Donald Trump made an historic appearance in a New York courtroom yesterday, where the former President of the United States pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — making the 76-year-old the first former US leader to be criminally prosecuted.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office accuses Trump, who was also the first US President to be impeached twice while in office, of attempting to "conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election."
During the hearing, the judge overseeing the case, Juan Merchan, exhorted Trump's lawyers to "speak to your client and anybody else you need to, and remind them to please refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence or civil unrest."
In a flagrant violation of the judge's wishes, immediately after the hearing Trump flew back to his base in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, where he gave an angry speech in which he claimed that the US is "going to hell", insulted the Manhattan District Attorney who indicted him as "failed", and explicitly accused Merchan of bias.
"I never thought a thing like this could happen in America," Trump said. "The only crime I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it...I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating family."
No case to answer?
In his speech, Trump, further claimed that "every single pundit and legal analyst" has claimed that "there is no case" for him to answer. He also repeated his allegation that the prosecution's charges against him are politically motivated, with their ultimate aim being to prevent him from running in the 2024 US presidential race.
Trump is principally accused of attempting to conceal hush money payments made to former pornstar Stephanie Clifford — better known by her stage name, Stormy Daniels — with whom he is alleged to have had sex in 2006. Prosecutors argue that this payment aided Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and thereby violated federal campaign-finance rules.
The legal theory upon which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has based his case, however, is far from watertight, with The Economist recently describing the prosecution's argument as "convoluted".
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In particular, Trump is alleged to have classified his reimbursement of his former lawyer Michael Cohen's payment to Clifford as a routine legal expense: an accounting failure which would only qualify as a misdemeanour in the State of New York. Bragg's allegation that this also constituted a violation of campaign-finance laws, however, would, if true, constitute a far more serious federal crime.
"Linking the two [allegations] in this way is unusual, and a judge may decide it is unwarranted," The Economist noted.
The Economist's analysis has been echoed by other mainstream anti-Trump outlets, including Vox, which has similarly described the prosecution's case as "dubious" and "based on exceedingly uncertain legal theory".
"There is something painfully anticlimactic about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's indictment of former President Trump," Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser recently noted. "It concerns not Trump's efforts to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, but his alleged effort to cover up a possible extramarital affair with a pornstar."
