the DON JONES INDEX…
		GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED 4/3/23… 14,977.69 3/27/23… 14,973.21
	6/27/13… 15,000.00
(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 4/3/23... 33,274.15; 3/27/23... 32,237.53; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)

LESSON for April 3, 2023 – “STORMY of the CENTURY (“Fizzle”)”

On Tuesday last, last week... as our last week’s Lesson tabbed that very day self-selected by the putative Defendant as the Good Friday of MAGAdom... one of his enraptured acolytes tweeted “Stormy” Daniels, the porn star princess of womanly virtue wronged, according to New York special prosecutors with a crown of thorns with which she/he/it yearned to crown the accuser.

“A disgusting degenerate prostitute accepts money to Frame an innocent man!,” wrote Twitter user Intergalactic Gurl. “Good luck walking down the streets after this! @realDonaldTrump is our #POTUS and will be selected by a landslide in 2024!”

Daniels shot back: “I won’t walk, I’ll dance down the street when he is ‘selected’ to go to jail.”

Downcast and dispirited... Donald Trump, the unhappiest free billionaire in America... skulked round Mar-a-Lago Wednesday morning, March 22nd, cursing his ill fortune. He had not been arrested as predicted – not dragged back to Bragg, that animal of an Attorney General for Gotham, not photographed in chains, perhaps beaten a little but still standing strong in defense of America and defiance of the RINOs, the Democrats, the Deep State: of all of them... those thems that were dragging the United States down into the mediocrity of the mire, the swamp of reason.

How bitter this freedom is!

Six days from todaywill be Easter Sunday. But if Christ had not had his Friday cruzifixion, there would be no Holy Day... no candy, no flowers, no bad sermons nor bunnies or Peeps. Nothing!

No Christianity! No God for the faithful to pray to, for the infidels to hate and fear.

Romans, he reasoned turned back the African menace of Carthage and plowed salt into its ruins, embraced Egypt and its deadly charms, marched into England and battled the Picts and the Druids, survived plagues, civil wars and a bucketful of deranged Emperors as would make even Slick Willie and his witchy wife shiver; those Romans would not have frittered their time away on fripperies of the law. No – they would have hauled him into court, perp-walked him past the throng of supporters and enemies and treacherous Hebrews and, most importantly, the scribes and artists who would record his suffering and humiliations for posterity, and for the inspiration it would give the MRGA (Make Rome Great Again) mob to rise up, overthrow the emperor... what was his name?... and the Empire itself, reconstituting it into a Republic of free (if not wholly equal) patriots and patricians. His republic bolstered and applauded by the plebians in their plebian towns, working their plebian jobs, by the legal immigrants (the Gauls, the Goths, the Vandals). And, well, something would have to be done about the slaves... but no matter.

First, tho’, His Coronation.

But, even before that, The Resurrection. (Well, maybe 2020 counted as a crucifixion, but it would have to happen again, a spectacle for the world to appreciate and cherish, before an awestruck America embraced him once again.)

Three days – that inspires. Four years, that gets a little tiring,

Instead of this... dithering and lingering while the boastful Bragg dotted sentences and crossed circles. Holding up the Day of Judgment to hear more testimony... and from that little thing called Pecker, that little pecker of a publisher (former publisher, that!) of the putrid little rag that had once spashed his Apprenticist glory across its front page for the nation to marvel at, caught and killed nosy newsies and diligently hunted down the misadventures of celebrities (not excluding Hunter, himself)...

Another rat, squealing to the Bragg-art D.A.

Another traitor!

Damn him! Damn all those picking, nitpecking Peckers with their big lies and little junk and, to further engage his enragement, that puny Mike Pence, that punk whom he had raised up out of obscurity, somewhere in Indiana, and made his Vice President. Who had refused to do him the one little favor that he asked for his benevolence, that one little favor, like that handful of votes that his supposedly loyal Governor, SecState and election determinators down there in Georgia... another hellhole!.... refused to grant him/

And, speaking of Georgia, right over the line... in his own damn state, on his own damned Property for Chrissakes, that other little ungrateful weasel, Ron Sanctimonious, was repaying his debt to the Donald with treason and treachery. Disputing his right to the Republican nomination in 2024 and, after the multiplicative mob overran the infidels and Communists... even amidst the blue states... his Restoration.

Traitors everywhere!

So he’d show them how a man’s man swats adversity, beginning with his perp walk, his debut (or even reincarnation) with a clenched Power Fist, then a cheerful wave and a quip to the media!

Those dirty liberals up at the New York Times... those Democrats and Bragg-artists who... deep into the night on Tuesday had been sloughing off scenarios of vitriol, humiliatrion (even incarceration)... dredging up people who had worked with him years ago at the Trump Organization, fomenting likes that Mr. Trump — who was first criminally investigated in the 1970s — had been plainly frightened of being arrested. Frightened! Him! (See separate stories in the March 21 Times, Attachments Seventeen and Eighteen). Why... he had “spent years cultivating officials who might have influence over investigations into him or his company” Trumping and OutFoxing the law!

To cover eventualities and protect his reputation as a prophet, the suspect shared a post over the witching hours, suggesting that he may not face an indictment after all in the Manhattan district attorney’s probe into a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. (The Hill, 3/22 8:11 AM, Attachment Nineteen)

Now, the Times surmised as Wednesday dawned with Mr. Trump still at large, he arose both invigorated and angered by the prospect of being arrested, according to those who have spoken with him, also entertaining “a certain amount of magical thinking.”

“Behind closed doors (The Hill enhanced them as “gilded” closed doors at Mar-a-Lago, the former president has told friends and associates that he welcomes the idea of being paraded by the authorities before a throng of reporters and news cameras.” He had even, Times reporters Michael Bender and Maggie Haberman ventured, “mused openly about whether he should smile for the assembled media, and he has pondered how the public would react and is said to have described the potential spectacle as a fun experience.” The reporters even inquired as to what arrangements were being made “between the Secret Service and law enforcement to avoid a media circus,” given that Djonald now alleges it was the S.S. that prevented him from fulfilling his promise to the base to accompany them in their storming of the Capitol.

Or, as the experience has “intensified Mr. Trump’s confidence in his old playbook,” a fund (raising) experience.

The Exile and his aides now view the pending indictment — and the potential for more to come — as “an asset for the campaign”, according to the Times and other agents of the Biden/Soros/Hillary axis as MAGA used the investigations to increase fund-raising and watch as primary rivals walk a careful line between criticizing prosecutors and backing Mr. Trump.

And, at the providential magic hour of 11:11 AM, Wednedsay morning (with no indictement in sight) Team Trump announced that the candidate would travel to Waco, Texas, on Saturday for his first major campaign rally since announcing his third presidential bid (CNN, Attachment Twenty) provoking what sources at the FBI and DHS called an uptick in violent rhetoric online, including calls for “civil war” as well as the possibility that former protégé turned challenger Ron DeSantis would have to authorize any raid on Mar-a-Lago while aides, advisors and hangers-on confessed: “We’re in unchared territory.”

With MAGAworld awaiting further news from the Grand Jury... scheduled to reconvene at noon or thereabouts... with bated breaths (and, as authorities upon crime and politics like Roger Stone noted in last week’s Lesson... baited traps perhaps being set up wherever MAGAworld followed their Savior, the better to ensnare the patriots and destroy the Movement). The still-Trump-friendly Newsmax opined that the Democratic blue staters were playing the red card in their determination to convict former President Donald Trump “of something — anything — to make him ineligible to run again”, a ploy “straight out of Joseph Stalin's head of secret police Lavrentiy Beria's playbook: ‘Show me the man and I'll show you the crime’." (Attachment Twenty One) Manhattan District Attorney Bragg,” wrote Newsmaxxer Larry Bell, “has resurrected a misdemeanor 2016 case back from the dead beyond its statute of limitations, elevated it to a felony, and is prepared to indict Trump in a humiliating show trial destined to lead nowhere.”

Ever smiley-faced when confronted with partisan perfidy, Newsmaxx put a positive spin on the investigation by dreaming of the day when Trump would be back in his Presidential chair and his pet DOJ D.A. (Rudy? Bannon?) would be picking up the trail of Hunter Biden, Burisima and assorted Chinese.

And in what certainly was another trap-trick set by the bastardly, dastardly D.A. before the trap sprung on his thumb, ABC (12:51) PM produced yet another timeline for a Grand Jury that would not be meeting today, nor at any time designated by Bragg, Biden or the Cult.

After less than an hour of suspense, the devious DA announced that the Grand Jury would not meet today and would, instead, reconvene on Thursday – clearly trampling on their agreed-to schedule of Monday, Wednesday and Friday sessions. (ABC News, Attachment Twenty Two)

The grand jurors were told to be prepared to reconvene on Thursday when it’s possible they will hear from at least one additional witness, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

His martyrdom averted (or revoked) The Man was left to wander, cursing Providence (and all the other blue cities in blue states), finalize plans to send a message at Waco before finally picking up his phone and dialing for dollars...

Leaving the Storm of the Century to fizzle out into drizzle and trash blowing around (unless, as would be speculated the following week, the Grand Jury had already, secretly voted to indict and the Government was just holding off announcing until they could alighn their jackboot thugs into positions for the takedown, and provoke a Deep State Kent State against the Patriots, wherever they might be) and Djonald (still, otherwise) UnIndicted to suffer the slings and arrows of unsolicited freedom.

Which leaves us the remainder of last week’s abruptly and tragically truncated Lesson to document those lessons of the fall of the prosecution, in the spirit of so many of these varied and omnipartisan agents of the Fourth Estate to ponder the politics of a prosecuting deflating like a Chinese balloon and the wicked games most certainly being played behind the scenes at Bragg’s inner sanctum, at the White House, and in the rest of those dark corners where documents stolen back from the rightful stealer were being parsed for actionable passages - where more traitors in Georgia and Florida and who-knows-elsewhere were conspiring with Inquisitorial Illuminati, and turncoat RINOs (like Saint Ron and the rest of the sordid gang) were stealing Trump’s thunder, and even some of his best lines!

Here then, consequently, is our own Timeline of transactions and transformations as transpired between Wednesday afternoon and this morning, after surprise announcement by D.A. Bragg that Djonald would be indicted at 3:30 on Tuesday; twelve days... not of Christmas, nor Easter, nor any other holiday... but, rather, a passing over of the fickle, (no longer fizzled) red finger of the law (claimed the Democrats) or vengeance; deterring and delaying justice until perhaps, as the wicked media mavens averred, until April 24^th. Or later, leaving the field of the haters and MAGAnoids wide open to Trump’s other, earthlier devils like Fox News host Tucker Carlson – walking back his texts saying he “hates” Mr Trump, now claiming he “loved” him.

And advisers were reported to be moving to capitalize on coverage in conservative media outlets, raising over $1.5 million since Saturday, a person familiar with the matter said, four million by this morning.

TIMELINE – (March 22 to Morning

, March 30, 2023)

WEDNESDAY – the FIZZLE begins...

Midnight having tolled and Wednesday the 22nd rolled round – finding Donald UnEncumbered still at liberty in Mar-a-Lago despite all predictions (especially his own) and, after the Grand Jury was sent home shortly before noon, muttering and puttering around with nothing to do but go back to his campaign for the Presidency

What a frackin’ drag! Well, there was at least the rally on Saturday to prepare for... his latest coming-party in Waco, home to the iconic David Koresh and, as the exile now determines, his dozens of patriotic martyrs, fighting for the cause of America, God and the Flag.

That cheers him up.

That conflict started on Feb. 28, 1993, when agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) raided the compound of the Branch Davidians cult near Waco because federal and state law officials were afraid that members were stockpiling weapons. Cult leader David Koresh, who claimed he was God, had convinced more than a hundred people to join him at the armed fortress “to await the end of the world,” as TIME described the group’s beliefs back then. Koresh was willing to be a martyr who would “die in a battle against unbelievers, then be joined in heaven by the followers who chose to lay down their lives for him.” (Attachment Twenty Five)

Reporting on the incident at the time, TIME obtained two letters that Koresh sent the FBI over the weekend of April 10, dictated to one of his 19 wives on lavender notepaper. “I AM your God,” he wrote, “and you will bow under my feet. Do you think you have the power to stop my will?” The fatal siege culminated on April 19, 1993, when a fire set by the Branch Davidians killed 76 compound members, including children, and several ATF agents.

(But an earlier Time report... Attachment Twenty Six... had reported not only that few, if any, of the base were willing to leap into the fire for their leader... the candidate’s “exhortations” were largely met with reluctance from both “prominent supporters and the far-right online acolytes who responded to his rallying cry on Jan. 6, 2021.”

“He’s not infallible and protest is very vague,” Time reported one person writing in a popular MAGA Telegram group. “And what exactly does “Protest, Protest!!!” mean?” another person asked in a different group. “I’m not trying to be a jerk but you’d think he could give slightly more explicit instructions if he really wanted the tens of millions of people who support him to do something effective.”

“Unless you’re willing to actually and truly do an insurrection, taking all oppressors prisoner (or worse), there is no point to “protest” here,” another protest peanut posted.

Some shied away from the protests on the grounds that they had been set up as a “trap” by Democrats. Others simply felt betrayed by the candidate who had deserted the One Six movement – Secret Service or not.

“Don’t expose your back, because Trump does not have yours,” one user on a pro-Trump social media group wrote. “And he never will.”

With no Grand Jury to stalk and debrief, the media were left talking to each other, at best, or else themselves.

“In New York, falsifying business records can be a crime, and Mr. Bragg’s office is likely to build the case around that charge, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” (March 22nd, 5:04 PM - Attachment Twenty Seven)

And in a separate report one minute later, an anonymous Timepiece noted the similar, if different, effects that the New York Central Park jogger case has been “a turning point” for both prosecutor and defendant (Attachment Twenty Eight) with the then-real estate mogul “making one of his first forays into politics by calling for New York to resurrect the death penalty, and Bragg, a teen living not far from Central Park at the time, later pointing to the wrongful convictions of five Black and Latino men as a reason he chose to become a lawyer,” launching into a biography of the DA... noting that: “As fate would have it, they are now on the opposing sides of another historical moment.”

Prior to Thursday’s “Sizzle”, Trump’s hometown Palm Beach Post advised watchers to watch the skies, inasmuch as Trump's plane had been at Palm Beach International Airport since at least Monday afternoon, meaning he was most likely at Mar-a-Lago. (Attachment Twenty Nine) Former President Donald Trump's indictment would 'most likely’ have been at the end of the week, the Palm Beach County state attorney said, but once aloft, as happened Friday, it would have meant that he was flying to New York to face the Grand Jury or to Waco for his campaign rally – and it was to Waco that he went.

Also making matters more uncomfortable at home... besides the obstructive shadow of Gov. DeSantis, Evan Corcoran, Trump’s attorney in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, was ordered to turn over his notes and audio transcripts to the criminal investigation after a federal appeals court (all Democratic appointees) rejected twin efforts to block the order. (Guardian U.K. 18.03 EDT, Attachment Thirty)

“The ruling by the appeals court could mark a momentous moment in the criminal investigation, and could make Corcoran a crucial witness for the special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the matter,” noted the British lefties.

So by comparison, Waco was determined to be a far more welcoming... and historic, of a sort... location to roll out the Trump 2024 campaign.

“Thirty years ago next month, 86 people died amid a disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas,” Time noted, even reprinting a cover of that wayback coverage. “Trump announced last week he was holding his campaign’s first major rally this Saturday in Waco, highlighting a city freighted with anti-government history at a moment when the former President is facing multiple criminal investigations and is increasingly making anti-government signals part of his 2024 campaign.” (Attachment Thirty One)

But embracing cult crazy Koresh?

Apparantly so!

Time also reported that the deposed President would create a “truth and reconciliation commission” to “expose the hoaxes,” and move as many as 100,000 government workers out of Washington, D.C. to “places filled with patriots who love America” like perhaps... oh... Waco? (where he slaughtered Biden by more than 20 percentage points), renewed his praises for camp-followers like politicians like GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia for supporting those accused of being involved in the deadly riot at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and ventured into (un)”Masked Singer” reality show territory by recording a song called “Justice for All” in the company of people convicted for participating in the Jan. 6 riot.

Asked if Trump’s decision to hold the rally in Waco was in any way related to the anniversary of the siege, Trump’s campaign thingies parsed their answer by responding that “Waco’s location and the role of Texas in next year’s primary schedule” were behind the choice of the city for the campaign’s first rally while sending a signal to anti-government movements that “they are welcome in his movement,” liberal critics complained.

For some of Trump’s diehard supporters, the Timeservers noted, “the significance of him scheduling a rally at this moment in Waco was impossible to miss.” Posting on the messaging app Telegram, far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer called the rally in Waco “very symbolic!” A few MAGA influencers on social media noted the choice of location, with one calling it “a meaningful shot across the brow of the Deep State”

“Yikes, that’s a town with some history right there. Wonder if he’ll bring it up,” an anti-Socialist MAGAhead posted on social media.

Up in New York, according to Fox correspondent Gregg Jarrett and senior congressional correspondent Chad Pergram, D.A. Bragg was secretly, sneakily doubling down on Stalin’s playbook (as noted above and in Attachment Twenty One).

“Driven by personal and political animus, the DA presumed the former president must be guilty of something. It was just a matter of devoting enough time and resources to hunt down the crime. Failing to find one, Bragg copied Beria’s paradigm and simply dreamed one up.” (Attachment Thirty Two)

Setting aside Rupert M’s strategic disavowal of Djonald UnRussianed in favor of Saint Ron, the Fox declared Bragg’s reliance on “such a disreputable character as Cohen” was a clear sign of the DA’s desperation.  “Cohen's hatred of Trump is well known. He has carved out a career of trashing his former boss,” Fox declared, giving more ammunition to those of bi- or omni-partisan leanings that the faltering Stormy case would eventually be dropped.

More or less implying that Cohen was about as trustworthy as George Santos, Fox sided with his former attorney Costello who testified that Cohen, in April of 2018, repeatedly stated that the Daniels payment was intended to protect the candidate’s wife, not the campaign – comparing the incident to Hillary Clinton’s weaponization of selective prosecution to promote the Christopher Steele hoax and subsequently “destroying thirty thousand” (not just a hundred) confidential documents.

But if the weekend brings indictment, not communion with the land and the legend of David Koresh, President Trump... some of his minions say... would want to do the whole ninety-nine cent special: the handcuffs, the perp walk, the mugshot, the victimization! Sources whispering to the Guardian U.K. believe that, if he has to be dragged to Bragg’s courthouse, arrested and put on trial, he might as well turn everything into a “spectacle.” (Attachment Thirty Three)

Moreover, Ol’ 45 has reportedly waved off Secret Service protection, even if members of those notoriously liberal New York far left terrorist groups like BLM, Antifa or... who knows?... the old fashioned mob were to take a shot at him on his way to or within Bragg’s courtroom – he would become “a martyr”... a jihadist in the service of truth, justice and the Americn way. Trump later added that if he got shot, he would probably win the presidency in 2024, the sources said.

In the past, publicity over political and criminal investigations have benefited Trump’s fundraising, and forced Republican rivals to stumble between criticizing prosecutors and defending otherwise politically indefensible allegations.

“Whether an indictment benefits Trump for the 2024 campaign remains to be seen given his grievance-driven campaigns have faltered in recent election cycles,” the liberal GUKsters aver, but the fact remains that his base remains solid at thirty-some percent of the American electorate with, as polls showing him leading DeSantis and the rest confirm, a much higher favorability rating among Republicans who apparently do not blame him for the likes of Herschel Walker, Kari Lake and Doctor Oz.

And if it’s spectacle Trump wants to dish out, there are plenty of Democrats and more ready to bring their tablespoons and gulp down heapin’ helpin’s of ham. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that legions of lovers and losers are preparing to march north to enjoy their ham with Big Applesauce... Tik Tok’s Chinese spymasters have to be puzzling over all of those videos showing protests — “both for and against Trump” — already forming outside the courthouse, the district attorney’s office, and Trump Tower in New York. Some show people dressed up as and mocking the former president... popular TikToker @MartyMorua posting a series of videos featuring someone walking outside Trump Tower and throughout Manhattan in a Trump mask and a fake United States Disciplinary Barracks orange prison jumpsuit. (Attachment Thirty Four)

So, as New York Times opinionator Ross Douthat warned... given the weakness of the case and potentiality for backlash and the failed prosecutions of John Edwards and Bill Clinton... “you had better have clear evidence, all-but-obvious guilt and loads of legal precedent behind your case.” (Attachment Thirty Five).

“The use of the phrase “novel legal theory” in descriptions of what the case might entail is not encouraging” given that Presidents are above the law “as long as the lawbreaking involved minor infractions covering up tawdry sex.”

THURSDAY, the 23rd

Coasting into Indictment Day Plus Two, D.A. Bragg moved to seize the narratie by accusing Congressional Republicans of hindering his investigation despite even the liberal Guardian U.K. admitting “Bragg’s investigation of what members of his own team came to call a zombie case has never run smoothly.” (Attachment Thirty Six)

Germane or not, the grand jurors considering the case were sent home for a long weekend, and are not due to meet again until Monday.

Jonathan Turley, a venerable and irritable right-wing scold now working for the pro-Trump New York Post compared the Daniels case to a treaty made between Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and the nonexistant “nation” of Kailasa “founded by an accused con man formed on an island off the coast of Ecuador.”

Bragg, Turley snickered, “continues a quest for his legal Kailasa.” (Attachment Thirty Seven)

“This is a thrill kill case,” wrote Turley and the prospect for many Democrats of Trump in handcuffs is exhilarating to the point of being indecent.

