Foreword…

Even Melania Must Know Trump Blew It

NYT, Nov. 14, 2022, By Michelle Cottle

Ms. Cottle is a member of the editorial board.

…Marriage is hard. Even the happiest couples will occasionally bicker, nitpick or wear on each other’s nerves. So consider just how bumpy things could get if someone’s thin-skinned, emotionally erratic, accountability-averse husband started criticizing her for his high-profile screw-ups.

This apparently has been happening at Mar-a-Lago, where, post-election, Donald Trump is flipping out over his key role in the Republicans’ face-plant in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Mr. Trump backed his old buddy Mehmet Oz, and the celebrity doctor turned out to be a loser. The former president has since been shifting the blame for his poor pick onto everyone else — including Melania Trump, according to The Times. (Mr. Trump, of course, hopped on Truth Social to denounce the “Fake Story” and insist he “was not at all ANGRY.”)

By now, Mrs. Trump must be somewhat accustomed to her hubby’s tantrums. Still, this round of ragey finger-pointing must be particularly galling, considering that Mr. Trump didn’t just undermine Republicans’ chances in an eminently winnable Senate race. He helped kneecap the party up and down the Pennsylvania ballot, giving the Democrats in the crucial swing state one of their best Election Days in ages.

How Mr. Trump manages to turn perfectly winnable races and states into big-time losers might be worth a little reflection (read: panic) among Republicans as the former president prepares for his third White House run. This guy has the Midas touch in reverse, yet still he’s planning a “Special Announcement” on Tuesday night — despite even some of his former aides’ urging him to slow his roll. Mr. Trump likes to move fast and furious, to keep heads spinning. His embrace of wing-nut candidates in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and New Hampshire not only probably cost Republicans potential victories in those battleground states but also offers a sneak peek at what Mr. Trump could do to his party in 2024 if he’s once more at the top of the ticket.

Of all the places where Mr. Trump proved toxic, Pennsylvania may be where he did the most impressive damage — a state that will be key to any winning Republican presidential contender in 2024. The Trumpian fiasco there shows what happens when candidates make the race all about themselves, embracing MAGA and being out of step with the electorate.

In the high-stakes fight for control of the Senate, Pennsylvania was a hot spot, widely considered the Democrats’ best opportunity to flip a Republican-held seat and, by extension, a must-hold for the G.O.P. Dr. Oz’s high-profile flop was a particularly painful one for Mr. Trump’s party. But there’s more: The Democrats scored a huge win in the governor’s race as well, where Josh Shapiro had the good fortune of running against Doug Mastriano, a Trump-endorsed MAGA extremist so unsettling you have to wonder if he is secretly related to Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Democrats also triumphed in House races, holding onto vulnerable seats, including the hotly contested 8th and 17th Districts. And while a couple of tight races have yet to be called, party leaders are thrilled about already netting 11 seats and being this close to possibly flipping the state House, putting Democrats in control of the chamber for the first time in more than a decade. All of this was a step up for them from 2020, when voters went for Joe Biden over Donald Trump but picked Republicans in some other statewide races.

A new legislative map helped boost Democrats in the state House battle. But at the core of their success in Pennsylvania was candidate quality. The new governor-elect, Mr. Shapiro, is considered a gifted politician who by all accounts ran a top-notch campaign, stumping tirelessly and raking in campaign cash. “In Philly he gave us all the resources we could have needed,” said Bob Brady, a former congressman and longtime chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic Party.

And while Mr. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, gave his party some anxious moments in his Senate run, many related to the stroke he suffered days before the May primaries, he is a promising model for Democrats looking to compete in other tricky purple places. Mr. Fetterman’s blue-collar, anti-establishment brand helped him sell himself as not just another politician — and certainly not some snooty blue-state elite. Looking to woo voters from beyond his party’s usual enclaves, he adopted “Every county, every vote” as his campaign mantra and worked the state accordingly — and successfully. In addition to racking up votes in the areas around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, he cut into Dr. Oz’s margins in more conservative regions. Independents and moderates broke strongly for Mr. Fetterman, according to CNN’s exit polling.

