Donald Trump went ahead of the Justice by announcing his arrest to great fanfare four days before it was expected to take place. In addition to offering him the opportunity to impede the trial by presenting defense witnesses to the grand jury, he succeeded in breaking the secrecy of an operation carefully prepared by prosecutor Alvin Bragg in order to avoid unwanted public and political attention: he treats the end and after the first arrest of a president of the United States in two centuries of history.
But Bragg has played against it. On Wednesday (early Thursday morning in Spain) it was leaked that the grand jury would take time to revisit the case and its verdict on whether or not to indict Trump would be delayed until the end of April. Twenty-four hours later, however, the accusation has been formalized and the tycoon’s team of lawyers and political advisers were caught by surprise. Even several of the lawyers have had to suddenly suspend their plans to take a vacation prior to the great legal battle that they expected in a few weeks, according to ‘The Washington Post’, and Trump’s team has had to immediately return to the Mar-a-Lago home-office to rearm the public campaign to defend the former president.
How has he taken it? At first, “annoyed” and “disappointed”, as commented by Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the first party colleagues who called him on the phone after the grand jury’s decision was released. The statements made by Stephanie Clifford, the actress named Stormy Daniels, do not seem to have sat well with him, thanking him for “the support and love” that he has received after the accusation was disseminated. I have so many messages coming in that I can’t reply. Nor do I want to uncork my champagne », she said, waiting for what happens from now on in court.
And, like the man with whom he had a sexual ‘affair’, he has also been in charge of monetizing the matter. “Wait, deliveries will take a few more days,” he told his followers in the face of the rise in sales of t-shirts, bags and other objects that he markets with his image with slogans such as ‘Team Stormy’, ‘America, make America great’. Stormy again’ or ‘Stormy Weather’ (stormy weather) along with a caricature of the former president, who, by the way, dined last night at his private club in Palm Beach with his campaign advisers.
Stormy Daniels, during an appearance before the media after declaring
EP
The accusation catches him at the beginning of his career to achieve the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential elections. According to one of them, the tycoon was “irritated” and “disaminated”, says ‘The Washington Post’, nothing to do with his optimistic and jocular behavior of the last week and a half, in which it even seems that he thought that he could get rid of the bench in the ‘Stormy Daniels case’, but get a good political and economic performance out of it. In this short period of time his team has raised two million dollars in donations and he himself has been strengthened internally thanks to the closing ranks of the Republican Party around him.
A patrol at the door
The billionaire has not wanted to hide on his first night as a future defendant. “The New York Times” points out that he dined as usual at his Mar-a-Lago club, in public and in the company of Melania, his wife, and his parents. The only disruptive note on the scene is the police patrol that, following the news of his indictment, has been parked since last night in front of his mansion. This presence is not banal, Trump considers that his magnificent mansion and the golf club where he plays daily is his impenetrable refuge and has already been desecrated too many times by the Police. Now, and when the FBI searched him thoroughly for the secret government documents that he took with him when he left the White House, another fact for which he can be subjected to judicial process.
The tycoon blames his situation on the Democratic leaders who, according to the first battery of messages that he has posted on his social network this morning, have “lied and cheated” in their “obsession” to catch him. “But now he has done the unthinkable,” he settles after becoming the first occupant of the White House to be fingerprinted.
In his conversation with Senator Graham, Trump expressed his belief that “they are using the law as a weapon against me,” to which the conservative veteran told him to remain calm. Graham believes that the process will revalidate the former president within the party. And this same thesis has been joined this morning by other Republican representatives.
Trump supporters, at dawn this Friday in front of the road that leads to the Mar-a-Lago mansion
AFP
The word calm obviously does not go with Trump’s attitude. In fact, he has been forced to remove a photo montage on his social network of himself wielding a baseball bat along with an image of prosecutor Bragg’s face. He also calls him “animal”. However, he may now need to learn to use relaxation techniques. His advisers are concerned about the possibility that the verbal excesses of the Republican leader will act against him from now on, especially if he insists on questioning the functioning of Justice, sows a rebellious seed among his followers – no one in the Republican formation wants a Capitol II – or attacks prosecutor Alvin Bragg with vulgar viscerality. The golden rule that handles the narrow circle of the tycoon is that, once the respect and tradition of not impeaching a former president is broken, the following eventual accusations are easier to fall. For example, those of insulting or threatening a member of the judicial system.