“For some voters, it may be commendable that Bragg would prosecute Trump on a trumped-up case. After all, any prosecutor can bring a real case. It takes a true believer to prosecute when there is no viable crime.”

The Post’s cover mashed up photography of a baseball bat wielding Trump near the D.A.’s head, warning of ‘death and destruction’ if indicted in hush money case and, as the week stumbled to its close, assorted liberals castigated the paper as having been... yes... indecent.

FRIDAY, the 24^th

Margaret Sullivan, a GUKster columnist and author of the tome “Ghosting the News” checked in on Friday, declaiming: “You have to hand it to Stormy Daniels.”

If Trump had, perhaps, profited... both in victimhood popularity and cold, hard cash... by the investigation, Stormy’s star has soared to new heights of celebrityhood and her prospects (barring some unforeseen occurrence like assassination or a social disease) shine even brighter.

“It may seem bizarre that such a small-time offense – a mere $130,000 to conceal a reported affair -- could be the thing to bring down this world-class con man,” marveled Sullivan (Attachment Thirty Eight) at the ungodly hour of 3AM, albeit later via Greenwhich Mean Time.

“But in the never-ending weirdness of Trump World, it would make a kind of inevitable sense.”

Recapitulating the previous trials and tribulations of Trump... the Access Hollywood tape, the heaving of paper towels to Puerto Rican hurricane victims, the gaudiness of his private and public headquarters... and, after his famous prediction that “he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters,” Sullivan might, sort-of theorizes that if somebody did shoot him and make him a martyr, the final act “would bring everything full circle -- the Trumpian version of poetic justice.”

A less bloody, but equally apocalyptic critique of the former President from Time editorialist Philip Elliott simultaneously marveled at and condemned the Exile’s fueling of bonfires for his fans around the country (and sometimes igniting innocent and/or culpable bystanders) and and powering his Presidency “through a constant lashing of grievance, trolling, and flamethrowers.” (Attachment Thirty Nine)

One person actually ran Washington this week, and “that was Donald Trump, whose rumored looming indictment was the only thing animating the D.C. insiders. And for good reason.

“His booking, legal filings, even his arrival in court would take on the aura of a circus,” Elliott wrote, “replete with a felon-styled red carpet for arrivals. His showmanship already had D.C. and New York on edge, with barricades going up around potential choke points for protesters who were summoned via social media much the way they were on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump seemed to be gleefully choreographing the whole affair from his seaside retreat in Florida, firing off rhetorical missiles from Mar-a-Lago with a style reminiscent of his pre-Twitter-ban days.

“Not since he left the White House has Trump had such a stranglehold over this city’s paces and palpitations. After two-plus years of Biden’s steady-as-she-goes rhythm, a lot of us had forgotten the anxiety-inducing need to have push-alerts set for Trump and his closest watchers.”

“In short,” Elliott deduced, “Washington has been spoiled by an overwhelming sense of normalcy of some measure for the last two years.”

So why the fizzle? “We’ve got the answers,” Arby’s... no, make that the Daily Beast between the buns... proclaimed.

The fizzle, spake the Beast, had... no foolin’!... many fathers.

The putative Defendant felt that the cancellation of Wednesday and Thursday’s sessions meant that the DA’s office was in “complete disarray.” (Attachment Forty)

On the pther hand, maybe Bragg’s office just needed “some time to draft and finalize the indictment against Trump to be presented to the grand jury.”

Or more witnesses were being prepared for testimony... former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg or Stormy herself, or even recalling Michael Cohen (which they deemed “poor strategy” given his original testimony and need to only secure a majority, not unanimith of the panel.)

Another Beastly possibility was that Team Bragg was working on a motion to disqualify Trump’s fourth string attorney Joe Tacopina on the grounds that he had previously advised and represented the Stormy one.

Even less likely was the possibility that Bragg has been intimidated by Trump’s “toonder and lightning” and the former President’s denunciation of him as “a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!” on his Truth Social site. (The Hill, Attachment Forty One) Could this, coupled with the bat-wielding New York Post cover photo have driven the panic-stricken prosecutors to seek refuge and sanctuary from The Man and The Mob as MAGA might not wait until Waco to incite another storming, so to speak, of the enemy’s castle – or perhaps a new ploy, a poisoning plot.

Forbes (Attachment Forty Two) expanded on the missive sent this morning to the DA’s office on Centre Street according to the New York Daily News and ABC News and, in addition to the toxin (which turned out to be harmless, so the government said), included a letter which read “ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!” according to NBC News.

The white powder discovery came three days after a bomb threat shut down the courthouse just as a hearing in a case involving a $250 million civil lawsuit against Trump was set to begin. Authorities said there was no indication the threat was directly related to the Trump case, and we all trust authorities, don’t we?

See more at...

Bomb Threat Shuts Down Manhattan Court Before Trump Lawsuit Hearing (Forbes)

Key Trump Attorney Testifying In Mar-A-Lago Case Friday—Here’s Why It Could Be A Big Deal (Forbes)

DOJ Thinks Trump Deceived His Lawyers About Classified Documents, Report Says (Forbes)

Trump’s Golf Club Now Faces Criminal Investigation—As Legal Troubles Mount For Former President (Forbes)

Trump Tries To Block Georgia Election Investigation As Criminal Charges Loom (Forbes)

The good news for the Innocent Man is that polls such as the Harvard CAPS/Harris survey cited by Newsweek (Attachment Forty Three) show Trump widening his lead over the Republican primary field; notably DeSantis (who, to be sure, has not helped his cause by proclaiming that, as President, he’d embrace Vladimir Putin and throw Ukraine under the bus... or, perhaps, the Abrams tank).

The survey monkeys found Trump is now the leading contender for 2024 among Republicans with half the potential voters giving him the thumbs up, compared to only a quarter for Saint Ron and diminishing amounts for former South Carolina Nikki Haley and the rest of the field.

Republican New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who has criticized Trump in the past, also told CNN over the weekend that a Trump arrest could fuel "a lot of sympathy for the former president."

MSNBC’s Maddow Blog (Attachment Forty Four) interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl) during the 2016 campaign and Lil’ Marco rose up on his hind legs and declared: “The great thing about our republic is that we settle our difference in this country at the ballot box, not with guns or bayonets or violence... (t)his is what happens when a leading presidential candidate goes around feeding into a narrative of anger and bitterness and frustration,” while Ted Cruz (R-Tx) said that Trump had “a consistent pattern of inciting violence.”

Both now support Djonald UnVeiled’s innocence (if not his candidacy, pending further expansion of the 2024 field) and decried DA Bragg’s “witch hunt.”

SATURDAY, the 25th

So, with the prosecution team still undecided on what to do with their case, Donald Trump literally gave the finger to the Inquisitors and directed the pilot of his private Jet to fly to Waco, not New York. (The Hill, 6:00 AM, Attachment Forty Five)

He’ll be in “friendly territory” for the campaign event, which is set to kick out the jams, as opposed to his campaign’s “more low-key events so far this cycle.”

“When you look at how he’s trending in the polls, plus it looks like Bragg’s case is dead in the water, he’s got momentum,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist referring to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), who is investigating Trump for potential financial crimes related to the hush money payments.

On Friday ahead of the rally, Trump warned of “potential death & destruction” if he is indicted. 

“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?” Trump wrote on Truth Social early on Friday. 

The same kind of foreboding rhetoric could continue into Saturday’s rally, although the Trump campaign has “brushed off the notion” that the rally and the 30^th anniversary of the siege which killed 86 people are connected. 

“President Trump is holding his first campaign rally in Waco in the Super Tuesday state of Texas because it is centrally located and close to all four of Texas’ biggest metropolitan areas—Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio—while providing the necessary infrastructure to hold a rally of this magnitude,” said Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman.

“This is the ideal location to have as many supporters from across the state and in neighboring states attend this historic rally. It also happens to be the home to the Baylor Bears, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in America.”

Look, Ma, no hands behind the mask!

The rally at Waco Regional Airport is being billed by his team as the first of his 2024 campaign, though he's held smaller events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina since launching his White House bid back in November reported ABC at four minutes to three, as the festivities were getting under way. (Attachment Forty Six)

"Waco is kind of the genesis of a lot of the discontent about government and the use of violence to be able to react to it," Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, told ABC News.

Musician Ted Nugent, who said he will be performing at the rally, tweeted he’s going to "unleash a firebreathing Star-Spangled Banner" and referred to McLennan County, where Waco is located, as "the epicenter of conservative American Dream spirit/values."

But Trump's niece, Mary Trump, noted the choice of Waco for the rally's setting was “a ploy to remind his cult of the infamous Waco siege of 1993, where an anti-government cult battled the FBI. Scores of people died. He wants the same violent chaos to rescue him from justice," she tweeted on Thursday

"Donald Trump needs to defend the South and Texas is fertile ground for a stand," Rottinghaus said.

While Trump was denouncing and campaigning, President Joe was awarding medals to and hanging out with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen, the cast of Ted Lasso and cute li’l Justin Trudeau up there in Canada – responding to questions about his predecessor, in effect, with variations on “What, me worry?”

"Silence is the best policy for him on this right now," Todd Belt, professor and political management program director at George Washington University told USA (Attachment Forty Seven). "There's an old saying, if the enemy is digging themselves deeper, don't throw them a rope."

"The last thing the White House should do, or any other political leaders, is to put their hands on the scale of justice," said longtime Democratic strategist and Sunday talkshow roundtable designated liberal Donna Brazile. "This is about the former president and we don't know what's going to happen. I think it would be premature if the White House decided to weigh in."

"There's no need for Joe Biden to jump in front of a moving train here," said Lis Smith, a Democratic campaign strategist. 

Twelve hundred miles away, the Innocent Man was finalizing preparations for his performance at Waco. The event, scheduled for 5 p.m. at Waco Regional Airport, about 100 miles north of Austin, contended the Austin-American Statesman (Attachment Forty Eight) “provide(d) an early peek into Trump's messaging as he seeks the Republican nomination for president for a third straight election.” Waco city officials are expecting around 15,000 people at the rally.

If Austin is home to Baylor’s nemesis, the U. of Texas, Willie Nelson and the most liberal voters in the Lone Star State, Waco remains famous (or infamous) for Koresh and his gang of crispy critters. Come to view the spectacle and hear the noise, the more moderate English correspondents from the Independent U.K. stalked through the crowd, taking notes and recording statements from the faithful.

“I don’t think it’ll stick,” Trump supporter Karey Cottrell told The Independent, regarding the potential charges in New York, which are expected to drop some time next week.

“It’s complete garbage,” she added. “It’s ridiculous. I didn’t think they (Bragg and the Democrats) would stoop this low.”

Many of the MAGA faithful saidthat the multiple legal probes against Mr Trump - who has survived two impeachments, a special counsel investigation, and numerous lawsuits and probes throughout his life - will fizzle out and that Bragg’s probe, into alleged hush money payments made by Mr Trump to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign, “is an exercise in partisan politics.” (Attachment Forty Nine)

“They’re just attacking him,” said Steve Harris, a retired statistics professor, who lives in Waco. “It’s ridiculous to indict somebody on something when the statue of limitations ran out a long time ago.”

“For almost eight years, that’s what they’ve been doing,” rallygoer Tammy Pavelka told The Independent. “He’s draining the swamp, so they’re after him.”

“Bragg, he’s just looking for popularity,” Ms. Pavelka said.

Another man was seen holding an “Arrest Alvin Bragg” t-shirt.

Some believed that the investigations are part of a wider plot against the former president.

Attendee Shelley Harrison, of Dallas, said that officials are targeting Mr Trump because he helped expose “child trafficking issue,” - a QAnon conspiracy theory which purports that Democrat and media elites are responsible for child trafficking.

Experts on political violence pointed to the significance of choosing Waco as Trump's first rally for his 2024 campaign.

"Waco is hugely symbolic on the far-right," said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism in an interview with USA Today. "There's not really another place in the U.S. that you could pick that would tap into these deep veins of anti-government hatred — Christian nationalist skepticism of the government — and I find it hard to believe that Trump doesn't know that Waco represents all of these things."

Thirty years ago, multiple agencies, including Texas law enforcement, the U.S. military, and ATF and FBI agents, laid siege to the compound of a sect of Christians known as the Branch Davidians. “On the first day of the siege in late February 1993, four ART agents and four Branch Davidians were killed in a gunfight. On the final day in mid-April, the building housing the Branch Davidians caught on fire during a tear gas attack and burnt to the ground. Koresh and 75 others inside, including 25 children, died,” recalled the Austin American Statesman (Attachment Fifty) – further wondering whether the choice of Waco sends a message to the far right.

The tragedy, often framed as the "Waco massacre," spilled over into a right-wing militia movement in the 1990s and continues to sew a distrust of the federal government. It also led people like Timothy McVeigh to follow through on carrying out the Oklahoma City bombing just two years later as an act of revenge. The bombing resulted in 168 people, including 19 children, being killed.

"Waco has a sense of grievance among people that I know he's (Trump's) got to be trying to tap into," Beirich said. "He's being unjustly accused, like the Branch Davidians were unjustly accused — and the deep state is out to get them all."

Trump's indictment and Stormy Daniels payment

New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg hasn't said how his office is investigating Trump. Still, a hush-money payment then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen arranged from Trump to porn actress Stormy Daniels could potentially be used to build a case for how the Trump Organization falsified business records and violated campaign finance law.

The $130,000 payment aimed to prevent her from publicizing her claim of having had sex with Trump before the 2016 election. Trump has denied wrongdoing but admitted to making the payment to Daniels. He also declined to testify before a grand jury conducting criminal proceedings in Manhattan.

If Trump's arrested, do we know if he'll be handcuffed?

Should Trump be indicted, he would become the first former president ever charged with a crime. The process of his arrest is less clear, especially because being indicted does not always mean you are arrested. Charges can also be dropped after an indictment.

His lawyers have said he will surrender and routine arrest in New York would involve Trump being fingerprinted and photographed for a mug shot. But a scene of Trump being escorted by law enforcement in handcuffs in front of media cameras is potentially less likely, especially after Trump's call for supporters to "protest" his arrest in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

Learn about the process:What is an indictment? Why would Trump get arrested? Here's what we know.

A court date for an arraignment could come several days after an indictment is announced, and Trump could be released following his arraignment, too.

Whether the terms of his arrest allow Trump to leave New York and return to his home at Mar-A-Lago in Florida or a rally in Texas, remain to be seen.

Before former President Donald Trump was scheduled to take the stage at a campaign rally in Waco, several guest speakers shared a message with those in the crowd.

Ted Nugent played the Star-Spangled banner on guitar...

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said if Donald Trump got indicted, he’d win 2024 automatically”...

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick disputed reports that the Trump campaign chose Waco for the rally due to the anniversary of the Branch Davidian cult compound's siege by federal agencies in Waco in 1993 saying Trump had asked him to pick a place for his rally, and he suggested Waco.

"That’s the reason he's here," Patrick said.

Current and former members of Congress at the show included Republican U.S. representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Reps. Roger Williams and Wesley Hunt of Texas and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller.

A MAGAlicious good time was had by all and no serious violence occurred.

SUNDAY, the 26th

Donald Trump, according to the title of Vanity Fair’s Sunday report (Attachment Fifty Two) has “hijacked the news cycle.”

“For a while,” hoped reporter Molly Jong-Fast, “it looked like Donald Trump was out of our lives and retreating to his own Palm Elba. Now all of a sudden everything is 2016 again and we’re glued to CNN news alerts.”

Acknowledging the drama and the ability of the former President to create a really big shew, Jong-Fast, nonetheless deemed Trump to be, at best, a bad actor and at worst a complete sociopath, known to “flood the zone with shit” in the immortal words of Steve Bannon. 

On CNN’s State of the Union, Kentucky congressman and frequent Trump defender James Comer wasn’t sure what he was defending Trump from on Sunday morning, but he seemed sure Trump was innocent.

Trump has reportedly raised $1.5 million over his “indictment” in just three days and has enjoyed a polling bump over rivals declared (like Nikki Haley) or undeclared (like DeSantis),

“This indictment is a billion dollar gift-in-kind from Democrats to Trump’s ‘24 campaign,” former representative Peter Meijer tweeted.

At least to the primary sprint for the nomination.

As I write this, confessed Jong-Fast, “Trump still hasn’t been indicted but he has used the threat of any possible consequences for his actions to once again become the main character of the news cycle.”

MONDAY, the 27^th 53-59

Back to work went the Grand Jury: and the mystery witness was now revealed... not Weisselberg, not Cohen, not Stormy herself but, rather, David Pecker, former CEO of American Media and publisher of National Enquirer.

As latenite talkster Jimmy Kimmel would quip: “This case began with a pecker, and it ends with a Pecker.”

But not quite... and NBC proved the fascination with the alleged felon, rather as Vanity Fair envisioned, by promoting yet another lengthy roll call of timelines and takeaways to detail every parcel and peck of the testimony. (Attachment Fifty Three)

In a Q&A formet, peacock peckers Rebecca Shabad and Laura Jarrett cited a November 2018, Wall Street Journal report that Trump had personally asked Pecker to “silence women who might come forward with details of Trump’s sexual relationships with them.” Payments were made to ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal and Daniels. (53A) Federal prosecutors granted the Nat Enq. and Pecker immunity, but former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was sentenced to prison for his $130,000 payment to Daniels. Federal prosecutors said Cohen acted in coordination with and at the direction of Trump.

The former President tweeted (53C) that Bragg should re-prosecute Cohen and lock him up again. New York activists accused Trump of racism (53D)

NBC also dropped in on the ongoing investigation of attempted electoral tinkering in Georgia (53G) and the impact of the probe (if any) on DeSantis (53L) including the contention from a Waco attendee that the Florida Governor “is deep state.”

Rival CBS delineated some of the charges that Trump could face (Attachment Fifty Four)... falsifying business records (a misdemeanor) and felonies like campaign finance violations.

Demonstrating that the whole arrangement was to cover up Cohen's payment to ensure such knowledge wouldn't hurt his presidential campaign, will be a "hell of a task, I think, for the prosecution here," Mark Bederow, a criminal defence attorney and former Manhattan, N.Y., prosecutor told CBS.

But attorney Norm Eisen, co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment trial scoffed at that potential defence. He said Trump would have to show there was no element of campaign intentionality, "no element whatsoever," regarding the payment to Daniels.

"Who does he think is fooling? Even for a serial fabricator like Donald Trump, this is beyond the pale," said Eisen, adding that... while the cross-examination of Cohen would be "colourful and tough... he believed the convict was telling the truth about Trump and Stormy. “He's rough around the edges and colourful himself but I think he's going to withstand cross-examination."

Time columnist Philip Elliott compared the investigation to the first act of Chicago, celebrity murderess Velma Kelly reaches an uncomfortable realization: “her star power is limited by the churn of news, and to stay on top she needs a fresh schtick to capture the fickle public’s attention.” (Attachment Fifty Five) At this moment, Elliott opined, “Donald Trump is America’s real-world Velma Kelly.”

With DeSantis failing to catch fire among Republican voters, Elliott attributed the “rallying moment behind Trump” to his status as an anti-hero, and —in politics, theater, and Taylor Swift lyrics alike—the public “finds the draw to cheer for them strong.”

To be sure, as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told the Business Insider, indictments don’t help anyone. But Trump may prove they don’t exactly hurt, either – as witness the fundraising and merch-moving frenzy. “No one in the wings has anything like Trump’s star power,” Eliott concluded. “At least not at this point in Act One of 2024.”

Reporting on the Pecker testimony, the New York Times (Attachment Fifty Six) reported that the grand jury has now heard from at least nine witnesses — “including Mr. Pecker, who has gone in twice — and is expected to vote on an indictment soon.”

Pecker, who was seen leaving the building where the grand jury sits at about 3:30 Monday afternoon, “was a key player in the hush-money episode. He and the tabloid’s top editor helped broker the deal between the porn star, Stormy Daniels, and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time.”

And while the grand jurors could vote to indict the former president as soon as this week — in what, the Times reported, would be the culmination of a nearly five-year investigation — the exact timing of any charges remains a mystery... and might also depend on the jurors’ availability. “Sixteen of the 23 grand jurors must be present to conduct any business (and a majority must vote to indict for the case to go forward). For the prosecutors to seek a vote to indict, the jurors in attendance that day must previously have heard all key witness testimony.”

Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing — as well as any sexual encounter with Ms. Daniels — and unleased a series of escalating attacks on Mr. Bragg. Mr. Trump has referred to the investigation as a “witch hunt” and called Mr. Bragg, who is Black and a Democrat, a “racist” and an “animal” and has, causing concern to the police, called on supporters to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”

An hour after Pecker scuttled out of the DA’s office, ABC News reported that he had testified “for about an hour.” (Attachment Fifty Seven)

With testimony apparently concluded for the time being, the former President’s defenders and detractors renewed their assaults upon each other and upona the prosecution and the defense. Trump, opined Ryan Cooper, a somewhat hyperbolic editorialist for prospect.org (Attachment Fifty Eight) was the most corrupt president in American history, and “has gotten away with far too much.” Sins of the President, over and above Stormy, the pilfered documents at Mar-a-Lago, the Georgia election tampering charges and the riot itself, included abusing the bankruptcy system to enrich himself while driving his casinos and hotels into the ground – hotels used to launder bribers from foreign and domestic officials (the Saudis being among his favorite collusionators) avoiding paying tens of millions of dollars in inheritance taxes while stiffing his contractors and losing “money by the billions” made his reputation so bad that nobody in New York real estate would work with him anymore. Once elected to office, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington counted up about 3,700 conflicts of interest over his time as president

Moreover, two dozen women have credibly accused him of sexual assault.