The myriad charms of the top Democratic candidates aside, they indisputably benefited from facing Trump-approved opponents who, in their respective ways, drew on a Trumpian playbook ill suited to woo Pennsylvanians. First, Dr. Oz. This was arguably Mr. Trump’s most straightforward bet that celebrity logically translates into political success. But the daytime-TV host, a longtime resident of New Jersey, was ripe for caricature as a slick, rich, elitist carpetbagger. This proved to be an especially fun project for Mr. Fetterman, who is devoted to the grittier, redder western region of the state. When asked during his lone debate with Dr. Oz about his loyalties in the fierce intrastate football rivalry between the Eagles and Steelers, Mr. Fetterman did not dissemble. “Always for the Steelers,” he said, with a look suggesting the very question was absurd.

From the moment Dr. Oz won the nomination, Team Fetterman moved to paint him as a Jersey interloper, creatively slamming him on social media at every turn. This played into the larger narrative of the Republican as “a phony,” said Sharif Street, the state’s Democratic Party chair. Dr. Oz had no core values, no clear political identity and no real message, Mr. Street argued, adding that he kept trying to have it “both ways” — presenting himself as a reasonable moderate in the Philly suburbs while playing up his MAGAness in redder, more rural regions.

“Everything Oz did just appeared to be synthetic,” said Fletcher McClellan, a political scientist at Elizabethtown College and longtime analyst of the state’s politics.

There is little question that Democrats were more afraid of and would have had a tougher time beating David McCormick, Dr. Oz’s chief opponent in the Republican primary. “They really dodged a bullet there,” Mr. McClellan said.

Mr. Mastriano, a Republican state senator, was an even bigger boon to the Democrats. Unlike Dr. Oz, this ultra-MAGA warrior had plenty of core values. “Dark, dark values,” Mr. Street quipped.

Mr. Trump liked Mr. Mastriano’s passionate embrace of the former president’s election-fraud lies. But Mr. Mastriano also went all in on the culture warring, taking a hard-right line on everything from abortion to transgender rights to public school curriculums. At no point did he seem interested in reaching beyond his base. “It never seemed to me like he wanted to be governor — more like the leader of a movement,” Mr. McClellan observed.

Mr. Mastriano was so out there that several of the state’s former G.O.P. officials announced their support for Mr. Shapiro. No one was surprised when the Republican fell flat on Election Day.

Still, no one disputes that Mr. Trump’s pathetic candidates helped turn Pennsylvania a much bluer shade of purple this cycle. For now at least, the state’s Democrats may be feeling more fondly toward the former president than many in his own party — and perhaps even his wife.

Donald Trump Is Indicted in New York…

NYT, March 30, 2023, updated March 31, 2023

A Manhattan grand jury indicted Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.

On Thursday evening, after news of the charges had been widely reported, the district attorney’s office confirmed that Mr. Trump had been indicted and that prosecutors had contacted Mr. Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to authorities in Manhattan.

Mr. Trump is likely to turn himself in on Tuesday, at which point the former president will be photographed and fingerprinted in the bowels of a New York State courthouse, with Secret Service agents in tow. He will then be arraigned, at which point the specific charges will be unsealed. Mr. Trump faces more than two dozen counts, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Trump has for decades avoided criminal charges despite persistent scrutiny and repeated investigations, creating an aura of legal invincibility that the indictment now threatens to puncture.

But unlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House — which examined his strong-arm tactics on the international stage, his attempts to overturn the election and his summoning of a mob to the steps of the U.S. Capitol — this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Mr. Trump’s presidency. The reality star turned presidential candidate who shocked the political establishment by winning the White House now faces a reckoning for a hush-money payment that buried a sex scandal in the final days of the 2016 campaign.

In a statement, Mr. Trump lashed out at the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, and portrayed the case as the continuation of a politically motivated witch hunt against him.

“This is political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history,” Mr. Trump said in the statement, calling Mr. Bragg “a disgrace” and casting himself as “a completely innocent person.”

Mr. Trump, who has consistently denied all wrongdoing, has already called on his followers to protest his arrest, in language reminiscent of his social media posts in the weeks before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters. He has also denied any affair with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had been looking to sell her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign.

“President Trump did not commit any crime,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Susan R. Necheles and Joseph Tacopina, said in a statement. “We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in court.”

