MAGA voters will lose their collective minds. But in the end, for the first time in his life, Donald John Trump will be held accountable for his crimes.
And the entire Republican Party will have to decide if it wants to have its 2024 presidential nominee be a convicted felon.