All that surely deserves a great deal of legal scrutiny, Cooper declared. And, in a preview of the Stormy stormclouds, “(s)o does the Trump campaign conspiring with Pecker to spend $150,000 buying rights to a story from Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleged she had a monthslong affair with Trump in 2006-2007, and then burying it.”

Cooper attributed the lack of indictments for these and many other crimes to protectors in high places – “Attorney General Merrick Garland, above all” – composing a “culture of elite impunity” that “produced Trump in the first place.”

Firing off his volleys of defamation and scorn bipartisanly, he deemed that, while Trump was “the worst president in history,” the trail had been blazed by George W. Bush, who “didn’t get busted for his torture program and Barack Obama (who) didn’t get prosecuted for assassinating American citizens without trial.” While Bragg may not be focusing on Trump’s worst crimes, should his indictment come through, he is to be commended for doing something at least. Let’s hope it is just the first of many.”

TUESDAY, the 28th 60-62

Striking back on Tuesday, the National Review argued that misdemeanor falsification of business records charges (which can be upgraded to a felony only if proof is proffered that falsification was committed to conceal another crime) are (a) virtually never prosecuted by the office of Bragg, “a progressive prosecutor pursuing an anti-enforcement, anti-imprisonment agenda,” and (b) this particular offense is almost certainly time-barred. To make the case even arguably viable, then, Bragg “has to inflate it into a felony, which has a five-year statute of limitations.”

Nat. Review correspondent Andrew McCarthy dismissed the misdemeanor-into-felony transformation as “dubious” and concurred with what the accused’s supporters rationalized as an arrangement to conceal the hush money from his wife (Trump, as we have already learned, has denied everything, including any affair with the pornstar) and has interpreted the reticence of some of the most intensely anti-Trump mediots (such as Van Jones) to be a fear that “a weak prosecution brought by Bragg would discredit more serious investigations of Trump”... namely the documents, the Georgia election tampering and the riot.

That reticence, NR deduced, is why the the New York Post reported that it “has learned” there will be no indictment of former President Trump this week. Other sources believe there will be silence until late April, or summer, or never... Bragg having conceded to the growing sentiment that the case is a loser.

Tuesday’s liberal New York Times, compiling a what-we’ve-learned-to-date chronology of the case; after explaining the circumstances of the misdemeanor-to-felony escalation, no less than three reporters concluded that the case would be hard to prove due to star witness Cohen’s conviction for lying to the authorities (a conviction and prison term Cohen now says he received for lying on behalf of Mr. Trump. (Attachment Sixty)

Despite the defendant’s implied threats of violence and termed the prosecutors as “thugs” (invoking racist dog whistles as regards Bragg and anti-Semitic tropes by referring to a conspiracy of “globalists” and the influence of the billionaire financier George Soros, who is Jewish), the even-more-liberal GUK expressed concern that, while Trump cannot stop the judicial process, . “Trump cannot stop the judicial process, although he can try to slow it and can “undermine its credibility through his charges and by mobilizing his supporters.”

While the GJ needs only a majority to indict, any criminal charges it pursued could run up against a “(polluted) jury pool” since: “All he needs is one juror who believes this is all a concocted plot.” (Attachment Sixty One)

Trump has repeatedly said he did not have a relationship with Daniels, and he has denied any wrongdoing regarding the payment.

“I never had a relationship with her. I never had an affair with her. It’s all made up," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an interview that aired Monday night, according to NBC. (Attachment Sixty Two)

WEDNESDAY MORNING, the 29th

Wednesday morning saw the tide continuing to turn towards prosecutorial abandonment of what increasingly looked like a dud of a case.

Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan pronounced the hush money investigation into him is "dead," one week from the day the former president claimed he would be arrested as part of the probe.

Halligan told Newsmax (Attachment Sixty Three, reported at the ungodly hour of 4:11 AM) that the "weak" case against the former president is ending with no indictment for the Republican.

"I think they just are trying to keep the case alive—but it looks like the case is dead," Halligan said. "If not, it should be. Bragg needs to wrap this case up, stop focusing on someone who doesn't even live in New York City, and focus on protecting those living in New York City from the violent crime going on there.”

Mark Z. Barabak stated that, having been elected because of his brash, impulsive and decidedly unpresidential behavior — not in spite of it, there is no doubting the nature of Trump.

Or what his return to the White House would mean.

“Controversy trails him like the whiff off a cesspool,” the 5 AM (PT) article in the Los Angeles Time contended. (Attachment Sixty Four) Polls, the Califorinans noted “show most Americans have tired of Trump, his wreckage and ruin,” although other media outlet polls have shown Trump to be well ahead of the field.

While “...it’s hard to see Trump gaining support beyond his base if he were indicted in a sordid case involving hush money and extramarital sex, whatever the outcome of the legal process,” the Times ultimately concurred with critics of the prosecution regarding “the shaky foundation on which the New York case rests,” even though Barabak deemed it: “Best to lock him up in his resort compound and pitch the key into the Atlantic Ocean.”

Also before dawn on Wednesday morning, Stormy herself announced that she would be holding an online meet and greet on her OnlyFans account in an event that is likely to be dominated by questions surrounding a potential indictment of Donald Trump as reported by The Daily Beast (5:24 AM, Attachment Sixty Five). Attendees at the Q&A scheduled for 9 PM will hear Daniels’ answers “straight from the horse’s mouth” (in reply to Trump’s depiction of her as “horseface.”

Even as Bragg’s case seemed to be crashing downwards in dust and rubble, like one of those tornado-demolished buildings in Arkansas or Louisiana, Stormy was all over the Web on Wednesday morning; Newsweek predicted that Daniels wouldn’t testify, nor reveal any new information about the allegations in her livestream.

"It seems she has a pretty consistent story from the beginning," Palm Beach County (Florida) State Attorney Dave Aronberg told Newsweek. (Attachment Sixty Six, 10:30 AM) Her attorney, Clark Brewster, tweeted a week earlier that he and Daniels met with the Manhattan prosecutors involved in the case.

"At the request of the Manhattan DA's office Stormy Daniels and I met with prosecutors today," Brewster tweeted. "Stormy responded to questions and has agreed to make herself available as a witness, or for further inquiry if needed."

Two hours later, Newsweek updated their story, adding that the pornstar-turned-podstar had tweeted: “This is going to be entertaining. Get your questions ready." (Attachment Sixty Seven)

Aronberg answered further questions by saying that there were likely no legal ramifications to Daniels answering Trump-related questions on her livestream. But there were risks.

"If she is going to be a key witness for any future prosecution, anything she says can be used to impeach her testimony later on," Aronberg said. "So, if she says something that contradicts what she says at a future trial, those statements can be used against her.”

Two rapid-fire releases by the Business Insider pounded home the contention that Bragg’s investigation was rolling down the river in a leaky boat with real, not pornstar, Stormy weather looming.

The grand jury will not revisit the Trump investigation until the week of April 24 "at the earliest," a BI source said. “For the rest of this week and next week, the grand jury is expected to hear evidence in an unrelated case and take time off for the upcoming Passover holiday.” 

Alina Habba, who represents Trump in several civil lawsuits, said the slowing pace of the grand jury signaled the district attorney's case was weak. (Attachment Sixty Eight, 12:36 PM)

And Djonald UnMenaced promptly posted a Truth Social paean to the integrity, judgment and foresight of the grand jury as opposed to the “highly partisan and hateful district attorney.”

Some three hours later, BI... noting that Bragg's predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., passed over on the indictment and prosecutors targeting Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg didn't charge Trump with that scheme.

Mark Bederow, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney's office referenced in Attachment Fifty Four, said a case against Trump solely on the hush-money payments was "likely to fail." (BI, Attachment Sixty Nine)

The relatively low stakes and convoluted nature of the anticipated charges could give "reasonable doubt" to jurors hearing the case, according to Bederow.

"They have to demonstrate that his intent was to defraud and also that his intent was also to cover up another crime," Bederow told Insider.

And star witness Cohen, convicted and imprisoned and now blaming Trump for his crimes, “has been attempting to change his image as someone who's come clean about Trump, but jurors might view him as someone with an axe to grind,” the Insiders cautioned.

Bederow dismissed the investigation as “a disaster,” summing up: "You wouldn't rely on Michael Cohen to tell you the time of day unless you corroborated it with a clock. That's how awful a witness he is."

Later, Wednesday afternoon, the Trump-friendly New York Post offered a possible alternative explanation regarding the delay in the former President’s indictment and booking...

“The DA can take as long as he wants” to file an indictment with the clerk’s office, former Brooklyn prosecutor Adam Uris told The Post.

The panel, which “sources” said won’t convene in the case for the next month, could have voted on whether to indict Trump after Pecker’s testimony — but no one except the jurors and prosecutors would know for sure due to the secretive nature of the closed-door proceeding.

Any delay could be an attempt “to keep the arrest and arraignment process from being a circus,” Uris said. “But it’s going to be a circus no matter what.” (Attachment Seventy)

The Post also interviewed a former prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s Office, Michael Bachner, who said that “it’s not that unusual in long-term white-collar criminal investigations” for a DA to delay filing an indictment.

It’s usually done for logistics, security or sometimes even as a courtesy to a defendant — who may have an upcoming wedding, vacation or holiday — to buy them time before they are arrested, Bachner explained.

And another former Brooklyn prosecutor, Julie Rendelman, agreed that because a former president being indicted would be an “unparalleled event,” Bragg would want “as much time as possible” to prepare “for what’s to come and allow law enforcement along with the court to put safety measures in place  for any potential public unrest.”

Trump himself concluded, without offering evidence, that there was only one reasonable explanation for the delays—they simply don't have a case.

"I have gained such respect for this grand jury, & perhaps even the grand jury system as a whole," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "The evidence is so overwhelming in my favor, & so ridiculously bad for the highly partisan & hateful district attorney, that the grand jury is saying, hold on, we are not a rubber stamp, which most grand juries are branded as being, we are not going to vote against a preponderance of evidence or against large numbers of legal scholars all saying there is no case here."

"Drop this sick witch hunt, now!" he added. (Newsweek, and Business Insider, above)

Unfortunately, he spoke... or tweeted... a smidgen too soon.

Next week’s lesson begins with events upon the afternoon of Wednesday, the 29^th... when a shocked (deposed) President and a shocked, or perhaps puzzled, nation come to terms with Indictment the following Tuesday (April 4^th) plus the pomp, the posturing, polls and position-seeking among the faithful, the traitors and potential 2024 challengers.

	March 27^th– April 2^nd, 2023
Monday, March 27, 2023 Dow: 32,432.08	Tornado relief and recovery begins in five states, following last week’s devastation in Mississippi. Five animals are killed at the Wild American Safari park in Georgia; lions and tigers escape, but are captured. Following Trump’s Waco rally (nobody shot but Ted Nugent’s guitar is shredded), the Grand Jury goes back to work. Ol’ 45 declares: “I am the most innocent man in America.” School shooter kills six at a Christian school Nashville by a... something... who identifies as transgender and was a former student who had “resentments.” Seven are shot, two die in Little Rock. Stabber stabs staffer for Sen Rand Paul (R-Ky). Riots escalate in France and Israel, where PM Netanyahu backs off his plan to cancel the legislature and judiciary and rule by decree. Macron holds firm on raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Police in Greece round up suspected terrorists,
Tuesday, March 28, 2023 Dow: 32,394.25	Police investigating Nashville murders call the transgender perp “vengeful” and say she... born a woman might not have even been a trannie at all, just someone who identified as male and wanted to do male things like... uh... shoot people? Gov. DeSantis is confused. The victims were three 9 year olds, a substitute teacher, a janitor and the principal. Statistical counters say there have been 131 mass shootings in 2023 to date, vs. only 113 last year. Psychologist says mass murderers seek fame and justification and the way to stop them is to prohibit naming them, publishing their inevitable manifestoes or showing their pictures. Inquiring minds, however, want to know. Washington’s finest have a busy day grilling bankers on the failed banks and blaming each other for failed or repealed policies; others of a more bipartisan bent take on Tik Tok whose CEO, Shou Zi Chew, does a spot-on impression of a Chinese spy. Forty migrants die in fire at Mexican detention center after inmates start burning mattresses in their cells to protest conditions. Bad idea.
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 Dow: 32,717.60	Stormy trial fizzles as The Donald’s predicted D-Day passes into history. (See above) DA Bragg sends the Grand Jury home... again after one more witness testifies: comedian Jimmy Kimmell says that this case “began and ended with a Pecker.” The stormy weather doesn’t let up. There has been so much rain and snow in California that several “ghost lakes” are coming back to life again. When the tempests pass, storm-chasing construction scammers prey on those who have lost their homes. France is not the only country with labor troubles... Disney fires 7,000 and shuts down its Metaverse while Starbucks CEO is grilled by The Bern and others regarding his predilection for union busting and retaliating against organizers.
Thursday, March 30, 2023 Dow: 32,859.03	Taiwanese PM visits America, enraging the ChiComs. Russia, seeking more confrontations with the U.S.A., arrests a Wall Street Journal reporter. And then... First the leakers leak and squealers squeal... then an official announcement is made: the Grand Jury, ostensibly dismissed for the rest of the week after having had their fill of Pecker, suddenly files over thirty indictments against Donald Trump in the Stormy tempest-in-a-G-string. Manhattan DA Bragg cuts the ribbon (or cloth, or cheese) at 3:30 PM (3:30 on 3/30 for the symbolists)... Trump has become the first Chief Executive to have to face a judge and jury on criminal charges since Ulysses Grant was tried, convicted and fined $20 for speeding with his horse and buggy. America fairly melts with rage and/or relief. Chatter combusts – a mushroom cloud of speculations, admonitions and advice rises up over the U.S.A. sending the staunch liberals into orgasmic fantasies of retribution (Nikki Haley makes play for press coverage by pronouncing the deed “revenge (for what?), not justice.” Lesser Republicans are circling the wagons – carefully walking the fine line between alienating the base and embracing the dark – some also re-evaluating their 2024 options. Stocks go up. And it’s also MLB’s Opening Day...
Friday, March 31, 2023 Dow: 33,274.15	Morning-after calculations begin clucking. Democrats sit smugly, Republicans line up for or against Djonald ReChained; most take the safe stance of blaming D.A. Bragg, the embodiment of Satan himself – persecuting the Crucified One. The victim himself works late into the night, dialing for defense (and for dollars) while DeSantis makes a half-serious offer of aid, should he decide to resist arrest and do a Waco of his own down there in West Palm Beach. That it’s “Transgender Visibility” Day must be loathsome to Saint Ron. Fortunately, it’s also National Crayon Day Tweets, posts, even physical letters to editors scrawled in crayon proliferate. Police in Nashville speculate on the motives and opportunities of the transgender-wannabe school shooter as funerals begin for the victims. The circling buzzwords regarding the legalities of the arrest include “novel” (mostly as designates something new, untested, but also certain to become adapted for Hollywood and the New York Times best seller list) and “unprecedented”. As conservative pundits compare Trump to Saint Sebastian, a bad (meaning “evil”) archer shoots an innocent duck full of arrows.
Saturday, April 1, 2023 Dow: (Closed)	Mother Nature steps in and yanks the reins from Father Trump and his worries; more than fifty tornadoes strike between the Gulf of Mexico and Canada, killing at least two dozen, injuring many more and causing massive devastation. The worst of it is in Arkansas, in Georgia (where the Wild Animal Safari is leveled, killing beasts and setting tigers free... later recaptured) and up in Illinois where the roof is blown down over patrons of a heavy metal concert featuring Morbid Angel. Police in New York, Washingon DC and Mar-a-Lago utilize the interregnum until Trump’s expected collaring on Tuesday to shore up defenses as The Donald calls for protests and Mike Pence calls for calm. Pope Francis gets out of the hospital for his bronchitis and baptizes a baby. Sen. Fetterman (D-Pa) also gets out of the hospital for his depression and goes back to Washington, where Congress will take on the implications of fifteen million of America’s poorest being cut off from Medicaid and having to choose between pills and porridge for themselves, their grandparents and their children.
Sunday, April 2, 2023 Dow: (Closed)	It’s Palm Sunday. Pope Francis, voice a little hoarse from his bronchitis, delivers the homily. Yet another mass supermarket shooting: four gunned down at L.A. “Trader Joe’s”, presumably during a drug deal gone bad. “We can’t allow something like this to happen,” gun controllers plead as the numbers crunchers say gun murders defeated car crashes as the Number One kid killer, 3,200 over the last five years to 2,900. Another drug deal gone bad finds Fentanyl Grannie arrested and a Denver damsel stabs a man... presumably a bad boyfriend... 27 times. Post-announcement, pre-indictment pundits, politicians and people of no particular distinction flock to Sunday talkshows – most lining up for or against Donald Trump. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, an agginner, announces his own candidacy on ABC’s “This Week”, saying Trump should drop out due to his “bad instincts” and promises he will appeal to America’s better instincts while the everywhere, everyhow all at once Michael Cohen warns/chortles that Trump is “petrified with fear.” Hopping across the dials to CBS’ “Face the Nation”, Mikey insists the furor “is about accountability, not me.” He blames BilBarr the Barbarian for supporting Trump, before deserting him. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin touted as another candidate and, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, John Bolton and his moustache... another never-Trumper... say they are “considering” a run due to the Exile’s “bad character” and predicts “a lot of trees are going to be cut down to draft Stormy’s legal motions and counter-motions.
The Dow experienced a Trump (indictment) Bump and rose by a thousands points, pushing the Don back into the black.

THE DON JONES INDEX

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

See a further explanation of categories here…

ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)