The first sign that an indictment was imminent on Thursday came just before 2 in the afternoon, when the three lead prosecutors on the Trump investigation walked into the Lower Manhattan building where the grand jury was sitting. One of them carried a copy of the penal law, which was most likely used to read the criminal statutes to the grand jurors before they voted.

The team prosecuting Mr. Trump was led by Matthew Colangelo, center, and Susan Hoffinger, center left, as well as Chris Conroy.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Nearly three hours later, the prosecutors walked into the court clerk’s office through a back door to begin the official process of filing the indictment, arriving about two minutes before the office closed for the day.

For weeks, the atmosphere outside the district attorney’s office had resembled a circus, with television trucks and protesters surrounding the building. But the fervor had cooled by Thursday, and the outskirts of the office were emptier than they had been in weeks.

Mr. Bragg is the first prosecutor to indict Mr. Trump, but he might not be the last. Mr. Trump’s actions surrounding his electoral defeat are now the focus of a separate federal investigation, and a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.

But the Manhattan indictment, the product of a nearly five-year investigation, kicks off a volatile new phase in Mr. Trump’s post-presidential life as he makes a third run for the White House. And it will throw the race for the Republican nomination — which he is leading in most polls — into uncharted territory.

Under normal circumstances, an indictment would deal a fatal blow to a presidential candidacy. But Mr. Trump is not a normal candidate. He has already said that he would not abandon the race if he were charged, and the case might even help him in the short term as he paints himself as a political martyr.

The indictment also raises the prospect of an explosive backlash from Mr. Trump, who often uses his legal woes to stoke the rage of die-hard supporters. Already, the former president has used bigoted language to attack Mr. Bragg, the first Black man to lead the district attorney’s office, calling him a “racist,” an “animal” and a “radical left prosecutor.”

Mary Kelley, a supporter of Mr. Trump, on the bridge outside of Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday.Credit...Josh Ritchie for The New York Times

In the past, Mr. Trump has lashed out when feeling cornered, encouraging the violent attack on the Capitol as he contested the results of the 2020 presidential election. That assault on the seat of government demonstrated that Mr. Trump’s most zealous followers were willing to resort to violence on his behalf as he sought to overturn the election results.

While the specific charges in the Manhattan case against the former president remain unknown, Mr. Bragg’s case centers on a $130,000 hush-money payment to Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, made the payment in the final days of the 2016 campaign. Mr. Trump later reimbursed him, signing monthly checks while serving as president.

Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors appear to have zeroed in on the way Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization, handled the reimbursement to Mr. Cohen. In internal documents, Trump Organization employees falsely recorded the repayments as legal expenses, and the company invented a bogus retainer agreement with Mr. Cohen to justify them.

Mr. Cohen, who broke with Mr. Trump in 2018 and later testified before Congress as well as the grand jury that indicted Mr. Trump, has said that the former president knew about the phony legal expenses and retainer agreement.

In New York, it can be a crime to falsify business records, and Mr. Bragg’s office is likely to build the case around that charge, according to people with knowledge of the matter and outside legal experts.

But to charge falsifying business records as a felony, rather than a misdemeanor, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an effort to commit or conceal a second crime.

That second crime could be a violation of election law. Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors might argue that the payment to Ms. Daniels represented an illicit contribution to Mr. Trump’s campaign: The money silenced Ms. Daniels, aiding his candidacy at a crucial time.

“Campaign finance violations may seem like small potatoes next to possible charges for his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, but they also go to the heart of the integrity of the electoral process,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, a special counsel at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP and a recognized expert in New York state election law.

If Mr. Trump were ultimately convicted, he would face a maximum sentence of four years, though prison time would not be mandatory.

Yet a conviction is not a sure thing, and Mr. Bragg’s case might apply a legal theory that has yet to be evaluated by judges. A New York Times review of relevant cases and interviews with election law experts strongly suggest that New York State prosecutors have never before filed an election law case involving a federal campaign.

An untested case against any defendant, let alone a former president of the United States, carries the risk that a court could throw out or limit the charges.

Mr. Trump will not be the first person charged over the hush-money payment. In 2018, Mr. Cohen was federally prosecuted for the payment and pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations.

Mr. Cohen is likely to become Mr. Bragg’s star witness at trial. While his past crimes will make him a target for Mr. Trump’s lawyers — who can be expected to attack the former fixer’s credibility at every turn — prosecutors will be likely to counter that Mr. Cohen lied on behalf of Mr. Trump, and that his story has been consistent for years.