The New York prosecutor is also a figure closely linked to the defense of civil rights and with a great prestige in social organizations. The Trump team does not want to agitate them too much, aware of their value in raising the Democrats, despite the fact that their fear now seems paradoxical. Ethics change according to events, because the reality is that the announcement of the grand jury has dismantled the smear plan of the Trump consultants, which apparently was underway to discredit the Prosecutor’s Office in the long month that they expected to have before the judicial resolution. The strategy would have consisted of wearing down Bragg, who this week several Republicans such as the representative of New York, Elise Stefanik, or the controversial senator JD Vance have attacked, assuring that he is a lawyer controlled by the billionaire George Soros.
Prosecutor Alvin Bragg leaves the Manhattan courthouse after the indictment is made public
EFE
Soros is a figure of anathema to the strictest conservative circles due to his criticism of Trump and, above all, his donations to Democratic campaigns. However, the idea propagated by the right that the billionaire “bought” Bragg by paying for his run to the Prosecutor’s Office is quite diffuse and inaccurate. Trump’s probable accuser has not wanted to come in and dirty a criminal case with a political overtone, as Trump wishes, but Soros’s organization has come forward to explain that the businessman “has never met or spoken” with Bragg.
The argument of recalcitrant conservatism would actually be a self-interested interpretation of the financial contributions – one million dollars – from Soros’s foundation to Color of Change, an association in favor of racial justice that once supported the New York prosecutor. In fact, one of the main goals of this group is to engage the country’s district attorneys, “the most powerful people in the criminal justice system,” with Black communities to counter racial injustice, arbitrary arrests, the spread of of hate messages on the networks –above all, those of Trump– or, for example, the marginalization of African-American studies in a part of the American academic circuit.
A policeman stands guard in front of the entrance to Trump Tower in New York
AFP
Waiting for what happens from now until next Tuesday, the day he is scheduled to turn himself in or be effectively arrested, the former president’s main concern seems to reside more in the political repercussions of the process than the criminal ones themselves. Because he is convinced that “they accuse a completely innocent person”, according to him he has trusted his partner network.
The fear of the mugshot
But not everyone paints the same picture. While dozens of former employees of the Trump Organization and its political network have posted messages on different platforms criticizing their former boss, Michael Cohen, who was his lawyer and has already been convicted of paying Stormy Adamas, believes that Trump feels “enraged.” » and intimidated because « his biggest fear is that they will take a mugshot of him and that from now on he will have a D for delinquent next to his name for the rest of his life. He wants people to believe that he is very strong, but he has very thin skin and a very fragile ego ».
Cohen adds that the tycoon has never thought that he could end up on the bench for this case and right now “he must be angry” with his collaborators for the advice “that they have given him during this time” because “he always has someone to blame.” .
For now, this same Friday he has opened a new fundraising campaign among his followers, aware of his ability to monetize setbacks, such as when he announced his arrest days ago or, previously, as a result of his possible involvement in a rape case. of official secrets for the ‘top secret’ documents discovered in his mansion. Thus, he has sent an email to his supporters in which he asks for a minimum contribution of $24 to “defend our movement from the endless witch hunt.”
Another aspect that can brighten your morning are the words of your former vice president, Mike Pence, who considers this “example of political criminalization” a “scandal” which, “for millions of Americans is nothing more than persecution” and an “obsession of the media”. A description adjusted to the unit and the victimizing story that, according to some experts, the conservative wing is already building with the preferred ingredients of its leader and that, at the very least, can help him consolidate his nomination as a presidential candidate for 2024 .