CATEGORY	VALUE	BASE	RESULTS			SCORE		OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS
INCOME	(24%)	6/17/13 & 1/1/22	LAST	CHANGE	NEXT			SOURCE
Wages (hrly. per cap)	9%	1350 points	3/6/23	+1.24%	4/23	1,434.03	1,434.03	https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages   28.61
Median Inc. (yearly)	4%	600	3/24/23	+0.28%	4/17/23	602.88	603.05	http://www.usdebtclock.org/   35,761 771
Unempl. (BLS – in mi)	4%	600	3/6/23	+5.56%	4/23	633.65	633.65	http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/  3.6
Official (DC – in mi)	2%	300	3/24/23	+1.27%	4/17/23	278.66	275.12	http://www.usdebtclock.org/      5,522 511 820
Unofficl. (DC – in mi)	2%	300	3/24/23	-0.91%	4/17/23	268.36	265.93	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    11,930 908 12,027
Workforce Particip. Number Percent	2%	300	3/24/23	+0.23% +0.23%	4/17/23	301.32	302.00	In 161,036 094 462 Out 100,297 308 029Total: 261,333 402 http://www.usdebtclock.org/  61.61
WP % (ycharts)*	1%	150	2/27/23	+0.16%	4/23	150.95	150.95	https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 62.50
OUTGO	15%
Total Inflation	7%	1050	3/24/23	+0.4%	4/23	996.88	996.88	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.4
Food	2%	300	3/24/23	+0.4%	4/23	278.78	278.78	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.4
Gasoline	2%	300	3/24/23	+1.0%	4/23	243.21	243.21	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm    +1.0
Medical Costs	2%	300	3/24/23	-0.7%	4/23	294.90	294.90	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     -0.7
Shelter	2%	300	3/24/23	+0.7%	4/23	281.06	281.06	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.8
WEALTH	6%
Dow Jones Index	2%	300	3/24/23	+3.22%	4/17/23	261.11	269.51	https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/ 33,274.15
Home (Sales) (Valuation)	1% 1%	150 150	3/6/23	-0.50% -2.15%	4/23	125.77 267.55	125.77 267.55	https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics Sales (M):  4.00 Valuations (K):  359.0
Debt (Personal)	2%	300	3/24/23	+0.085%	4/17/23	278.69	277.88	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    72,972 73,034 246
NATIONAL	(10%)
Revenue (trilns.)	2%	300	3/24/23	+0.011%	4/17/23	384.45	384.49	debtclock.org/       4,610.6 0.918 611.3 611.68 612.2
Expenditures (tr.)	2%	300	3/24/23	+0.033%	4/17/23	340.95	340.95	debtclock.org/       6,019 021 023 025 027
National Debt tr.)	3%	450	3/24/23	+0.065%	4/17/23	426.57	426.57	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    31,596 609 624 639 661 (The debt ceiling was 31.4)
Aggregate Debt (tr.)	3%	450	3/24/23	+0.11%	4/17/23	421.79	421.79	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    94,466 556 660 764 913
GLOBAL	(5%)
Foreign Debt (tr.)	2%	300	3/24/23	+1.35%	4/17/23	347.43	342.73	http://www.usdebtclock.org/   7,224 216 315
Exports (in billions)	1%	150	3/24/23	+2.92%	4/23	163.94	163.94	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 257.5
Imports (bl.)	1%	150	3/24/23	+2.52%	4/23	165.54	165.54	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 325.8
Trade Deficit (bl.)	1%	150	3/24/23	+1.32%	4/23	300.76	300.76	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 68.3
SOCIAL INDICES (40%)
ACTS of MAN	12%
World Affairs	3%	450	3/24/23	-0.1%	4/17/23	447.68	447.23	Presidents Joe and Zelenskyy congratulate UN on evicting Russia from the Security Council. April Fool! But NATO does welcome Finland and the EU promises to phase out gasoline powered vehicles by... 2035? Strikes and riots continue in France and in Israel. Russia kidnaps Wall Street Journalist – to be tried for espionage.
Terrorism	2%	300	3/24/23	-0.1%	4/17/23	288.44	288.15	Government redlights travel to Haiti as kidnappings and anarchy rise. Greek police arrest two terrorists. Russia arrests a woman who blows up pro-Putin blogger in a café after giving him a statue of himself.
Politics	3%	450	3/24/23	nc	4/17/23	471.14	471.14	Trump indicted, arrest next Tuesday, Kevin Mac challenges President Joe’s budget numbers.
Economics	3%	450	3/24/23	-0.4%	4/17/23	430.91	429.19	Busted and bought-out SVB reopens as First Citizens’ Bank. Starbucks fires union organizers and gets lectured by The Bern. Disney fires 7,000 and shuts down its Metaverse. Other Meta (the parent company of Facebook) sued for inflicting psychological harm on children. Homelessness up 35% over 7 years, authorities propose prisons and involuntary mental commitments for the unhoused. Very Soviet!
Crime	1%	150	3/24/23	-0.4%	4/17/23	266.78	265.71	“Very queer” school shooter kills six in Nashville. Stabber stabs staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky). Thirteen states sue Juul vapes for marketing to kids, Fed sentiment to ban Tik Tok as Chinese spy ring grows. Maniac chases man in a stolen forklift.
ACTS of GOD	(6%)
Environment/Weather	3%	450	3/24/23	-0.2%	4/17/23	423.42	421.09	The hits just keep on coming – snow piling up and freezing temps on the left and right coasts, tornadoes between. But the rains are reviving “ghost lakes.” Authorities insist water in Philadelphis is safe to drink; residents say “Hell, no!”
Disasters	3%	450	3/24/23	+0.6%	4/17/23	439.60	441.35	Dozens of migrants in Mexican jail die in fire they started to protest conditions. Nine die in Ky. crash of army helicopters. Yet another train derailmenti in Minnesota spills 22 cars of ethanol (whiskey). 4 year old boy lost in the woods saved... and his dog too. Actress Melissa Joan Hart hailed as a hero for helping save kids from Nashville shooter, Washington State skier for rescuing buried snowboarder and school bus driver for saving 23 kids from a fiery end.
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX			(15%)
Science, Tech, Educ.	4%	600	3/24/23	+0.3%	4/17/23	624.74	626.61	Elon Musk leads a delegation of AI app skeptics who write a letter of warning. Twitter starts charging $8/mo, for “validation” as hackers render its source code invalie. Chinese say they have discovered water on the moon. Swiss space scientist invents a Space Claw to retrieve and dispose of Space Junk.
Equality (econ/social)	4%	600	3/24/23	+0.3%	4/17/23	609.35	611.18	Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft donates $25M to anti-anti-Semites. Woman moonmaid to be named next week.
Health	4%	600	3/24/23	nc	4/17/23	472.52	472.52	Michigan scientists say The Chronic (marijuana) can replace opioids for chronic pain, Critics call prescription drug salesman “modern day gangsters”.
Freedom and Justice	3%	450	3/24/23	+0.2%	4/17/23	462.23	463.15	Feds greenlight Dominion Voting Machine defamation suit against Fox. Gwyneth Paltrow wins her case against retired optometrist who “fuckin’ skied into ME!” and wins a dollar. Interminable “Rust” trial delayed again as another prosecutor flees.
MISCELLANEOUS and TRANSIENT INDEX					(7%)
Cultural incidents	3%	450	3/24/23	+0.3%	4/17/23	485.07	487.53	John Wick sequel tops box office. Baseball season starts with new rules to speed up games and pay raise for minor leaguers. NCAA finals set... Iowa and LSU for the women, UConn and San Diego State for the men. RIP art-rocker Gary Reid (“Procol Harum”),
Misc. incidents	4%	450	3/24/23	+0.1%	4/17/23	475.93	476.40	FAA to ban “unruly” air passengers. Thirteen states sue Juul vapes for marketing to kids, Fed sentiment to ban Tik Tok as Chinese spy ring grows.

The Don Jones Index for the week of March 27^th through April 2^nd, 2023 was UP 4.48 points

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.

ATTACHMENTS

See Attachments One through Eighteen appended to last week’s Lesson... “Drizzle”. Next week’s lesson, “Sizzle, covers events from late Thursday, March 30^th to the Indictment, and beyond.

WEDNESDAY, March 22, 2023

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – From The Hill

TRUMP SHARES POSSIBILITY OF NO INDICTMENT IN HUSH MONEY CASE

BY JULIA SHAPERO - 03/22/23 8:11 AM ET

Former President Trump shared a post late Tuesday suggesting that he may not face an indictment after all in the Manhattan district attorney’s probe into a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

The former president posted an image of a Fox News article with the headline “Sources say there’s real chance DA may choose not to charge Trump as rumors swirl” to Truth Social.

Trump suggested over the weekend that he could face charges as soon as Tuesday, claiming that “illegal leaks” indicated that “the far & away leading Republican candidate & former president of the United States of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”

NY DA Alvin Bragg could eye various charges in Trump prosecutionTrump seeks to use indictment to his political advantage

However, a Trump spokesman clarified that the former president had not yet been formally notified of charges and was basing his claim on media reports.

The Manhattan grand jury appears to be gearing up to vote on Wednesday on whether to indict the former president for his role in the $130,000 hush-money payment ahead of the 2016 election, according to NewsNation.

Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations in connection with the payment to Daniels, who alleged she had an extra-marital affair with Trump. Trump has denied the affair. 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – From CNN

TRUMP AND HIS ADVISERS AWAIT POTENTIAL INDICTMENT IN HUSH MONEY CASE

Trump is scheduled to travel to Waco, Texas, on Saturday for his first major campaign rally since announcing his third presidential bid, though an adviser questioned whether an indictment from the New York grand jury could derail those plans.

“If this happens Friday, do we just go to Texas the next day?” the adviser added.

By Kristen Holmes, CNN Updated 11:11 AM EDT, Wed March 22, 2023

Behind the gilded doors of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump and his advisers are preparing for several different potential scenarios related to a possible indictment from the Manhattan grand jury probing a hush money scheme.

Already a 2024 candidate for the White House, Trump has both celebrated how an indictment would help him politically and complained about how “unfair” it would be. He’s toyed with the idea of trying to create a media spectacle around it and, at times, he’s ignored the prospect of criminal charges altogether, sources close to him told CNN.

Two advisers said that the former president appears to have resigned himself to the likelihood of an indictment, with one close adviser calling his perceived distancing from the matter “compartmentalization.”

Even as there are signs the investigation into Trump’s alleged role in the scheme to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels is nearing an end and that preparations are being made for an indictment, it is not clear yet that the former president will be charged or when those charges could be unveiled.

“[Trump] knows it’s happening. We’ve all moved on to ‘OK, this is happening, how do we deal with it?’” one Trump adviser said.

In the latest twist in the case, CNN reported exclusively Tuesday evening that communications between Daniels and an attorney who is now representing Trump have been turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The exchanges – said to date back to 2018, when Daniels was seeking representation – raise the possibility that the Trump attorney, Joe Tacopina, could be sidelined from Trump’s defense.

CNN has not seen the records in question, and Tacopina denies that there is a conflict or that confidential information was shared with his office. He says he neither met nor spoke to Daniels. Ethics experts said the impact that the disclosure will have on the case will depend on the circumstances and the substance of the communications.

Amid the uncertainty over how the yearslong investigation will wrap, several advisers to the former president expressed frustration at the lack of information around a potential indictment and the logistical complications that would come with an appearance in New York, where Trump would be arraigned.

“We’re planning for what we can: What does he say and when?” another adviser told CNN. “There’s not a lot we can really plan for right now.”

The hush money investigation is hardly the only legal cloud hanging over the former president. In a separate development in a distinct probe, the Justice Department has convinced a federal judge that Trump used one of his defense attorneys in furtherance of a crime or fraud related to the existence of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, sources familiar with the matter told CNN Tuesday evening.

The finding, which was part of a major ruling Friday from Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court and was first reported by ABC News, makes clear for the first time that the Justice Department is arguing it has evidence that Trump may have committed a crime. And Howell ruled that prosecutors met the burden to overcome Trump’s right to shield discussions with his lawyers normally protected under attorney-client privilege.

The evidence would likely be significant in the obstruction probe being pursued by special counsel Jack Smith’s team.

Political implications of a possible indictment in New York case

Trump is scheduled to travel to Waco, Texas, on Saturday for his first major campaign rally since announcing his third presidential bid, though an adviser questioned whether an indictment from the New York grand jury could derail those plans.

“If this happens Friday, do we just go to Texas the next day?” the adviser added.

Over the weekend, Trump on his social media page called for protests of what he said was his impending arrest. But he has since moved away from that language after calls from allies and advisers to tone down his rhetoric, a sign he may be listening to those around him.

Still, federal officials, including those at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, are monitoring what they say has been an uptick in violent rhetoric online, including calls for “civil war.” But so far, it’s been limited to chatter and has lacked the actionable information, coordination and volume that preceded the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, US officials and security experts told CNN.

And while some Republicans and Trump allies have argued an indictment could be politically beneficial to Trump, particularly in a contested 2024 GOP primary, others are uncertain there is any gain to be had from the situation.

“We’re in uncharted territory. We don’t know what this does long term politically. We’d rather he just not be indicted than get some potential boost,” a source involved with Trump’s campaign told CNN.

Trump’s presidential campaign began fundraising off the potential indictment on Saturday, galvanizing supporters to contribute in response to reports that he will be indicted as soon as next week. One fundraising email was sent in Trump’s voice, saying, “I’m not worried in the slightest” about reports he could soon face charges in the Manhattan grand jury investigation probing a hush money scheme.

Additonally, Trump allies had engaged in a coordinated pressure campaign to get Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, likely to become his biggest primary rival, to speak out in defense of the former president. DeS would have to authorize raid on mar a lago if T resists.

“Thank you, Vice President @Mike_Pence and @VivekGRamaswamy, for pointing out how Radical Left Democrats are trying to divide our Country in the name of Partisan Politics,” Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller tweeted on Saturday. “Radio silence from Gov. @RonDeSantisFL and Amb. @NikkiHaley.”

But DeSantis didn’t address Trump’s legal situation until asked by an individual from The Florida Standard, a conservative website friendly to DeSantis, during an unrelated news conference about central bank digital currencies, a recent area of concern among some conservatives but hardly the topic of the day, given the revelations about Trump’s legal case.

MAGA Inc., a super PAC launched by top allies of the former president, sent emails tracking which Republicans had commented on the potential criminal charges and hitting the Florida governor for “remaining silent.”

Trump allies acknowledged that this was a concerted effort to force DeSantis to weigh in on the matter, believing that he would have to offer support to Trump.

In a tease of an interview with Piers Morgan that is set to air on Thursday, DeSantis downplayed Trump’s attacks on him as “background noise,” continued to allude to the former president’s questionable character and took aim at his onetime ally’s leadership during the pandemic.

This story has been updated with additional information.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – From Newsmax

TRUMP INDICTMENT WOULD SET WORRISOME PRECEDENT FOR JOE, HILLARY

By Larry Bell Wednesday, 22 March 2023 12:08 PM

Hate or love the guy, Democrat determination to convict former President Donald Trump of something — anything — to make him ineligible to run again, is straight out of Joseph Stalin's head of secret police Lavrentiy Beria's playbook: "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."

In the latest attempt in this ongoing assault on fair justice principles, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has resurrected a misdemeanor 2016 case back from the dead beyond its statute of limitations, elevated it to a felony, and is prepared to indict Trump in a humiliating show trial destined to lead nowhere.

The same charges, namely failure to report a payment of $130,000 to former porn star Stormy Daniels as a campaign contribution purportedly to hush up an affair which Trump denies, was previously dismissed both by Bragg's predecessor Cyrus Vance, and the former chair of the Federal Election Commission.

As noted by George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, Bragg's prosecution will face serious challenges, including convincing a court that Trump paid hush money for the sole purpose of the election, and that any such case hasn't already exceeded the two-year expiration period for a misdemeanor or five-year limitation for a felony.

Turley concludes, "This is a patently political prosecution," one that many or most Americans have come to recognize as such.

There's little wonder why two separate polls show that a majority of Americans believe the U.S. currently has a two-tiered justice system.

According to a 2022 July-August survey of more than 1,000 likely general voters conducted by the Trafalgar Group and Convention of States Action, 66.7% of Democrats and 87.8% of Republicans said there was one system benefitting political insiders, and the other favoring their enemies.

Kangaroo court bias couldn't have manifested more clearly than in the elaborately orchestrated Democrat-dominated House Select Committee Capitol Riot show trial that omitted important exculpatory evidence and denied opportunities for Trump attorneys to cross examine witnesses.

For example, the former president's Jan. 6 statement to his supporters to "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard" was deleted from a featured video, as were the entirety of scenes in their possession showing peaceful protesters being freely allowed into the building by Capitol Police.

As an important case in point, recent surveillance footage supplied by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy clearly shows officers escorting Jacob Chansley, the bare-chested behorned so-called "QAnon Shaman" who has come to symbolize the riot, through the halls of the Capitol and to the very door of the U.S. Senate as de facto tour guides.

Nevertheless, Chansley is serving 41 months in prison along with hundreds of others who await delayed official charges.

It would be difficult to find a more blatant weaponization of two-tiered justice than has been applied to Trump versus both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden concerning handling of classified documents.

U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland's authorized August 2022 early morning FBI raid on Trump's private Mar-a-Lago residence — including Melania's wardrobe closet and teenage son Barron's bedroom — was historically unprecedented.

Contrast this with July 2016, when a different U.S. Attorney General — Loretta Lynch — along with then-FBI Director James Comey, gave former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a pass for unauthorized secret government documents in her possession and destroying about 30,000 others she claimed were personal without external validation.

As former president, Trump had full authority to declassify any materials in his possession, including those related to now proven FBI spying on his administration and Russia collusion disinformation used to harass him and his associates leading up to and throughout his term of office.

Of about 30,000 emails Clinton finally handed over to the State Department, 110 contained information that was classified at the time she sent or received them in addition to "several thousand" not turned over of which three were later determined to contain classified information.

There has also been little apparent DOJ concern regarding a bunch of documents found at multiple unsecure locations— some marked top secret — removed by Joe Biden during the time he was vice president.

Some of those materials reportedly relate to Ukraine matters when Joe headed up Obama administration policy negotiations with that country and son Hunter held a lucrative no-show board position with Burisma, an energy company there in which Vice President Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion of U.S. aid unless they fired the government prosecutor who was pressing charges.

Also recall that documents which were known but not reported by the DOJ before either the Mar-a-Lago raid or the 2022 midterm elections cover a time period when Hunter had accompanied his vice president dad on a 2013 trip to Beijing Aboard Air Force Two ... returning 10 days later with a $1.5 billion deal his company inked with the Communist state-owned Bank of China.

We've since recently learned from a U.S. Treasury Suspicious Activity Report (SPR) issued to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer that in 2017, four members of the Biden family received $1.3 million of a $3 million wire transfer from State Energy HK Limited, a firm affiliated with CEFC China Energy.

This occurred less than two months after then-vice president Joe Biden left office.

Anything alarmingly suspicious here?

Maybe Hillary and Joe have good reasons to imagine some curious judicial minds may finally have very good reasons to believe so.

Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO – From ABC News – timeline

Trump live updates: Manhattan grand jury not meeting Wednesday

No current or former president has ever been indicted for criminal conduct.

ByAaron Katersky

Last Updated: March 22, 2023, 12:51 PM ET

A grand jury is continuing to weigh charges against former President Donald Trump in connection with the Manhattan district attorney's probe into the 2016 hush payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

No current or former president has ever been indicted for criminal conduct.

Latest headlines:

· Manhattan grand jury to reconvene as early as Thursday

· With Trump case looming, what is an indictment?

· Pence discourages protests if Trump indicted

Here is how the news is developing today. All times Eastern. Check back for updates.

Mar 22, 12:51 PM EDT

Manhattan grand jury to reconvene as early as Thursday

The Manhattan grand jury weighing charges against former President Donald Trump in connection to the Stormy Daniels hush payment investigation is not meeting on Wednesday, sources told ABC News. The earliest the grand jury would reconvene is Thursday, sources said.

outside the Manhattan District Attorney's...Read More

The grand jurors were called Wednesday morning and told they were not needed during the day as scheduled, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. The grand jurors were told to be prepared to reconvene on Thursday when it’s possible they will hear from at least one additional witness, the sources said.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment, citing a policy of not discussing grand jury matters.

-ABC News' John Santucci and Luke Barr

Mar 22, 8:25 AM EDT

With Trump case looming, what is an indictment?

Criminal prosecution proceedings typically start with an arrest and a court appearance, but legal experts say that on many occasions, especially in white collar crimes, suspects aren't hit with charges or a visit from an officer until long after an official investigation is underway.

Typically, if a crime is being investigated, law enforcement agents will make an arrest, file initial charges and bring a suspect to be arraigned in court, Vincent Southerland, an assistant professor of clinical law and the director of the criminal defense and reentry clinic at NYU School of Law, told ABC News.

After this arraignment, prosecutors would impanel a grand jury for a formal criminal indictment. Southerland, who has been practicing law in New York state for 19 years, said this process includes giving the jury evidence, possible testimony and other exhibits before they can officially charge a person with felonies.

A Manhattan grand jury is currently investigating Trump's possible role in the hush payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. The former president has denied any wrongdoing and having an affair with Daniels. His attorneys have framed the funds as a response to an extortion plot.

-ABC News' Ivan Pereira

Mar 21, 6:11 PM EDT

Pence discourages protests if Trump indicted

Former Vice President Mike Pence discouraged any protests should a grand jury indict Donald Trump.

"Every American has the right to let their voice be heard. The Constitution provides the right to peaceably assemble. But I think in this instance, I would discourage Americans from engaging in protests if in fact the former president is indicted," Pence said Tuesday when asked by ABC News if Americans should protest a possible indictment.

Pence said he understood the "frustration" while calling the case "politically motivated."

"But I think letting our voices be heard in other ways, and in not engaging in protests, I think is most prudent at this time," he said.

-ABC News' Libby Cathey

Mar 21, 11:00 AM EDT

McCarthy grows frustrated as Trump questions persist at House GOP retreat

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy again ripped into Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg when asked about the potential charges against former President Donald Trump at a Tuesday press conference at the House GOP retreat in Orlando.

When McCarthy was asked directly if had concerns about Trump's alleged conduct regarding the alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, he didn't answer the question and instead pivoted to talking about Hillary Clinton and Bragg.

"What we see before us is a political game being played by a local. Look, this isn't New York City, this is just a Manhattan," McCarthy said.

McCarthy said he hasn’t spoken to Trump in three weeks.

When asked if Trump is still the leader of the Republican Party, McCarthy took a jab at the press: "In the press room, for all of you, he is."

-ABC News' Katherine Faulders and Will Steakin

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE – From the Independent UK

TRUMP NEWS – LIVE UPDATES: STORMY DANIELS’ TALKS WITH TRUMP ATTORNEY REVEALED AS INDICTMENT AND ARREST LOOM

Grand jury investigating Trump’s role in hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election could return an indictment on Wednesday

By Oliver O'Connell

In a historic day for America, Donald Trump could become the first former president to be indicted on criminal charges today.

The Manhattan grand jury investigating Mr Trump’s role in hush money payments to Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election is expected to appear on Wednesday afternoon.

Live: Anti-Trump protest outside New York court ahead of possible indictment

The panel is expected to hear from at least one more witness before it votes on whether to indict Mr Trump.

An indictment could come by Wednesday at the earliest, before the former president appears for an arraignment sometime next week.

In a sign that his looming indictment could be giving him sleepless nights, Mr Trump was posting on Truth Social late into the night on Tuesday.

Ms Daniels’ attorney has now turned over communications between the adult film star and Mr Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, CNN reported. The communications date back to when Ms Daniels was seeking legal representation.

Mr Tacopina’s comments have also resurfaced, revealing he called the hush money payments “illegal” in 2018.

Meanwhile, Fox News host Tucker Carlson sought to walk back his texts saying he “hates” Mr Trump – now claiming he “loves” him.

KEY POINTS

· Trump could be indicted in Manhattan probe today

· Trump attorney’s 2018 communications with Stormy Daniels handed over to Manhattan DA

· Trump wants to be handcuffed and turn everything into a ‘spectacle’

· Trump posts late-night Truth Social video attacking four criminal probes

· Surge in online threats as police prepare for possible Trump indictment

· Tucker Carlson now claims he ‘loves’ Trump

8 minutes ago

Watch: Scenes outside a New York courthouse and Trump’s Florida home

Oliver O'Connell

22 March 2023 15:15

23 minutes ago

Trump attorney’s 2018 communications with Stormy Daniels handed over to Manhattan DA

Communications between Donald Trump’s attorney and Stormy Daniels have been handed over to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office – as the office prepares to potentially indict the former president on criminal charges.

Ms Daniels’ attorney Clark Brewster told CNN that the records between the adult film star and Mr Trump’s personal attorney Joe Tacopina date back to when she was seeking legal representation in 2018.

Mr Brewster said that the messages reveal that Ms Daniels had disclosed confidential information to Mr Tacopina about her situation involving the former president.