In a statement, Mr. Cohen said he took “solace in validating the adage that no one is above the law; not even a former president.”

His lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, said that “Michael Cohen made the brave decision to speak truth to power and accept the consequences,” and that “he has done so ever since.”

Mr. Cohen will not be the prosecution’s only witness: David Pecker, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump and the former publisher of The National Enquirer, testified before the grand jury twice this year. He is likely to be able to corroborate important aspects of Mr. Cohen’s story, including that Mr. Trump wanted to bury embarrassing stories to protect his presidential campaign, not just his family, as his lawyers contend.

Soon after Mr. Trump began his campaign in 2015, he hosted Mr. Pecker for a meeting at Trump Tower, during which the publisher agreed to look out for stories that might damage Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

One such story arose in the summer of 2016, when Karen McDougal, Playboy’s playmate of the year in 1998, said that she had had an affair with Mr. Trump. She reached a $150,000 agreement with the tabloid, which bought the rights to her story to suppress it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”

When Ms. Daniels tried to secure a similar arrangement, Mr. Pecker didn’t take the deal. But he and the tabloid’s former top editor helped broker Mr. Cohen’s payment to Ms. Daniels.

Despite the potential legal obstacles, and questions about Mr. Cohen’s credibility, if the case does go to trial, the salacious details could sink Mr. Trump. While white-collar prosecutions are often dry and procedural, this one will likely have some built-in jury appeal: a defendant charged with a seedy crime in a city where he is loathed by many.

Any trial is months away. It will take time for Mr. Trump’s lawyers to argue that the case should be thrown out. That timeline raises the extraordinary possibility of a trial unfolding in the thick of the 2024 presidential campaign.

The case would come before a jury more than five years after Mr. Cohen’s federal guilty plea prompted the district attorney’s office to open an investigation into Mr. Trump’s role in the hush-money saga. The inquiry began under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who did not seek re-election.

Over the years, the investigation expanded to include whether Mr. Trump had lied about his net worth on annual financial statements. Although Mr. Vance’s prosecutors were marching toward an indictment of Mr. Trump for inflating his net worth, soon after Mr. Bragg took office, he developed concerns about proving the case.

But he continued to scrutinize Mr. Trump. And in January, a few months after his prosecutors began revisiting the potential hush-money case, Mr. Bragg impaneled the grand jury that has now indicted Mr. Trump.

Conspiracy theorists online grasp for explanation behind indictment.

On social media channels associated with extremists and conspiracy theorists, people searched for an explanation behind former President Donald J. Trump’s indictment on Thursday, with some calling him a victim of a Democratic witch hunt to suppress his influence and others describing him as a grand master playing political chess to reclaim the presidency.

The scattered response reflects the shift in Mr. Trump’s power since a large group of his supporters stormed the Capitol after he lost the 2020 election. In the years since, Mr. Trump’s political movement experienced multiple electoral defeats. Some supporters were jailed after the attack on the Capitol. The social media landscape shifted, and Mr. Trump’s digital reach remains limited by an obligation that he first post on Truth Social, the social network he started last year that has far fewer users than Twitter and Facebook.

Mr. Trump tried rallying his base as the expected indictment drew near — and he earned widespread support from Republicans. Mr. Trump’s recent calls for supporters to protest his potential arrest received a muted response.

Online conversations about the indictment on Thursday seemed to reflect the absence of clear direction. QAnon accounts on Telegram began posting slogans associated with the conspiracy theory, such as “trusting the plan” and “the storm is upon us,” in support of Mr. Trump. Dan Bongino, a radio host who has echoed Mr. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, wrote on Truth Social that “the police state is here.” Some users claimed that the indictment would only strengthen support for Mr. Trump and help him win re-election in 2024.

Exaggerated accounts of the connections between Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney overseeing the case, and George Soros, the financier and Democratic megadonor, continued to spread. Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, wrote on the social network Gab that Mr. Bragg was “a Soros D.A.,” although a spokesman for Mr. Soros has said that he has never met Mr. Bragg nor donated directly to his campaign. (Mr. Soros donated $1 million to the political arm of Color of Change, a progressive criminal justice group that endorsed Mr. Bragg.)