Daniels’ attorney said that the records between the adult film star and Trump’s personal attorney Joe Tacopina date back to when she was seeking legal representation in 2018

Oliver O'Connell

22 March 2023 15:00

38 minutes ago

How the Trump 2024 campaign is adapting to the 'new normal’

The Washington Post has published an in-depth look at how Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is adapting to what it calls the “new normal” of a former president running for office again, likely under indictment.

Campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung is quoted as saying about the ongoing multiple legal battles: “This is the new normal. The president has been battle-tested … This operation has been fine-tuned since 2016. Dealing with these types of news cycles, you learn to get good at it. We have a full-spectrum response operation on the campaign that can deal with anything that comes our way.”

There are of course concerns about what might happen next:

Criminal charges could add to concerns about Trump’s electability that have developed even among his loyal fans, and they could hinder his efforts to secure major donors and endorsements. And as much as Trump likes playing the victim and has privately vowed to look tough and fight the charges, some advisers said he does not actually want to be seen in handcuffs or in a mug shot.

The paper quotes former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as saying: “Being indicted I don’t think ever helps anybody.”

While we may not know exactly why the former president suddenly tweeted on Saturday morning that he was going to be arrested on Tuesday, the Post does note it accomplished at least two things:

Trump’s Saturday morning post to his Truth Social website predicting that he would be arrested Tuesday and calling for supporters to protest, woke up many of his advisers, who were staying around Palm Beach and were su-ddenly flooded with calls from reporters and others. But it accomplished one thing Trump cared about: pushing Republicans to defend him. Trump had complained in recent days that no one was going on TV to defend him.

Further:

Advisers are moving to capitalize on coverage in conservative media outlets, raising over $1.5 million since Saturday, a person familiar with the matter said.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR – From MSNBC

TIMELINE, Wednesday afternoon

Trump indictment vote delayed, grand jury not meeting today

If the grand jury in New York votes to charge Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money scheme, it would be the first ever indictment of a former U.S. president.

Last updated March 22, 2023, 4:09 PM EDT

1h ago / 4:09 PM EDT

Meanwhile, Trump hit with bad news in DOJ's classified docs probe

MSNBC

Judge rules Trump lawyer must testify in special counsel probe of classified documents

MARCH 22, 202301:51

2h ago / 3:19 PM EDT

Trump raking in campaign donations after his 'arrest' prediction: report

Hayley Miller

Trump's 2024 presidential campaign has reportedly raked in in $1.5 million in donations since Saturday, when the former president announced he expected to be arrested on Tuesday. (That, of course, did not happen.)

As Steve Benen wrote for MaddowBlog today:

To put these numbers in context, in the six weeks following his 2024 campaign kickoff event, Trump raised roughly $9.5 million, for an average of roughly $224,000 per day. Since Saturday morning, if today’s reporting is accurate, the Republican has raised roughly $500,000 per day.

"In other words, saying he’d be arrested gave the former president a significant boost — which might help explain why Trump made the false prediction in the first place."

Read Steve's post below.

4h ago / 2:02 PM EDT

Last-minute witness may have been a tactical blunder for Trump

Glenn Kirschner

As MSNBC Daily columnist Glenn Kirschner told "MSNBC Reports" moments ago:

In the event Robert Costello had any truly damaging information about Michael Cohen’s credibility or conduct, what the defense team has done is given the prosecutors a golden opportunity to drill down, to investigate anything Costello said, and to meet the force of it with, perhaps, a witness that can rebut what Costello said. All of that now will be diffused before there’s ever a trial, so I think that’s a win for the prosecutors.

4h ago / 1:11 PM EDT

Cause for grand jury delay is unclear, but here are a few potential reasons

Lisa Rubin

News that the grand jury will not meet today subverts expectations about the timing of a potential indictment. We don't know the cause of the delay at this time, but here are just a few of the possible reasons.

One possibility stems from the issues raised by Stormy Daniels, who consulted Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina about representing her around February 2018. And though Tacopina-linked sources deny he intends to represent Trump in any criminal case stemming from the Manhattan DA’s hush money investigation, NBC News has also confirmed that Daniels’s lawyer has turned over to the DA’s office emails and other communications that show Daniels sharing confidential information with Tacopina. Given the thorny ethical and even legal issues that could present, it’s possible Tacopina is a cause of the delay.

Item possible mistimed...

Trump legal nightmare – Lawyer says he will surrender if indicted

MARCH 17???, 2023 04:03

Of course, another possibility concerns additional grand jury witnesses. While Bob Costello and Michael Cohen each have told media they do not expect to return, The New York Times has reported there could be at least one more, unnamed grand jury witness. (CNN is also reporting today that a lawyer for one witness has been contacted to arrange for that witness’s return visit, if necessary. Neither NBC News or MSNBC has confirmed that report.)

Who that person is, of course, remains a mystery. Is it Daniels herself? Or could it even be former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who, according to the Times, remains under investigation for potential insurance fraud charges even as he serves a five-month sentence at Rikers Island after pleading guilty to a yearslong tax fraud scheme that led to the Trump Organization’s own conviction last year.

Whomever that witness is, the lead prosecution team could be meeting with that person in anticipation of their testimony — or that person could simply be unavailable to testify to the grand jury today.

And of course, there could be reasons far beyond anyone’s imagination for the delay. Trump would have you think Costello’s triumphant discrediting of Cohen has forced the DA’s office to regroup. That seems the least likely possibility to me, especially given the apparent pressure on Cohen to retain Costello in the first instance, and his ultimate decision against doing so. But from the casual observer to the legal commentators who eat, sleep and breathe this and other Trump investigation news, it appears we are all in the dark together today as the grand jury takes a day off.

5h ago / 12:57 PM EDT

Is the Manhattan grand jury running out of time with Trump?

By Jordan Rubin

So, what does it mean that the grand jury didn’t vote or meet today? Are they running up against a clock?

I don’t think so, at least not in terms of their service. That is, when The New York Times reported on the grand jury in late January, it said the panel recently started and serves for six months. So if that’s the case, then it’s not running out of time in that respect.

Of course, with the impending 2024 presidential election, there’s the bigger ticking clock hanging over all the Trump probes. The former president who’s running again is also being investigated in Georgia and by the Department of Justice.

So we don’t know what’s next for the Manhattan grand jury, but it doesn’t appear to be running out of time just yet.

5h ago / 12:43 PM EDT

The latest MAGA indictment delusion is a doozy

By Hayes Brown

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: “Any indictment of former President Donald Trump helps his chances in a presidential election.” It’s an old chestnut that’s been floating around for the last few years and is threatening to become conventional wisdom as Trump faces possible charges in New York.

But there’s a feedback loop occurring here. Trump supporters and lawyers say that an indictment will rile up his base; MAGA diehards repeat that back. Stepping back, you can see that there’s not actually much to validate the idea that criminal charges will boost Trump with the voters who spurned him in 2020. Read my full analysis below.

5h ago / 12:32 PM EDT

Grand jury won't meet today, but why?

By Jordan Rubin

We’ve learned that the grand jury considering charges against Trump in Manhattan won’t be voting on an indictment today because it isn’t meeting at all.

It’s unclear why this apparent schedule change occurred, as is when the grand jury will next meet. The grand jury meets on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The Manhattan DA told grand jurors to be on standby for tomorrow, according to local NBC affiliate WNBC, citing two sources familiar with the matter.

New York grand jury for Trump hush money probe will not meet Wednesday

MARCH 22, 2023 02:21

The apparent schedule change follows the appearance of last-minute Trump witness Robert Costello on Monday, when Michael Cohen was prepared to testify as a rebuttal witness after Costello but wasn’t called by prosecutors to do so. One possibility for the delay is that prosecutors are seeking to call another witness besides Cohen who wasn’t available or prepared to testify Wednesday.

5h ago / 12:11 PM EDT

Breaking: Manhattan grand jury will NOT meet today

By Hayley Miller

The Manhattan grand jury weighing whether to indict Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money scheme will not convene today, delaying a potential indictment, sources told WNBC, the local NBC affiliate in New York.

Two sources familiar with the matter say the Manhattan DA told the grand jury be on standby for tomorrow, according to WNBC. The reason for this delay is unclear.

Insider was the first to report the delay.

6h ago / 11:50 AM EDT

Why the Stormy Daniels payoff may be a distraction

By Danny Cevallos

As NBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos told "MSNBC Reports" moments ago:

There’s been a lot of talk about the falsifying business records charges in connection with the Stormy Daniels payoff. At this point, I’m starting to think that may be a distraction, that maybe we’re really going to see charges possibly related to Donald Trump’s practice of inflating his value for bragging rights or to get loans and deflating it when the tax man cometh.

The reason I think the Stormy Daniels avenue may be a distraction is I don’t think it’s a strong case. It’s default a misdemeanor case if you falsify business records. It only becomes a felony if the falsification is designed to conceal some other crime. And if that other crime is an election law violation, there are at least three or four problems with that. Not the least of which is that it’s a state attempting to enforce federal election law and that may not fly.

There’s some suggestion in the courts that it could, but if it’s a reasonable minds can differ situation. That means it could get tossed and it could be hard to sell to a jury.

So, Trump/Bragg collusion?

6h ago / 11:16 AM EDT

Trump turned down New York prosecutors' invitation to testify

By Shawn Cox

Trump hasn’t been subpoenaed in the hush money investigation, but he was invited to testify before the Manhattan grand jury.

Ultimately, after a weekend huddling with his lawyers in Florida earlier this month, the former president opted against speaking under oath.

As Jordan Rubin predicted recently for Deadline: Legal Blog: “It’s rare in general for defendants or potential defendants to testify in these situations, and Trump might be an even worse candidate than usual, given his awkward relationship with the truth. No doubt Trump’s legal team knows this and has taken it into account when advising the former president.”

Read Jordan’s full story below.

7h ago / 11:01 AM EDT

Costello's appearance not likely to thwart any Trump indictment

By Jordan Rubin

We thought the grand jury might be nearing a vote when a last-minute witness popped up from the Donald Trump camp on Monday: Robert Costello, a lawyer who offered testimony in attempt to attack the credibility of key prosecution witness Michael Cohen.

Did it work?

Of course, we won’t know until we learn of the grand jury’s decision. But there’s reason to think that if the grand jurors were heading toward an indictment already, Costello didn’t change their minds.

For one thing, part of Costello’s claim appears to be that Cohen made the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels on his own, without Trump’s backing. But even if that’s true, it’s sort of besides the point. That’s because a charge of falsifying business records, if that’s in fact what Manhattan prosecutors are contemplating, deals with Trump’s actions on the back end of the scheme in his reimbursement to Cohen, not whether the scheme was Trump’s idea in the first place.

And remember, the level of proof needed to secure an indictment is reasonable cause, which is much lower than beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard required at trial. So Costello might have accomplished nothing more than tipping his hand about what he’d say at a trial.

Trump ‘clown’ show: Cohen scorches Costello

MARCH 20, 2023 11:14

7h ago / 10:58 AM EDT

Dilanian: 'This office has brought this charge 117 times'

MSNBC

NBC News' Ken Dilanian just explained why claims of "selective prosecution" by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg in potentially charging Trump with falsifying business records are meritless.

"There is a record here," Dilanian told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" moments ago. "This office has brought this charge 117 times as a felony against 29 individuals or companies in just the last year or so. And there’s a long history of other New York prosecutors doing this."

"It isn’t just Alvin Bragg," he added. "There’s a whole group of citizens who have been brought in there to be grand jurors and they have to sign off on this. And that’s the beauty of our system, right? It’s not just a prosecutor.”

7h ago / 10:38 AM EDT

Grand jury to reconvene this afternoon, as 'Law & Order' films down the street

By Hayley Miller

NBC News' Gabe Gutierrez reported that grand jurors in New York are expected to reconvene this afternoon. In weeks past, they typically meet around 2 p.m. ET on Wednesdays.

"Right now, the big question is, will there be potentially another witness as part of this grand jury investigation?" Gutierrez told MSNBC. "That is unclear at this moment."

Gutierrez continued: "But if there are no more witnesses then the prosecution could put this up for a vote. And if 12 grand jurors vote to indict former President Trump, that indictment would then go under seal. It's possible we might not find out about an indictment until prosecutors reach out to the former president's legal team."

Importantly, Gutierrez noted that an episode of "Law & Order" is currently being filmed down the street from where grand jurors will meet in lower Manhattan. Fitting.

8h ago / 9:25 AM EDT

What to expect if Trump is indicted: Mug shot, fingerprinting and more

By Jordan Rubin

While we’d be in unprecedented territory with the potential indictment of a former president, people are indicted and processed all the time in New York, so we have a sense of what Trump could have to go through.

As I explained on Monday, that means, for example, that if Trump fights extradition from out of state, then he’d be subjected to the usual interstate extradition process. That would essentially amount to processing paperwork between the two states and ensuring the defendant’s identity — that he’s the person charged in the requesting state.

Then the question becomes what happens once Trump gets to New York, however he gets there — and it doesn’t seem like he’s fighting extradition at this point, so he could be turning himself in if indicted. Would Trump be “perp walked” in front of the cameras in handcuffs on his way into the courthouse? According to The New York Times on Tuesday, Trump “claims he is ready for his perp walk.” Whether that’s true or not, there’s no legal requirement for such a display, so it remains to be seen.

What would more likely need to happen, however, is that Trump would be fingerprinted and photographed in order to be processed on the arrest warrant that would issue in connection with the indictment. So you might see a Trump mug shot making the rounds.

Once the former president is processed, Trump could be arraigned on the indictment, meaning the formal process in court where the charges in the indictment are unveiled and the defendant enters a plea — most likely, a “not guilty” plea. And don’t expect Trump — a former president and one of the more recognizable people on the planet — to be held on bail pending trial. From there, pretrial motions and litigation in this historic case would commence.

9h ago / 8:43 AM EDT

Possible indictment scenarios in 'choose your own adventure' form

By Hayley Miller

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin shared Just Security editor Asha Rangappa's flow chart laying out her working theories for a potential Trump indictment in New York.

Click through to read Lisa's thoughts on another potential charge.

10h ago / 8:00 AM EDT

What to make of Trump calling Alvin Bragg ‘racist’

By Ja'han Jones

As I’ve watched Trump baselessly lob allegations of racism at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the lead-up to a potential indictment, I’ve been reminded of the constant struggle Black lawyers in the U.S. have endured as truly racist detractors have tried to undermine their legitimacy.

The same thought came to me last year, as Republicans railed against President Joe Biden’s vow to nominate a Black woman — ultimately, Ketanji Brown Jackson — to the Supreme Court.

In a nation where Black people were once deemed property, that we might become anything more than that is a radical notion. And for some bigots — including Trump, apparently — the idea that one of us, citing a set of laws that once enslaved us, could play a role in their freedom is a reversal of fate too great to bear.

Racist 'white replacement theory' runs parallel to conservative political issues

See OCT. 19, 2022 04:57

10h ago / 7:56 AM EDT

Pics of Trump getting arrested went viral yesterday. They're fake.

By Hayes Brown

Pictures that appear to show Trump in police custody have been going viral all week. One of the most widely circulated versions shows him being manhandled by a set of suspiciously tall police officers. Another shows his supposed mugshot. In case you haven’t figured it out already: They’re fakes. Frauds. Counterfeit compositions compiled by our artificially intelligent artistic overlords-to-be.

If and when there are actual pictures of Trump being taken into custody, you can be certain we’ll share them here.

10h ago / 7:47 AM EDT

Could an indictment knock Trump out of the 2024 race?

By Zeeshan Aleem

If Trump is indicted, it’ll be a historic moment and instantly reshape the contours of American political life. But it’s far from a guarantee that he’ll be knocked out of the 2024 race. There’s nothing in the Constitution that necessarily prevents Trump from running even if convicted of a crime — there’s even historical precedent for at least one presidential candidate winning votes while imprisoned.

As far as the Republican electorate is concerned, Trump’s various transgressions of norms and laws in the past several years have never left a lasting mark on his steady 40% approval rating. Part of this is because Trump’s central appeal to his base lies in operating outside the rules of a “corrupt” establishment in order to deliver change. It’s unclear if criminal charges will do anything to change that.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE – From Time

THE VIOLENT HISTORY OF WACO, THE INFAMOUS SITE OF TRUMP'S NEXT RALLY

BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN MARCH 22, 2023 4:14 PM EDT

On Saturday, despite a possible indictment looming, former President Donald Trump is holding a rally in Waco, Texas. The Trump 2024 presidential campaign told TIME they chose the city because of its central location and Texas’ role in the primary, but Waco has an infamous, violent history: it was the site of a deadly standoff between an anti-government cult and federal law enforcement thirty years ago.

The conflict started on Feb. 28, 1993, when agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) raided the compound of the Branch Davidians cult near Waco because federal and state law officials were afraid that members were stockpiling weapons. Cult leader David Koresh, who claimed he was God, had convinced more than a hundred people to join him at the armed fortress “to await the end of the world,” as TIME described the group’s beliefs back then. Koresh was willing to be a martyr who would “die in a battle against unbelievers, then be joined in heaven by the followers who chose to lay down their lives for him.” As the magazine reported, Koresh got a phone call tipping him off that the federal agents were coming and the Branch Davidians met them with gunfire. Four agents died and 16 were wounded, as well as about a dozen cult members and their children.

A 51-day standoff ensued. Reporting on the incident at the time, TIME obtained two letters that Koresh sent the FBI over the weekend of April 10, dictated to one of his 19 wives on lavender notepaper. “I AM your God,” he wrote, “and you will bow under my feet. Do you think you have the power to stop my will?” The fatal siege culminated on April 19, 1993, when a fire set by the Branch Davidians killed 76 compound members, including children, and several ATF agents.

Waco had long been a hub of white power activity. Among white power activists who were already fearing racial extinction, the disastrous raid just reaffirmed that the state was “inherently evil” and gave rise to “a new surge in militia organizing,” according to Bring the War Home by Kathleen Belew, an expert on the history of right-wing extremism. In the aftermath, “the militia movement surged to more than 50,000 members in 47 states, and focused increasingly on taking violent action to stop the rampant federal government.” Belew’s research finds the surge was even greater than the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. And Waco directly inspired another famous act of violence: the mastermind behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh, went to Waco during the standoff and launched the attack on the two-year anniversary of the April 19 siege, which he saw as “a massacre carried out by a rampant superstate and its corrupt agents,” as Belew put it.

See the May 3, 1993 cover of TIME for a sinister photo of Koresh.

Waco has since become a pilgrimage site for some members of the far-right who see special significance in the city’s history of civilians confronting what they viewed as government overreach. In an adapted excerpt from the new book Waco Rising, author Kevin Cook writes about how Waco is now a tourist attraction, visited by families and militia members who see it as one of the hubs of the modern-day extremist “patriot movement.” Several thousand people around the world still call themselves Branch Davidians. There’s a chapel on the site of the compound, thanks to a fundraising drive by conspiracist Alex Jones. Merchandise for sale at the chapel include Trump shirts and a poster with Koresh wielding a rifle over a line directed at President Joe Biden: “SLEEPY JOE, WAKE UP OR WACO! COME GET IT!”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX – From Time

'HE BETRAYED US': WHY TRUMP'S CALL TO PROTEST IS FLOPPING

BY VERA BERGENGRUEN MARCH 21, 2023 4:57 PM EDT

Donald Trump’s calls for supporters to protest his possible indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg led officials to tighten security in New York and Washington and raised fears of potential violence. But Trump’s exhortations were largely met with reluctance from both prominent supporters and the far-right online acolytes who responded to his rallying cry on Jan. 6, 2021.

A demonstration on Monday organized by the New York Young Republican Club outside the Manhattan court where Trump would be arraigned if indicted drew barely 50 people. Only a handful of supporters showed up outside his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, according to local reports.

Distrustful that protests might be “traps” set by federal law enforcement and without a fixed date or event to rally around, the vast majority of pro-Trump online groups seemed to waver between apathy and confusion, showing very little appetite for organized action. “He’s not infallible and protest is very vague,” one person wrote in a popular MAGA Telegram group. “And what exactly does “Protest, Protest!!!” mean?” another person asked in a different group. “I’m not trying to be a jerk but you’d think he could give slightly more explicit instructions if he really wanted the tens of millions of people who support him to do something effective.”

While there were the usual mentions of “civil war” and apocalyptic language about using violence to “take the country back” that have become commonplace in far-right channels, polls in these groups asking if followers would protest for Trump overwhelmingly found their members opposed. While far-right groups see Trump’s possible arrest as a politicized prosecution, they mostly advised each other to stay home. “I think “protest” is bad advice from Trump,” read one post on a pro-Trump forum. “Unless you’re willing to actually and truly do an insurrection, taking all oppressors prisoner (or worse), there is no point to “protest” here.”

None of the prominent Trump supporters who played key roles in organizing rallies and protests in the past stepped up either, with many of them publicly declaring they were staying out of it. “I’m retired,” Ali Alexander, a right-wing activist and key organizer of the 2020 “Stop the Steal” rallies that led to Jan. 6, wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app. Alexander said he had spoken to Alex Jones, a prominent conspiracy theorist involved in the Jan. 6 rallies. “He’s not protesting either. We’ve both got enough going on fighting the government,” he wrote. “No billionaire is covering our bills.”

The muted response highlights the lack of enthusiasm for and widespread distrust of mass protests after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which led to more than 1,000 prosecutions. A review of more than two dozen popular pro-Trump Telegram channels, online forums, and social media groups also suggests that many supporters feel betrayed by what they see as the former President’s abandonment of those who rallied for him on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Why would I protest for a man that left the [Jan. 6 protesters] high and dry?” one user posted in a pro-Trump Telegram group. “Trump did nothing to help them after they stuck [their] neck out for him.”