Threats directed at Mr. Bragg and Mr. Soros peppered online discussions of the indictment — including claims that people were watching Mr. Bragg’s house and children, appeals for Trump supporters to “pick up your rifles” and posts asking “when is go time.” On Truth Social, some called for an armed defense of Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s residence in Florida.

Much of the chatter on far-right channels appeared to be an effort to vent or prognosticate, rather than attempt any coordinated effort. Some users called for peaceful protest and urged others to resist acting on their emotions until more was known about the indictment.

Mike Pence, on a previously booked TV interview, calls the indictment ‘an outrage.’

Mike Pence, who was Donald J. Trump’s vice president, defended his former running mate on Thursday night, describing Mr. Trump’s indictment in a hush-money case as “an outrage.”

“The unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage,” Mr. Pence told the host Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

He accused Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, of having “literally ran” his campaign vowing to go after Mr. Trump. Mr. Bragg talked about Mr. Trump during his campaign in 2021.

Mr. Pence, who is considering a run for president, added that the indictment had no bearing on his own decision about the 2024 race.

But by virtue of being previously booked on CNN, Mr. Pence was one of the few prospective candidates to comment. Chris Christie and Senator Tim Scott did not comment. Neither did Nikki Haley, who declared her candidacy last month.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is expected to run but has not yet announced his campaign, called the indictment of Mr. Trump “un-American.” Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the lesser-known Republican contenders, also weighed in, condemning the indictment in a statement as undermining “public trust in our electoral system and our justice system” and urging other candidates to join him in denouncing it.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Pence delivered his strongest public rebuke yet of Mr. Trump, saying that “that history will hold Donald Trump accountable” for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which he called “a disgrace.

Democratic reaction focuses on a theme: accountability.

Some Democrats cheered. Others were somber.

But from New York to New Mexico, the early Democratic reaction to news of Donald J. Trump’s indictment had one common message: No one is above the law.

In statements and interviews, party chairs, representatives from left-leaning organizations and other Democratic officials cast the indictment as a critical measure of accountability for a politician who has long trafficked in lies and now faces a morass of legal difficulties.

“This indictment is a long-overdue step in holding Trump accountable for his flagrant disregard for our laws and democracy,” said Jessica Velasquez, chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico. “The legal system is finally holding him accountable for past transgressions, but it’s up to the voters to hold him accountable in his current run for president.”

“Trump is being held accountable for breaking the law,” added Jane Kleeb, her counterpart in Nebraska.

While he is innocent until proven guilty, Mr. Trump was indicted on Thursday by a special grand jury in connection with his role in paying hush money to a porn star, making him the first former president to face criminal charges in American history.

The specific charges are not yet known, and some Democrats warned against making sweeping judgments without more information.

“In America we believe in the rule of law,” Representative Ruben Gallego, who is running for the Senate in Arizona, said in a statement. “We should wait to hear from the grand jury before jumping to conclusions.”

Mayor Randall L. Woodfin of Birmingham, Ala., stressed that “grand juries are a serious matter.”

“Since 2016, American politics have been a mess, an embarrassing mess,” he said in an interview, saying that Mr. Trump had done things “where many just thought he was above the law. I want to be totally clear when I say this: Nobody’s above the law.”

But it is not yet clear how much, if at all, leading Democrats will lean into discussing the indictment in a political context, especially until charges are known.

In a statement, the Democratic National Committee made only a passing reference to the development before shifting to lash Republicans over more traditional political fare concerning abortion rights and the social safety net, as well as Republican efforts to undermine “free and fair elections.”

“No matter what happens in Trump’s upcoming legal proceedings, it’s obvious the Republican Party remains firmly in the hold of Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans,” said Ammar Moussa, a representative for the D.N.C. “We will continue to hold Trump and all Republican candidates accountable for the extreme MAGA agenda.”

Others, like Representative Adam B. Schiff, didn’t hold back. Mr. Schiff, who is running for the Senate in California and who led the first impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, is already fund-raising off the development.

“Donald Trump was just indicted,” the appeal said. “Adam has always championed progressive values and led the fight to protect our democracy. Now, taking his fight to Trump’s biggest defenders in the Senate is more important than ever.”

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