“Has he called for protests about these poor guys? No. But he’s calling for us to protest about his arrest,” another person wrote. “It doesn’t sit right with me.” Another user agreed: “He’s right. Trump betrayed the J6 patriots. How can anybody still support [him]?”.

Many of the narratives in right-wing circles online have centered on warnings that the federal government is trying to stoke violent protests by Trump supporters so they can arrest them, according to an analysis shared with TIME by Logically, a U.K.-based tech firm that tracks online misinformation. Far-right groups have warned followers that any protests could be a “setup” or “Deep State traps” to draw our Trump supporters. When the British far-right YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson asked his more than 218,000 followers on Truth Social “Is the potential protest against Trump being arrested a J6-style trap?” more than 85% responded “Yes.”

On online messaging groups and forums, Trump supporters discussed alternative ways to protest, with many urging people to withdraw their money from banks, organize national work strikes, set up prayer groups or fly American flags upside down. “Don’t expose your back, because Trump does not have yours,” one user on a pro-Trump social media group wrote. “And he never will.”

Read More: The United States of Political Violence

Still, intelligence officials have tracked an uptick in violent rhetoric in recent days, with most threats targeting law enforcement, judges and government officials in New York, according to a CBS report. Extremism analysts and former law enforcement officials have cautioned that the risk of violence is more likely to come from an individual who decides to act, as happened last year when an armed man attacked the FBI’s office in Cincinnati after the agents raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN – From the New York Times

GRAND JURY HEARING TRUMP EVIDENCE DID NOT MEET WEDNESDAY

While prosecutors have signaled that an indictment of the former president is likely, its specific timing remains unclear, and grand juries conduct their work in secret.

March 22, 2023 Updated 5:04 p.m. ET

The Manhattan grand jury that has been hearing evidence about Donald J. Trump’s involvement with a hush-money payment to a porn star did not meet on Wednesday, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, meaning that any indictment of the former president would come Thursday at the earliest.

Criminal charges against Mr. Trump have been hotly anticipated since at least Saturday, when the former president, with no direct knowledge, declared on his social media platform that he would be arrested on Tuesday. But the grand jury, which meets in the afternoons, heard from a witness on Monday until nearly 5 p.m., leaving little time for anything else.

The grand jury meets on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and may hear from at least one more witness before being asked to vote, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Because the proceeding is held in secret, it is unclear whether other witnesses could appear as well.

There was no indication as to why the grand jury did not meet on Wednesday, but the panel is not required to convene all three days each week, and scheduling conflicts and other interruptions are not unusual.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.

The news of the canceled session was first reported by Insider.

While an indictment of Mr. Trump is not a certainty, prosecutors working for the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, have signaled that charges are likely. They have been scrutinizing Mr. Trump for the hush-money payment that was made by his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, in the run-up to the 2016 election.

The timing of any potential indictment is unknown, and an arrest and arraignment — the criminal proceeding in which a defendant is formally charged — would not immediately follow. In order to indict Mr. Trump, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must ask the grand jury to vote whether to charge him. A majority of the 23 jurors must agree to do so.

Once witness testimony has concluded, prosecutors are expected to explain any charges they are seeking to the jurors before asking them to vote. With the grand jury not meeting on Wednesday, the earliest that is likely to happen is Thursday afternoon.

The charges likely center on the way Mr. Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, handled reimbursing Mr. Cohen for the payment of $130,000 to the porn star Stormy Daniels. The company’s internal records falsely identified the reimbursements as legal expenses, which helped conceal the purpose of the payments, according to Mr. Cohen, who said Mr. Trump knew about the misleading records. (Mr. Trump’s lawyers deny that and have accused Mr. Bragg’s office of targeting the former president for political purposes.)

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

William K. Rashbaum is a senior writer on the Metro desk, where he covers political and municipal corruption, courts, terrorism and law enforcement. He was a part of the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. @WRashbaum • Facebook

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney's office, state criminal courts in Manhattan and New York City's jails. @jonesieman

Ben Protess is an investigative reporter covering the federal government, law enforcement and various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his allies. @benprotess

ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT – From Time

FOR BOTH DONALD TRUMP AND ALVIN BRAGG, THE CENTRAL PARK JOGGER CASE WAS A TURNING POINT

MARCH 22, 2023 5:05 PM EDT

Alvin Bragg and Donald Trump are on the verge of an epic legal clash.

The Manhattan District Attorney is expected to indict the former President as soon as this week over falsifying financial records tied to alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign.

But while the looming courtroom showdown may be the first head-to-head collision between the two New Yorkers, it’s not the first time they have been on the opposite side of a combustible nationally-charged issue. Both men’s trajectories, in fact, were shaped in part by the same event more than 30 years ago: the Central Park Jogger Case.

The infamous case of the sexual assault of a 28-y ear-old investment banker jogging in Central Park had strikingly different impacts on Trump and Bragg, with real estate mogul making one of his first forays into politics by calling for New York to resurrect the death penalty, and Bragg, a teen living not far from Central Park at the time, later pointing to the wrongful convictions of five Black and Latino men as a reason he chose to become a lawyer.

It’s a story that goes back to April 1989, when New York City was the epicenter of a historic country-wide crime wave, beset with more than 2,000 murders a year. Less than two weeks after the attack that made national headlines, Trump, who was a regular subject of intrigue in the local tabloids, took out full-page ads in four New York newspapers, including The New York Times, advocating for the return of capital punishment. “I want to hate these murderers and I always will,” Trump wrote in the May 1989 ad. “I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them.”

Political pundits saw the move as strategic—an attempt by Trump to not only insinuate himself into local and national politics but to prop himself up as a foil to the city’s Democratic mayor, Ed Koch.

But for the five men who were wrongly convicted after being coerced into making false statements, the ads helped to intensify the growing bloodlust throughout the city. “He put a bounty on my head,” Korey Wise, who was imprisoned for more than a decade over the incident, told TIME in 2016. All of the men were later exonerated by DNA evidence in 2002.

None of that made an impression on Trump. In 2014, after New York City announced a $41 million settlement for the wrongly convicted, he wrote an op-ed calling the deal a “disgrace.”

“He’s a guy who’s never missed an opportunity to infuse himself into a public situation, if it meant that he would advance his plan,” David Kreizer, a lawyer who represented Wise in the 2014 settlement case, tells TIME. “We see that as far back as 1989. He used the money that he had to build that Trump brand, that Trump machine. It’s amazing foreshadowing that more than 30 years later, he’s still doing it.”

In 2019, while Trump was in the White House, a Netflix series on the incident “When They See Us” pushed it back into the national conversation. Trump continued to show no remorse for his behavior. “You have people on both sides of that,” Trump said, echoing comments he made about the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville. “They admitted their guilt.”

For Bragg, the case had the opposite effect. He was only 16 at the time, but the experience of watching it up close as a child of Manhattan was formative. “I grew up in the shadow of the Central Park Five case, which had an incredibly deep impact on me,” Bragg told The New York Amsterdam News in May 2022.

That was due in large part, he has said, because the incident had a personal resonance. “I was actually pulled over with some friends by the police not long after, who started interrogating us about a crime that we didn’t commit,” he told the Amsterdam News. “I was lucky—the reality of being a Black man meant I could have been one of the Exonerated Five.” In an interview with The American Prospect, in July 2021, he recounted enduring “three gunpoint stops by the NYPD during unconstitutional stops.”

After graduating from the prestigious Trinity School in Manhattan, Bragg went on to Harvard University and then Harvard Law School, where he was an editor for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, a student-run progressive legal journal.

After graduating, he clerked for a federal judge before working at a private law firm on white collar crime and civil rights issues. He soon left the private sector, first working for then-New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, and then becoming the chief of investigations for the New York City Council.

Those positions landed him on the radar of former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who in 2017 appointed him as an Assistant Attorney General, where he ran the criminal justice and social justice units. In that role, he oversaw probes into the Trump Organizations, but those never led to an indictment. In 2019, he joined the race to replace Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who wasn’t running for reelection. Ahead of the June 2021 Democratic primary, four of the Central Park Five endorsed Bragg in the race. He edged out his primary opponent and then cruised to victory over a Republican challenger in one of the bluest cities in America.

As the District Attorney, Bragg has shown the lasting imprint the Central Park Jogger case made on his psyche. He served as a co-defendant to exonerate one of the other defendants in the case, Steven Lopez. He also established a “Post-Conviction Justice Unit” that reviews and, in some cases, re-investigates old cases if there’s a possibility of a wrongful conviction.

“There are far too many people who have had their lives ruined due to unjust convictions,” Bragg said when announcing the division. “But beyond the impact it has on individuals and their families, unjust convictions undermine public safety by impairing law enforcement’s ability to apprehend those who actually committed the crime. They also severely undermine the public’s faith in our criminal justice system.”

When Bragg took over the DA’s office, it was already investigating allegations that Trump inflated the value of his assets to mislead and defraud lenders. Bragg ultimately decided not to press charges, a controversial decision in his office that led to a spate of resignations.

Now, however, he appears primed to go toe-to-toe with the former President who has famously escaped legal jeopardy for more than a half century, despite high levels of scrutiny from state and federal prosecutors. A man highly sensitive to the perils of a wrongful conviction is going to try to convict one of the most incendiary and difficult targets imaginable.

Two weeks ago, Bragg’s office invited Trump to testify before a grand jury, a move that former federal prosecutors and legal experts have said is a sign that his office was nearing an indictment. And then Trump himself wrote on his social media platform over the weekend that he was expecting to be arrested on Tuesday, calling for nationwide protests.

The arrest has not yet materialized, nor have protests of any substantial size. But an indictment does appear to be in the offing. If it happens, the case would mark the first ever criminal indictment of a current or former President. It promises to generate reams of controversy, not to mention grist for campaign attack ads in all directions.

Yet at the heart of the indictment are two native New Yorkers who, 34 years ago, watched the same event terrorize their city, and whose antithetical reactions helped to guide the rest of their professional lives. As fate would have it, they are now on the opposing sides of another historical moment.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY NINE – From WPBF (Palm Beach, FL)

HERE'S HOW WE COULD FIND OUT IF FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP HAS BEEN INDICTED

Updated: 5:28 PM EDT Mar 22, 2023

PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. —

If the grand jury indicts former President Donald Trump when it reconvenes Thursday, a former DOJ trial attorney said this doesn't mean the public will hear about it right away.

Unless an arrest warrant is signed by the judge or there is a leak, former DOJ trial attorney Richard Serafini said it would be unlikely for the public to find out by an announcement or a press release.

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An indication could be if Trump were to leave Mar-a-Lago, but the defense and the prosecution could also schedule a surrender for the coming days. Trump is also expected to hold his first 2024 presidential campaign rally in Texas Saturday, so leaving Florida doesn't mean he is on his way to New York.

Trump's plane has been at Palm Beach International Airport since at least Monday afternoon, which means he's most likely at Mar-a-Lago.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

It's possible Trump would charter a different plane to New York if he's indicted, but he usually travels in his private jet that's currently parked at Palm Beach International Airport. Also, Trump has a campaign stop in Texas this weekend so if his private jet were to leave Palm Beach International Airport, it doesn’t necessarily mean it would be on its way to New York.

While Trump claimed that he expected to be arrested Tuesday, a grand jury in New York could continue to weigh charges against him Thursday. It's unclear if there are any more witnesses testifying against him.

Those charges are in relation to a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trial attorneys are investigating whether he falsified documents and violated election laws.

Trump has admitted to paying Daniels, but he says he did nothing wrong.

"It still looks like they’re moving towards an indictment, and if they do indict, it’s going to be relatively soon,” Richard Serafini, former Department of Justice criminal division trial attorney, said.

Previous Coverage: Here's what we know about Trump's possible indictment

Serafini says that even if a surrender deal is struck, Trump could likely agree to turn himself in up to a week later. However, everything still depends on if and when there’s an indictment.

"At this point, I think everybody is just waiting to see what happens next,” Serafini said.

If Trump is indicted and surrenders, he likely won’t spend time in jail or be forced by the New York police to wear handcuffs, though he would have to be fingerprinted, get his mugshot taken and appear before a judge in criminal court, according to a state attorney. Trump would also likely be able to get most of his court appearances waived by the judge.

Previous Coverage: Former President Donald Trump's indictment 'most likely to be at the end of the week,' Palm Beach County state attorney says

Trump is also a current presidential candidate in the 2024 general election.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY – From the Guardian U.K.

TRUMP LAWYER ORDERED TO HAND OVER NOTES IN MAR-A-LAGO DOCUMENTS INQUIRY

Major blow to ex-president as Evan Corcoran loses legal bid to avoid giving notes and audio transcripts to investigators

By Hugo Lowell, Wed 22 Mar 2023 18.03 EDT

Donald Trump’s main lawyer – who was involved in turning over classified-marked documents at the Mar-a-Lago resort to the justice department last year – must provide his notes and audio transcripts to the criminal investigation after a federal appeals court rejected twin efforts to block the order.

The US appeals court for the DC circuit on Wednesday rejected two separate appeals from the former president and his lawyer Evan Corcoran to stop a sealed order, piercing attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine protections issued in a court decision last week.

In losing the appeal – a major defeat for Trump – Corcoran must provide additional testimony and produce documents to the grand jury hearing evidence about Trump’s potential unauthorized retention of national security materials at Mar-a-Lago – and possible obstruction of justice.

The obstruction part of the investigation is centered on Trump’s incomplete compliance with a subpoena in May that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents in his possession. That was after documents he returned earlier to the National Archives included 200 that were classified.

In June, Corcoran searched Mar-a-Lago and produced about 30 documents with classified markings to the justice department, and had another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, sign a certification that attested to compliance with the subpoena “based on the information provided to me”.

But, according to court filings, the justice department developed evidence that more documents that were marked as classified remained at the resort, along with “evidence of obstruction”. And when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, they found 101 such documents in a storage room and in Trump’s office.

The ruling by the appeals court could mark a momentous moment in the criminal investigation, and could make Corcoran a crucial witness for the special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the matter.

Details about the order and Corcoran’s notes are unknown because the case is under seal, though the secret appeals court battle was over a ruling last week by the then chief US judge for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, that there was prima facie evidence Trump used Corcoran’s legal advice to further a crime.

The order from Howell granted in part – and denied in part – the justice department’s motion to compel testimony from Corcoran on a range of subjects he discussed with Trump with respect to the obstruction element of the investigation.

What was granted by Howell included an order for Corcoran to testify about his communications with Trump about how to comply with a grand jury subpoena, issued last May, which demanded the return of any documents in his possession bearing classified markings, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The spat between Trump and the justice department began last month, when Corcoran appeared before the federal grand jury but invoked attorney-client privilege protections to avoid answering questions about his legal advice to Trump and his compliance with the May subpoena.

In an effort to force Corcoran to testify about those subjects, the department brought a motion to compel testimony from Corcoran before Howell, asking her to pierce the protections with the so-called crime-fraud exception.

The motion was partly granted by Howell last week, saying the justice department had shown sufficient evidence that Trump used the legal advice from Corcoran in furtherance of a crime. ABC News reported Howell also found evidence that Trump intentionally misled or lied to his lawyers.

As part of her decision, Howell ordered Corcoran to turn over his notes to the criminal investigation by Wednesday, one of the sources said. But before he complied with her order, the Trump legal team appealed the ruling, and the appeals court granted a temporary stay.

The appeals court then laid out an unusually tight schedule to consider the appeal, instructing the Trump legal team to file briefs by midnight on Tuesday and the justice department to file its response by 6am on Wednesday.

On Wednesday afternoon, the three-judge panel of Cornelia Pillard, Michelle Childs and Florence Pan – all Democratic appointees – dissolved the stay, and ordered Corcoran to produce his notes and transcripts of audio recordings as Howell had originally decided.

The lightning episode became complicated because the Trump legal team and Corcoran appear to have filed separate appeals: one appeal was against the justice department’s ability to question Corcoran, and the second was against the justice department’s access to Corcoran’s notes.

The appeals court lifted both temporary stays, but appears to have allowed one of the appeals to continue, with briefs due in May – meaning the appeals court is allowing the justice department to access Corcoran’s testimony and notes now so as not to delay the investigation, but still allowing him to appeal.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY ONE – From Time

'VERY SYMBOLIC!': TRUMP'S PLAN FOR WACO RALLY SPURS ANTI-GOVERNMENT SUPPORTERS

BY BRIAN BENNETT MARCH 21, 2023 7:05 PM EDT

As Donald Trump waits to see if a Manhattan grand jury will choose to indict him this week, a prospect that he is encouraging his supporters to protest, he is also preparing to hold the first major rally of his presidential campaign in a city that was famously the site of a deadly standoff between an anti-government cult and federal law enforcement.

Thirty years ago next month, 86 people died amid a disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Trump announced last week he was holding his campaign’s first major rally this Saturday in Waco, highlighting a city freighted with anti-government history at a moment when the former President is facing multiple criminal investigations and is increasingly making anti-government signals part of his 2024 campaign.

If elected President, Trump promised in a video released Tuesday that he would create a “truth and reconciliation commission” to “expose the hoaxes,” and move as many as 100,000 government workers out of Washington, D.C. to “places filled with patriots who love America.”

Trump continues to center his campaign around the 2020 election, which he lost but still refuses to concede. At a conservative conference this month, he told his supporters that if he’s elected again he’ll be their “retribution” and praised politicians like GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia for supporting those accused of being involved in the deadly riot at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Recently, Trump posted a song called “Trump Won” on his Truth Social networking site with a link to donate to his campaign. Earlier this month, he added his voice to a song called “Justice for All” sung by people convicted for participating in the Jan. 6 riot.

Trump’s railing against the forces that helped remove him from power comes at a time of considerable legal jeopardy for him. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has a grand jury hearing testimony about Trump’s alleged hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. Over the weekend, Trump said that Bragg is the one who should be investigated. Trump’s also facing investigations by the Justice Department into his role in trying to stop the counting of electoral votes at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 and his handling of classified documents, and in Georgia’s Fulton County over his alleged efforts to overturn election results in that state.

“As Donald Trump’s legal woes have increased, his rhetoric has increased, and his vituperation has increased against all of those actors, and his supporters—who already don’t like Joe Biden—have been growing more anti-government,” says Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

When Trump travels to Waco on Saturday, he’ll be visiting a Texas county he won over Biden by more than 20 percentage points. It is also the site of a notorious 51-day standoff between the apocalyptic, anti-government Branch Davidians and the FBI and ATF that started with a lethal shootout with the death of 4 ATF agents and 6 people on the compound. Nearly two months later, the standoff ended in calamity, as a fire set by the Branch Davidians killed 76 people living in the compound including children. The deadly episode has since been a rallying cry for anti-government and militia movements in the U.S.

Asked if Trump’s decision to hold the rally in Waco was in any way related to the anniversary of the siege, Trump’s campaign said Waco’s location and the role of Texas in next year’s primary schedule were behind the choice of the city for the campaign’s first rally.

“President Trump is holding his first campaign rally in Waco in the Super Tuesday state of Texas because it is centrally located and close to all four of Texas’ biggest metropolitan areas—Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio—while providing the necessary infrastructure to hold a rally of this magnitude,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told TIME in a statement. “This is the ideal location to have as many supporters from across the state and in neighboring states attend this historic rally.”

Yet the scheduling of a prominent rally in Waco as Trump faces serious legal peril and continues to suggest the current leaders of the US government are illegitimate sends a signal to anti-government movements that “they are welcome in his movement,” says Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research, analysis and reporting for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks militia movements and hate groups.

“There are definitely young folks who may not remember Waco, but for people who are deep believers in this movement and who are deep activists, it is still very clear and present,” Carroll Rivas says.

For some of Trump’s diehard supporters, the significance of him scheduling a rally at this moment in Waco was impossible to miss. Posting on the messaging app Telegram, far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer called the rally in Waco “very symbolic!” A few MAGA influencers on social media noted the choice of location, with one calling it “a meaningful shot across the brow of the Deep State”

On the pro-Trump forums that served as the staging grounds for Jan. 6, discussions of the Waco rally largely centered on discussing the merits of nearby Baylor University (“great school”), recommendations for burger and BBQ joints for those thinking of attending, and musings about whether HGTV “Fixer Upper” stars Chip and Joanna Gaines, whose home decorating business is headquartered in the city, would endorse Trump. A few commenters mentioned the 1993 Waco siege. “Yikes, that’s a town with some history right there. Wonder if he’ll bring it up,” one person wrote. “Oh he will,” another responded.

One user wondered if Trump was “trolling [or] foreshadowing a little” by choosing Waco. “Interesting place to begin,” the user added. “The site of the most well known example of the government murdering people.”

The Waco siege has been the subject of elaborate, unfounded conspiracy theories, including that federal agents started the fire that killed more than 70 people, including children, who were living with the group’s leader, David Koresh.

In its aftermath, John Danforth, a former Senator from Missouri and a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, led a broad special counsel investigation into the Waco siege which concluded that the deadly fire on the compound was started by people in the Branch Davidian movement themselves and not federal agents outside the compound. Danforth, in an interview with TIME this week, says the conspiracy theories around Waco reflect the “appetite for the worst possible interpretation of what people do and what government people do.”

Those salacious accounts, Danforth adds, continue to corrode public trust in the federal government. “When the public is led to believe that the government is an evil force, that it’s just politically manipulated always and can kill people, then the consent of the governed is undermined,” he says.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY TWO – From Fox

From Fox x312

THE SUDDEN TURN OF EVENTS THAT COULD DERAIL TRUMP'S INDICTMENT

Manhattan D.A. Bragg is determined to snooker a grand jury into indicting Trump

 By Gregg Jarrett

House Judiciary Committee probes Manhattan DA over potential Trump indictment

Senior congressional correspondent Chad Pergram reports the latest on the GOP efforts from Capitol Hill.

"Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime," was the infamous boast of Joseph Stalin’s ruthless secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria. His modus operandi was to target any man the Soviet dictator chose and then find or fabricate a crime against him.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has taken a page out of Stalin’s playbook and targeted Donald Trump. Driven by personal and political animus, the DA presumed the former president must be guilty of something. It was just a matter of devoting enough time and resources to hunt down the crime. Failing to find one, Bragg copied Beria’s paradigm and simply dreamed one up.

As I explained in my last column, the DA invented his case against Trump by taking an alleged misdemeanor business records violation and supercharging it into a felony by citing an imagined second crime arising out of a supposed campaign finance violation.  The novelty of such a charge is exceeded only by its absurdity.  

The indictment appears to hinge on the DA’s argument that a 2016 payment made to porn star, Stormy Daniels, was intended to help Trump’s presidential bid and should have been accounted for as a campaign contribution, not legal fees, when he reimbursed his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, who paid Daniels to keep her mouth shut about a purported 2006 affair that Trump vigorously denies. Confused yet?  You

The flaw in Bragg’s tortured logic is two-fold.  First, non-disclosure agreements in exchange for money are perfectly legal.  Second, Cohen long ago stated that the payment had nothing to do with the campaign but was made to protect Melania Trump from an embarrassing, albeit false, accusation.  As such, it is not an illegal campaign donation under the law.  Hence there is no crime.

It appears that Bragg’s star witness is none other than Cohen who has performed an astonishing pirouette by recanting his earlier statements. He now claims that the money was intended to help Trump’s campaign fend off a damaging story. Reliance on such a disreputable character as Cohen is a clear sign of the DA’s desperation.  Cohen's hatred of Trump is well known. He has carved out a career of trashing his former boss.

Cohen has always had a warped relationship with the truth.  He peddled so many lies that there is no way to know whether the disgraced and disbarred lawyer even understands the concept of honesty.  Among the smorgasbord of crimes that sent him to prison was lying to congress. Santos?

In a sudden turn of events, Cohen’s former attorney Robert Costello —no longer bound by the attorney-client privilege that was waived by his ex-client— testified before the grand jury on Monday. According to Costello, in April of 2018 Cohen repeatedly stated that the Daniels payment was intended to protect the candidate’s wife, not the campaign. Moreover, Cohen insisted that he acted all on his own and not at the behest of Trump. While testifying for over two hours, Costello said he realized that Bragg had been hiding from the grand jury nearly all of the files he had previously turned over to the DA that corroborated Cohen’s original story.

Concealing exculpatory evidence from a grand jury is reprehensible conduct. But the overarching question is this: was Cohen lying at the outset of the investigation or is he lying now? I doubt even he knows. Inveterate liars tend to lose track of their lies.

Bragg’s determination to snooker a grand jury into indicting Trump is an egregious abuse of government authority. It constitutes the weaponization of the law for political gain. But it is also—and importantly—selective prosecution of the worst kind.

Consider the case of Hillary Clinton who secretly funded the anti-Trump dossier in 2016 by deploying campaign lawyers to pay ex-British spy Christopher Steele more than $1 million dollars to compose his phony document. Candidate Clinton listed it as a "legal expense," even though its sole purpose was to advance her campaign against Trump, her opponent. The Federal Election Commission fined Hillary for brazenly violating campaign finance laws.

But New York prosecutors never even thought about bringing criminal charges because it involved, well… Hillary. She has consistently been the beneficiary of a dual system of justice that grants her a permanent "get out of jail free" card for whatever crooked scheme she concocts. She was never prosecuted for obvious crimes under the Espionage Act by storing classified records in her home on a personal server. She also destroyed more than 30-thousand documents under congressional subpoena, but no obstruction of justice indictment was ever rendered.

Juxtapose the treatment of Donald Trump. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has devoted unlimited resources over many years scouring every aspect of the former president’s personal life and business affairs in a purely partisan quest to find a crime —any crime. They did it because they could, with no compunction over the code of ethics that binds lawyers. Despite the objections of senior experienced prosecutors, the district attorney conjured up a convoluted legal theory to slay his political hobgoblin. It has all the earmarks of a Stalin-like fabrication.

Much of the current witch hunt was driven and directed by former assistant DA Mark Pomerantz, an outsider who was hired for the sole purpose of "getting Trump."  When Bragg initially balked at bringing charges, Pomerantz quit in a fit of pique but not before blasting his former boss in a resignation screed conveniently made public.

He then ratcheted up the pressure on Bragg by penning a disgraceful tell-all book. In it, Pomerantz arrogantly laid bare his contempt of Trump because "he posed a real danger to the country and to the ideals that mattered to me." That confessional exposed the underlying rationale for charging Trump. The district attorney soon caved and fully embraced the loony legal theory promoted by Pomerantz.

Disagreeing with someone’s political views or harboring personal animosity is not a basis for criminal prosecution. Indeed, it is a serious breach of legal ethics. It is the duty of a prosecutor to see that justice is done, not to target an individual and contort the law to bring a feckless case against him. Pomerantz should face disbarment for his unconscionable conduct.

The district attorney’s prejudicial pursuit of Trump undermines the vital concept that the administration of justice will be fair and equitable. He has forsaken the presumption of innocence embodied in the 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments to our Constitution. When it comes to Trump, the DA only operates on the presumption of guilt.

Alvin Bragg has chosen to criminalize politics with the zeal of the notorious Lavrentiy Beria. In the process, he has badly damaged the public’s trust and sullied the sacred principle of equal justice under the law.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY THREE – From

the Guardian U.K.

Trump wants to be handcuffed for court appearance in Stormy Daniels case, sources say role play w.stormy?

People close to former president said to be unsure whether he is serious about wanting to do a perp walk

Hugo Lowell in New York

@hugolowell

Wed 22 Mar 2023 00.14 EDT

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Donald Trump has told advisers that he wants to be handcuffed when he makes an appearance in court, if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, multiple sources close to the former president have said.

The former president has reasoned that since he would need to go to the courthouse and surrender himself to authorities for fingerprinting and a mug shot anyway, the sources said, he might as well turn everything into a “spectacle”.

Trump’s increasing insistence that he wants to be handcuffed behind his back for a perp walk appears to come from various motivations, including that he wants to project defiance in the face of what he sees as an unfair prosecution and that it would galvanize his base for his 2024 presidential campaign.

But above all, people close to Trump said, he was deeply anxious that any special arrangements – like making his first court appearance by video link or skulking into the courthouse – would make him look weak or like a loser.

The recent discussions that Trump has had about his surrender with close advisers at Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere opens a window on to the former president’s unique fears and anxieties as the grand jury, which next convenes on Wednesday, appears on course to return an indictment.

Trump’s legal team in the hush money case has recoiled at the idea of him going in person and recommended that Trump allow them to quietly turn himself in next week and schedule a remote appearance, even citing guidance from his Secret Service detail about potential security concerns.

But Trump has rejected that approach and told various allies over the weekend that he didn’t care if someone shot him – he would become “a martyr”. He later added that if he got shot, he would probably win the presidency in 2024, the sources said. Jihadist?

It remains uncertain when the Manhattan grand jury might return an indictment in the hush money case and make him the first US president, sitting or former, to face criminal charges.

People close to Trump could not be sure how serious he is about being handcuffed for a perp walk, but he may be thwarted in his supposed ambitions if the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, decides against handcuffing him and refuses to allow him to be marched past the cameras.

Trump’s advisers have also been unsure whether he actually grasps the enormity of what an indictment might mean for him legally, in part because he has appeared disconnected at times from the recent flurry of activity in New York as the investigation has wrapped up.

In recent days, Trump has generally weighed his predicament only in between lunches and dinners at Mar-a-Lago and playing his usual rounds of golf at his resort in Palm Beach, the sources said.

When he eventually gets settled on strategizing his response to the hush money case, the sources said, he has been more focused on how he can project an image of defiance against the prosecution and that he is unfazed by being slapped with criminal charges that could turn out to rise to a felony.

The case centers on $130,000 that Trump paid to Daniels through his then-lawyer Michael Cohen in the final days of the 2016 campaign. Trump later reimbursed Cohen with $35,000 checks using his personal funds, which were recorded as legal expenses to Cohen.

It remains unclear what charges the district attorney might seek against Trump, though some members of his legal team believe the most likely scenario involves a base charge of falsifying business records coupled with potential tax fraud because Trump would not have paid tax on the payments.

Trump has also been fixated on how an indictment might be a boon for his 2024 presidential campaign, betting that it would enrage his Maga base and force the rest of the Republican party to fall in line to defend him, in what he has already characterised as a politically motivated prosecution.

In the past, publicity over political and criminal investigations have benefited Trump’s fundraising, and forced Republican rivals to stumble between criticizing prosecutors and defending otherwise politically indefensible allegations.

Whether an indictment benefits Trump for the 2024 campaign remains to be seen given his grievance-driven campaigns have faltered in recent election cycles, with independent voters, in particular, seemingly exhausted by his constant refrains surrounding “witch-hunt” investigations.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FOUR – From

From the Philadelphia Inquirer x304

NEWS

New York City prepares for a possible Trump indictment with steel barricades, cameras, and costumes

As people wait to hear if former president Donald Trump will be indicted, the scene outside of Manhattan's criminal court is anything but routine.

By Emily Bloch

As the question of whether former President Donald Trump will be indicted loomed, supporters and detractors alike gathered Tuesday outside Manhattan’s criminal court to be a part of the unprecedented event.

In front of the Lower Manhattan courthouse, New York police officers assembled steel barricades. Officers of every rank were ordered to wear uniforms and prepare for deployment. Small protests — both for and against Trump — formed outside the courthouse, the district attorney’s office, and Trump Tower in New York.

In a post on his social media platform Saturday, Trump claimed that his arrest is imminent, and issued a call for his supporters to protest as a New York grand jury investigates hush-money payments to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president.

Even as Trump’s lawyer and spokesperson said there had been no communication from prosecutors, Trump declared in his post that he expected to be taken into custody on Tuesday. When the day arrived, “Indictment Watch” began trending online and groups started assembling.

The pro-Trump gatherings throughout New York were small on Tuesday. GOP members, including Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, said they didn’t think people should protest Trump’s potential indictment. In some cases, protesters came together to instead call for his arrest.

Law enforcement — especially in New York and Washington — braced for impact, reports showed.

An internal memo instructed NYPD officers to be prepared for mobilization at any time, News 4 reported. Senior officials from the district attorney’s office and the stage agency that runs the New York courts discussed possible indictment and arraignment security plans, the New York Times reported. Security detailing for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whom Trump has publicly spoken out against, was also discussed.

In D.C., workers placed fencing around the Capitol building.

To date, Trump faces more than a dozen investigations, both criminal and civil, which include his handling of classified documents, voter-fraud allegations, and his role in the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

On TikTok, observers documented the crowds forming in front of the courthouse and the Manhattan district attorney’s office. One video showed the original poster holding a teriyaki bowl outside the courthouse with the caption “Tailgating the Trump arrest.” Other videos showed people dressed up as and mocking the former president. Popular TikToker @MartyMorua posted a series of videos featuring someone walking outside Trump Tower and throughout Manhattan in a Trump mask and a fake United States Disciplinary Barracks orange prison jumpsuit.

Law enforcement officials say they will cover high-profile locations throughout the week as needed.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FIVE – From

From the New York Times

OPINION

ROSS DOUTHAT

The Politics of a Trump Indictment

March 22, 2023

By Ross Douthat

If you intend to indict and try a former president of the United States, especially a former president of the United States whose career has benefited from the collapse of public trust in the neutrality of all our institutions, you had better have clear evidence, all-but-obvious guilt and loads of legal precedent behind your case.

The case that New York prosecutors are apparently considering bringing against Donald Trump, over hush-money payments made to Stormy Daniels that may have violated campaign finance laws, does not have the look of a slam dunk. The use of the phrase “novel legal theory” in descriptions of what the case might entail is not encouraging.

Neither are the doubts raised by writers and pundits not known for their sympathy to Trump. Or the fact that we have a precedent of a presidential candidate indicted over a remarkably similar offense — the trial of John Edwards for his payments to Rielle Hunter — that yielded an acquittal on one count and a hung jury on the rest.

The Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky precedent is a little less legally relevant, involving perjury rather than campaign-finance law. But the Clinton scandals established a general principle that presidents are above the law as long as the lawbreaking involved minor infractions covering up tawdry sex. If a potential Trump prosecution requires overturning that principle, then prosecutors might as well appear in court wearing Democratic Party campaign paraphernalia; the effect will be the same.

That effect does not need to benefit Trump politically to make such a prosecution unwise or reckless. An indictment could hurt him at the polls and still be a very bad long-term idea — setting a precedent that will pressure Republican prosecutors to indict Democratic politicians on similarly doubtful charges, establish a pattern of legal revenge seeking against the out-of-power party and encourage polarization’s continued transformation into enmity.

But of course, the political question is inescapable: Will an indictment help Trump or hurt him in his quest to reclaim the Republican nomination and the presidency?

Two generalizations are relatively easy to make. Even a partisan-seeming indictment won’t do anything to make Trump more popular with the independent voters who swing presidential elections; it will just be added baggage for a politician already widely regarded as chaotic and immoral and unfit for the office.

At the same time, even an airtight indictment would be regarded as persecution by Trump’s most devoted fans. So whether or not there’s a wave of MAGA protests now, you would expect the spectacle of a prosecution to help mobilize and motivate his base in 2024.

Alexander Burns of Politico argues that these two points together are a net negative for Trump. After all, he doesn’t need to mobilize his base. They will mostly be there for him, no matter what; he needs to persuade the doubtful and exhausted that he’s their man in 2024. And if even a few of these voters get weary of another round of Stormy Daniels sleaze, then he’s worse off. Burns writes, “If each scandal or blunder binds 99 percent of his base closer to him and unsettles 1 percent, that is still a losing formula for a politician whose base is an electoral minority. Trump cannot shed fractional support with every controversy but make it up on volume.” But money?

I’m not sure it’s quite that simple. That’s because in addition to the true base voter (who will be with Trump in any case) and the true swing voter (who probably pulled the lever for Joe Biden last time), there’s the Republican primary swing voter: the voter who’s part of Trump’s base for general election purposes but doesn’t love him absolutely, the voter who’s open to Ron DeSantis but swings between the two Florida Republicans, depending on the headlines at the moment.

I can tell you two stories about how this kind of voter reacts to an indictment. In one, Trump does well with this constituency when he’s either out of the news or on the offensive and does worse when he seems weakened, messy, a loser. Hence the DeSantis bump in polling immediately after the 2022 midterms, when the underperformance of Trump’s favored candidates damaged his mystique and his flailing afterward made him look impotent. Hence his apparent recovery in polling more recently, as he’s taken the fight to DeSantis without the Florida governor striking back, making Trump look stronger than his not-yet-campaigning rival.

Under this theory, even a politicized and partisan indictment returns Trump to a flailing position, making him seem like a victim rather than a master of events, a stumbling loser caught in liberal nets. So the Republican swing voter behaves like the general-election swing voter and recoils, and the disciplined DeSantis benefits.

But there’s an alternative story, in which our Republican swing voter is invested not in specific candidates so much as in the grand battle with the liberal political establishment. In this theory the DeSantis brand is built on his being a battler, a scourge of cultural liberalism in all its forms, while Trump has lost ground by appearing more interested in battling his fellow Republicans, even to the point of hurting the G.O.P. cause and helping liberals win.

What happens, though, when institutional liberalism seems to take the fight to Trump? (Yes, I know a single prosecutor isn’t institutional liberalism, but that’s how this will be perceived.) When the grand ideological battle is suddenly joined around his person, his position, his very freedom?

THURSDAY

ATTACHMENT THIRTY SIX – From

GUK

AND… x252 1348

Republicans accused by New York DA of meddling in Trump hush-money case

Alvin Bragg writes to committee chairs seeking his testimony saying there is ‘no legitimate basis for congressional inquiry’

Martin Pengelly in New York

@MartinPengelly

Thu 23 Mar 2023 13.48 EDT

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The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, on Thursday accused Republicans in the US Congress of interfering in his investigation of Donald Trump over a hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.

A letter from House Republicans demanding testimony and documents related to the investigation “only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested … and his lawyers repeatedly urged you to intervene”, Bragg wrote in a letter of his own.

Such circumstances, he said, did not represent “a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry”.

Bragg published his letter as it became clear another day would pass without an indictment of the former US president for offences related to the $130,000 payment made in 2016 and potentially including falsification of business records, tax fraud and/or campaign finance violations.

The grand jury considering the case is not due to meet again until Monday.

Last weekend, amid reports an indictment was imminent, Trump said he expected to be arrested on Tuesday.

That day came and went without an arrest but aides to the former president have told outlets, including the Guardian, that Trump wants to be seen in handcuffs and has even mused on how being shot while being arraigned might help him return to the White House.

Trump is under extensive legal jeopardy as he runs for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

An indictment is also thought likely in Georgia, over Trump’s election subversion efforts there. Trump also faces federal investigations of his election subversion and his retention of classified records, a New York civil suit over his business practices and a defamation suit arising from an allegation of rape by the writer E Jean Carroll.

Trump denies all wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of political witch-hunts mounted by Black prosecutors he says are racist.

Bragg is the first Black Manhattan DA and only the fourth man to fill the post on a permanent basis since the second world war.

The payment to Stormy Daniels was made by Trump’s then lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, and discovered in 2018. Cohen went to jail, in part over the payment, and turned on his former boss. But Bragg’s investigation of what members of his own team came to call a “zombie case” has never run smoothly.

Republicans in Congress have accused Bragg of acting politically while neglecting crime in his city. They have also repeatedly called him “Soros-backed”, a reference to donations by the progressive financier George Soros, a target for antisemitic invective on the US right.

In the Daniels case, the Republicans made their demands to Bragg on Monday.

Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics tsar now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, called the Republican letter “a transparent effort to interfere with the investigation of Trump in New York”, with “no legitimate congressional purpose” and “contrary to law”.

On Thursday, Bragg addressed his reply to Jim Jordan, the chair of the House judiciary committee; Bryan Steil, chair of the administration committee; and James Comer, chair of the oversight committee.

Trump keeps accusing Black prosecutors of being ‘racist’. Coincidence? I think not

The Republican congressmen, he said, had attempted an “an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution”.

Claiming “quintessential police powers belonging to the state” of New York, Bragg accused the Republican congressmen of “tread[ing] into territory very clearly reserved for the states”.

He also said the Republican request would interfere with law enforcement efforts requiring confidentiality.

Nonetheless, Bragg requested a meeting with committee staffers, to “understand what information the DA’s office can provide that relates to a legitimate legislative interest and can be shared”.

He also said he would “submit a letter describing [the] use of federal funds”.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY SEVEN – From

From the New York Post

Why Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump is falling apart

By 

Jonathan Turley

March 23, 2023 7:38pm 

MORE ON:ALVIN BRAGG

· Envelope containing suspicious powder sent to DA Alvin Bragg’s NYC office

· Trump posts pic holding baseball bat near DA’s head, warns of ‘death and destruction’ if indicted in hush money case

· Marjorie Taylor Greene calls for Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s arrest for investigating Trump

· Ex-Cohen lawyer says he ‘really stirred up’ Trump hush-money grand jury

It appears that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will go another week in the legal effort to locate the nation of Kailasa on a map.

Recently, Mayor Ras Baraka and the city of Newark held a formal ceremony signing a partnership with the nation of Kailasa that pledged mutual cultural, social and political development.

After all of the fanfare, pomp and circumstance subsided, a small problem emerged.

Kailasa does not exist.

One can certainly wonder why no one in Newark has access to Google or bothered to ask how a Hindu nation founded by an accused con man formed on an island off the coast of Ecuador.

However, to their credit, they did not continue to try to prove that Kailasa actually did exist under some creative geographical and political interpretation.

Despite similar widespread doubts over the existence of a viable state crime, Alvin Bragg continues a quest for his legal Kailasa.

While an indictment was expected this week, the grand jury looking into former President Donald Trump will go another week amid reports of opposition in the grand jury over what is viewed as a “weak” case.

The problem is that Bragg has long been searching for a crime in the criminal code to fulfill his pitch during his campaign that he was the man for voters who wanted to bag Trump.

The falsification of business records in reference to the $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels might have been a possibility, but it lacked two things.

SEE ALSO

EDITORIAL

Fumbling his Trump case, Alvin Bragg exposes his incompetence nationwide

First, it expired as a chargeable misdemeanor after two years — and that was roughly five years ago.

Second, it was a mere misdemeanor that could be brushed off by Trump even if they succeeded.

Prosecutors then created a Rube Goldberg approach and suggested that the misdemeanor was committed to conceal a federal election law violation — a crime that the Justice Department declined to charge.

That theory has been widely ridiculed, even by many on the left. The bootstrapping of a federal crime under this statute appears unprecedented and likely unsustainable.

The reason that the Justice Department likely declined the case was that it had previously tried to show that hush money paid to bury an affair was a federal campaign expense.

It failed in the case of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

There are a host of reasons why a married celebrity like Trump might pay hush money separate from a presidential run.

Bragg himself scoffed at the theory and stopped the investigation when he came into power.

Two prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, then resigned and Pomerantz took what some of us view as a highly unprofessional and improper step of publishing a book on the case against Trump — a person who was still under investigation and not charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime.

The pressure campaign worked and Bragg pushed the dubious theory to a grand jury.

Like Kailasa, the Bragg indictment has an established con man who insisted it exists.

Bragg has Michael Cohen, the former lawyer to Trump. A disbarred lawyer, Cohen is a convicted felon and one of the most repellent figures with a long history of false statements.

Then things got even worse when the lawyer for his star witness came forward with more than 300 emails contradicting his testimony.

Another letter on behalf of Cohen to the Federal Election Commission also surfaced that expressly contradicted his claims.

Finally, and probably most significantly for Bragg, the politics may have turned.

Even Democrats are hard pressed to defend the reported basis for the indictment, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declined to express his support for the effort.

The media and pundits have warned that Bragg could be undermining other efforts to indict Trump before the election with this weak case.

Trump has said for years that Democrats have weaponized the criminal justice system against him and Bragg just gave him proof positive to support that claim.

With this raw political prosecution, Bragg fulfilled the narrative of Trump, who is rising in the polls at the very time that President Biden is plunging.

The expectation is still that Bragg can get an indictment even out of a skeptical grand jury. He could then bank on a favorable and motivated judge and jury.

Moreover, even if the case ultimately fails on appeal, many in New York will still praise Bragg.

331

What do you think? Post a comment.

This is a thrill kill case and the prospect for many Democrats of Trump in handcuffs is exhilarating to the point of being indecent.

For some voters, it may be commendable that Bragg would prosecute Trump on a trumped-up case. After all, any prosecutor can bring a real case. It takes a true believer to prosecute when there is no viable crime.

So Bragg continues to stare at the map to find his Kailasa. He just needs to convince a grand jury that they see it, too.

Jonathan Turley is an attorney and a professor at George Washington University Law School.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY EIGHT – From

From GUK x251

Trump’s indictment over hush money to a porn star would be poetic justice

Margaret Sullivan

Unfortunately, actual justice may prove to be far more elusive

Fri 24 Mar 2023 03.10 EDT

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You have to hand it to Stormy Daniels.

After all of Donald Trump’s well-documented malfeasance over the decades – his fake university and failed casino, his Covid denialism, his consorting with dictators, his blatant lies about election fraud, his incitement of a deadly riot – it has taken a hush money payment to a porn actress to create the most imminent threat that he’ll face criminal charges

It may seem bizarre that such a small-time offense – a mere $130,000 to conceal a reported affair -- could be the thing to bring down this world-class con man.

But in the never-ending weirdness of Trump World, it would make a kind of inevitable sense.

The tawdriness of the Stormy Daniels situation, after all, is a perfect match for one of Trump’s enduring qualities.

Recall his bragging on the infamous Access Hollywood tape about sexual assault. Remember his cringeworthy hints about wishing he could date his own daughter. Don’t neglect his serving fast food to the Clemson football team when they visited the White House. Or his appalling paper-towel toss to Puerto Rican hurricane victims. Or his love for flashy décor which prompted the UK’s House and Garden magazine to counsel in a 2020 headline: “Why we should never forget the monstrosity that was Donald Trump’s gold apartment.”

What’s more, the facts of the case may not be nearly as minor as they look. Messing around with business records, potentially to obscure a violation of election law? That’s not tiddlywinks, and the implications are considerable.

“The Stormy Daniels incident is the origin story for Trump’s efforts to manipulate elections and to get away with it,” Joyce Vance, the University of Alabama law professor and former U.S. Attorney, noted recently, objecting to the notion that this is little but a “record-keeping error.”

The potentially criminal element goes back to just before the 2016 presidential election when the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, after many a failure to do so, was once again trying to publicize her story about a 2006 affair she credibly claims to have with Trump. (He has denied it.)

But she ultimately agreed to stay quiet about it and accept a payment after an agreement was negotiated.

You can’t make up the details.

“Ms. Daniels signed her copy,” the New York Times recounted, “on the trunk of a car near a porn set in Calabasas, California”

Of course, it would be a long way from a grand-jury indictment (even that is far from certain) to criminal conviction.

Such an outcome would probably depend on prosecutors being able to prove that Trump paid back his fixer, Michael Cohen, who made the payment, and falsified business records, possibly to conceal a violation of campaign-finance laws.

Meanwhile, and ever so predictably, Trump – crying “witch hunt,” as usual -- is using the threat of an indictment to raise money from his ever-loyal base of followers who believe he can do no wrong. In the three days after his initial claims that he’d be arrested, he reportedly raised $1.5 million, and that is just a start.

The never-ending grift is always the point.

After famously predicting that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, Trump now has a revised vision for how his hero’s journey will continue.

Claiming that he’ll be forced to do a perp walk in midtown Manhattan, he sees such a spectacle – the beloved and beleaguered former president in handcuffs – as a way to bond with the MAGA base.

Trump even has told allies, according to the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, that he did not care if someone shot him in the process.

That would only make him “a martyr,” which in turn would ensure that he would win back the presidency in 2024.

No one, of course, should wish for any element of that to happen. Many of us just wish he’d go away and let the damage control continue.

But it certainly would bring everything full circle -- the Trumpian version of poetic justice.

As for actual justice, that’s likely to be more elusive.

With Trump, the final curtain is always eagerly anticipated, but somehow the show goes on.

· Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

ATTACHMENT THIRTY NINE – From

Time

DONALD TRUMP SNATCHES BACK THE WASHINGTON MICROPHONE

Editorial by Philip Elliott

President Joe Biden made his first trip to Ottawa as the U.S. leader. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced another closely-watched interest-rate hike. Congress heard from the CEO of TikTok as it considered banning the app as a matter of national security. And even the cast of Ted Lasso took a turn in the spotlight during a visit to the White House to discuss mental health stigmas.

But one person actually ran Washington this week, and that was Donald Trump, whose rumored looming indictment was the only thing animating the D.C. insiders. And for good reason.

If indicted, Trump would become the first and only ex-President to face real criminal charges. His booking, legal filings, even his arrival in court would take on the aura of a circus, replete with a felon-styled red carpet for arrivals. His showmanship already had D.C. and New York on edge, with barricades going up around potential choke points for protesters who were summoned via social media much the way they were on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump seemed to be gleefully choreographing the whole affair from his seaside retreat in Florida, firing off rhetorical missiles from Mar-a-Lago with a style reminiscent of his pre-Twitter-ban days.

Not since he left the White House has Trump had such a stranglehold over this city’s paces and palpitations. After two-plus years of Biden’s steady-as-she-goes rhythm, a lot of us had forgotten the anxiety-inducing need to have push-alerts set for Trump and his closest watchers. “Policy by Tweet” quickly disappeared when Biden and his lot moved into the White House. When this White House has major news to announce, it usually comes with a briefing and detailed fact sheet, given to reporters a few hours ahead of the release. Congress has—to this point in the new Republican-led House—avoided a lot of cliffhangers; protracted haranguing on specifics is about as climatic as the Hill has offered. And Supreme Court justices leave very little to kremlinology as the arguments leave most observers pretty clued into how they’re leaning. Heck, even the Court’s most consequential rulings seem to leak well before they’re actually issued.

In short, Washington has been spoiled by an overwhelming sense of normalcy of some measure for the last two years.

Which is what has made this week so jarring. The haunting vibrations returned, as we all are watching to see what—if anything—Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could do in court filings. Trump’s self-predicted arrest on Tuesday came and passed, but that hasn’t given the row of reporters standing outside a New York courthouse any break. As NBC’s Garrett Haake observed dryly on his Instagram page, “We live on this corner.” His producer posted from the same perch with the caption: “Day 8 of Indictment Watch.”

There’s no clarity in the secretive process, but there is no reason for either partisan camp to think it is safe. After all, the fight over the law is secondary only to the fight over public opinion. And while the ex-President has a long list potential legal woes—in Manhattan, in Georgia, even with the Department of Justice just east of the White House—the main topic of discussion at D.C. gatherings this week was whether this case being the possible first bite of the Trump apple would hurt or help him politically.

Trump is out of power and perhaps soon under indictment. It doesn’t stretch the imagination to think that any of Trump’s predecessors, facing such a mounting pile of potential legal woes and history-making blackmarks, would be huddled with advisers looking to minimize the publicity and to dismantle the troubles methodically. Not Trump, who has fueled the bonfire for his fans around the country and the indigestion for his critics in Washington. The vast uncertainty accompanying Trump and his multiple legal defensive postures demands attention, of course, but Trump is also clearly relishing the messiness; it’s what made him a reality television star, helped him rise a crowded and credible field of candidates in 2016, and powered his presidency through a constant lashing of grievance, trolling, and flamethrowers.

This week proved that Washington remains enthralled by Trump’s oversized power to dominate a news cycle. And it is providing a reminder to many of what the conversation in the nation’s capital, and nationally, would look like if he returned to power. And judging from Trump’s talents to create a spectacle around himself and sustain it, there is unlikely to be a break in that return to razzle-dazzle any time soon.

ATTACHMENT FORTY – From

the Daily Beast x19

WHAT’S THE HOLDUP WITH THE TRUMP INDICTMENT?

WE’VE GOT ANSWERS

There could be many reasons for the delay, ranging from the mundane to the more substantive.

Updated Mar. 24, 2023 10:56AM ET / Published Mar. 23, 2023 11:05PM ET 

Speculation abounds about why the grand jury hearing evidence from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal investigation into Trump’s alleged hush-money payment to actress Stormy Daniels apparently took Wednesday and Thursday off from the case.

The grand jury, which meets Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, was reportedly told not to report on Wednesday and then heard evidence about a different case Thursday. It isn’t known whether the other case is in any way related to Trump, but Trump has felt free to claim that this pause means the DA’s office is in “complete disarray.”

There is zero evidence for Trump’s assertion, just as there was zero evidence of his proclamation that he would be arrested Tuesday—which obviously didn’t happen.

Since grand jury proceedings are secret and Bragg’s office is properly not disclosing information about it, the actual reasons for a pause in the grand jury hearing evidence about Trump are unknown. But based on my experience as a prosecutor, there could be many reasons, ranging from the mundane to the more substantive.

Starting with the mundane, Bragg’s office might just need some time to draft and finalize the indictment against Trump to be presented to the grand jury. Once it is presented, then the grand jury votes on the indictment. Only after that vote—typically by a majority—does the prosecutor formally take the next step of starting the criminal case by arraigning the defendant in court. It is at that time Trump would be “booked”—meaning fingerprinted and photographed.

A more substantive reason for the pause could be that prosecutors are deciding whether they need to put more witnesses into the grand jury. These could range from people like former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who could provide the foundation for tying the expected falsifying business records to other charges, such as financial crimes, that the falsification may have been intended to cover up. Prosecutors might also want actress Stormy Daniels to give testimony as well about the circumstances of her being paid the hush money and possibly even the facts of her affair with Trump. It is also possible that prosecutors want to put Michael Cohen—Trump’s former “fixer” attorney and a key prosecution witness—back in for more testimony to rebut the testimony on Monday from Robert Costello, for which they may need to prepare for with further interviews of Cohen.

Hopefully this isn’t the case—it would be poor strategy to put Cohen in front of the grand jury again. A grand jury investigation is not a trial where the prosecution needs to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, so they do not need to rebut anything. Grand juries are used primarily to present evidence necessary for an indictment under a “probable cause” standard—much lower than proof “beyond a reasonable doubt”—and requiring only a majority vote of the jurors. To accomplish that here, prosecutors likely would only need the paper-trail evidence of the money paid to Stormy Daniels and the testimony of Michael Cohen as evidence that the money was for the purpose of buying her silence—rather than being a payment to Cohen as a legal retainer. Grand juries also are used to preview defense witness testimony—which is exactly what Robert Costello did when he testified—as well as to lock in defense witnesses or any other witnesses who might change their stories later.

The least likely reason for any pause by the grand jury is that Bragg’s office is reconsidering the strength of its case after Costello testified. This seems unlikely given how frustrated Costello seemed to be with his ineffectiveness before the grand jury.

Costello and Trump’s team might understandably be disappointed at what an inept job Costello did, since they likely banked on the idea that Costello, as a former adviser to Cohen who had been privy to confidence shared under an attorney-client communication privilege, would be ideally situated to use such confidential information to damage Cohen’s credibility and undercut his testimony. But the only damage Costello is likely to have done is the damage to his own reputation, and possibly opening himself up to accusations that he violated legal ethics rules that prohibit a lawyer from trading on confidences learned from a client to disadvantage that client.

Speaking of legal ethics, one last tantalizing possibility is that Bragg’s team needs some time to work on a motion to disqualify Trump’s criminal defense attorney—Joseph Tacopina—from further representation of Trump in the case, based upon Tacopina’s prior advising and representation of Stormy Daniels. From public reporting, Tacopina had confidential communications with Daniels when she sought to potentially hire him about the Trump hush-money matter. Those communications have now been turned over to DA Bragg’s office by Daniel’s current attorney and could serve as the basis for seeking to disqualify Tocapina.

Like Costello, Tacopina would appear to be using confidences gained from Stormy Daniels under the cover of attorney-client protections to disadvantage Ms. Daniels and advantage his new client—Donald Trump.

ATTACHMENT FORTY ONE – From

From The Hill x25

Trump warns of ‘potential death and destruction’ if he’s indicted

BY BRETT SAMUELS - 03/24/23 9:40 AM ET

Former President Trump argued early Friday morning that filing charges against him could result in “potential death & destruction” as he railed against the possibility of an indictment by the Manhattan district attorney. 

“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?” Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly after 1 a.m. Friday.

“Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!” Trump wrote.

The post marked an escalation in Trump’s barrage of attacks against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a grand jury is weighing whether to indict Trump over hush money payments made to a porn star to keep quiet an alleged affair during the 2016 campaign.

It is also likely to further fuel concerns that Trump is stoking violence ahead of potential charges.

Multiple outlets reported in recent weeks an indictment against Trump could be imminent in the Manhattan investigation. Trump last Saturday predicted on Truth Social that he would be arrested the following Tuesday, though advisers said the post was not based on any advance warning.

At the same time, Trump began urging his supporters to protest and “take back our nation” in response to an indictment.

Trump is scheduled to hold a rally on Saturday in Waco, Texas. 

Trump’s rhetoric has alarmed some onlookers, who likened it to Trump’s calls for supporters to travel to Washington, D.C., ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters stormed the Capitol building to try and stop the certification of the 2020 election results.

Some Republicans, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), have sought to tamp down Trump’s calls for protests.

Authorities investigating envelope with white powder sent to BraggSenators urge Biden to cooperate with ICC’s Putin investigation

The grand jury in Manhattan did not meet on Wednesday or Thursday, and any charges are not expected to be filed until next week at the earliest. 

Bragg has said in an internal memo to staff that he will not be intimidated by Trump’s rhetoric. In response to a letter from House Republicans for his testimony, Bragg argued the former president “created a false expectation that he would be arrested” with his Truth Social post last weekend.

In addition to the Manhattan investigation, the Justice Department is probing Trump over his handling of classified documents upon leaving the White House, as well as his conduct around the Jan. 6 riots.

ATTACHMENT FORTY TWO – From

From Forbes x23

Suspicious White Powder And Threat Sent To Manhattan DA As Possible Trump Indictment Looms

Nicholas Reimann

Mar 24, 2023,02:58pm EDT

A suspicious white powder was discovered inside an envelope Friday at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, a New York police spokesperson told Forbes, which has been the site of an ongoing grand jury investigation into former President Donald Trump.

The powder was found in the mail room of the DA’s office at 80 Centre Street, according to the New York Daily News and ABC News.

The envelope was reportedly marked “Alvin”—suggesting it was intended for District Attorney Alvin Bragg—and around 1 p.m was opened by someone in the mail room, who was not exposed.

The letter read: “ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!” according to NBC News, which reported that the FBI is now investigating.

PROMOTED

The situation was “immediately contained” and authorities later determined the powder was not dangerous, DA spokeswoman Danielle Filson said.

It’s unclear if the powder’s delivery is at all related to Trump—New York courts spokesman Lucian Chalfen told Forbes the situation is “being investigated.”

SURPRISING FACT

The discovery came three days after a bomb threat shut down the courthouse at 60 Centre Street just as a hearing in a case involving a $250 million civil lawsuit against Trump was set to begin. Authorities said there was no indication the threat was directly related to the Trump case.

KEY BACKGROUND

Trump blasted Bragg in a Truth Social post early Friday morning, while warning of “potential death & destruction” if he is indicted—in the latest of his now-daily attacks against the DA. Multiple reports suggest a Manhattan grand jury wrapping up a years-long investigation will indict the former president over an alleged hush money payment given to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 to keep her from going public about an alleged affair she had with Trump, but the timing remains unclear since the panel has been dismissed until at least Monday. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels and has repeatedly called the investigation a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

TANGENT

Trump personal attorney Evan Corcoran testified before a D.C. grand jury Friday as part of a federal special counsel investigation into Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered Corcoran to testify last week, in a ruling piercing his attorney-client privilege claims over allegations Trump lied to him about the existence of some classified documents. ABC News reported Friday that Howell ordered former top Trump aides like Mark Meadows, John Ratcliffe and Dan Scavino to testify in the special counsel’s January 6 investigation, shooting down an argument that executive privilege shielded them from participating in the probe. Trump also faces a criminal probe in Georgia over his attempt to overturn the presidential election results and multiple criminal investigations in New York state for alleged financial fraud.

FURTHER READING

Bomb Threat Shuts Down Manhattan Court Before Trump Lawsuit Hearing (Forbes)

Key Trump Attorney Testifying In Mar-A-Lago Case Friday—Here’s Why It Could Be A Big Deal (Forbes)

DOJ Thinks Trump Deceived His Lawyers About Classified Documents, Report Says (Forbes)

Trump’s Golf Club Now Faces Criminal Investigation—As Legal Troubles Mount For Former President (Forbes)

Trump Tries To Block Georgia Election Investigation As Criminal Charges Loom (Forbes)

ATTACHMENT FORTY THREE – From

From Newsweek x24

REPUBLICANS' WARNING ABOUT TRUMP INDICTMENT COMING TRUE

BY KATHERINE FUNG ON 3/24/23 AT 4:59 PM EDT

Republican warnings that an indictment will help Trump's 2024 odds appear to be coming true, as polls have shown his support increasing compared to his closest Republican rivals.

· At the same time, Trump's most formidable 2024 challenger, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not announced yet if he's running for president, has dipped in support in recent polls.

· Trump's campaign spokesperson has said the operation is ready to deal with anything that comes their way.

Republican warnings that a possible indictment will actually help Donald Trump's 2024 presidential odds could be coming true, polls show.

Surveys conducted this week show that the former president is experiencing a surge in support amid reports that an arrest related to the hush money payment allegedly made to adult film star Stormy Daniels is imminent.

The former president is being investigated by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office for $130,000 that was paid to Daniels by his former attorney Michael Cohen ahead of the 2016 presidential election to keep secret an affair that Daniels claims she had with Trump in 2006. Over the course of the investigation, Trump has repeatedly asserted his innocence, has denied the affair between him and Daniels, and called on his supporters to protest against the possible indictment.

A survey conducted by Harvard CAPS/Harris between March 22 and 23 found Trump had increased his standing as the leading contender for the 2024 Republican primary, with 50 percent of GOP support, compared to his closest GOP rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who received 24 percent. DeSantis, however, has not officially declared his White House bid, but has hinted that he will run in 2024.

Former President Donald Trump speaks during the America First Agenda Summit on July 26, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Republican warnings that a possible indictment will actually help =Trump's 2024 presidential odds could be coming true, polls show.DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

In a head-to-head matchup, Trump scored even better against DeSantis, receiving 56 percent to the governor's 44 percent. In another hypothetical matchup against former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who has announced her candidacy for the presidential election, Trump received 70 percent of support compared to Haley's 30 percent.

Last weekend, Trump said on Truth Social that he was anticipating an arrest as early as this past Tuesday. Although no decision has been made in the case yet, Republicans—both those in the former president's corner and some of his most prominent GOP critics—have speculated that an indictment will only help Trump's chances of being elected back into the White House.

"If DA Alvin Bragg brings this case, it will not only serve to coalesce President Trump's support, but it will become the single largest in-kind contribution to a federal campaign in political history," Taylor Budowich, a former Trump spokesman who is now head of the Make America Great Again PAC, said in a Sunday statement.

Prosecutors claim that the payment made to Daniels might be considered a campaign violation and also found that the Trump Organization documented the reimbursement to Cohen as legal expenses. It is against state law in New York for companies to misclassify the nature of expenses. This could lead to a misdemeanor charge for Trump, which might later become a felony if the misclassification took place in order to cover up another crime.

See also:

· Donald Trump warns of potential "death and destruction" if he's charged

· Alvin Bragg breaks silence about Trump's potential arrest

· Ron DeSantis' polling withers under the spotlight

Republican New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, whose criticized Trump in the past, also told CNN over the weekend that a Trump arrest could fuel "a lot of sympathy for the former president."

A 2024 GOP primary tracker from Morning Consult also found that support for DeSantis, dipped, giving Trump a boost.

The latest poll analyzed by the tracker, conducted on Tuesday, shows that 54 percent of potential voters backed the former president, compared to 26 percent who picked DeSantis, putting the governor at his lowest level of support since the pollsters began tracking in December.

This week, DeSantis seemed to take a swipe at the former president when asked about a possible Trump indictment.

"I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I can't speak to that," the governor said, before suggesting that the Manhattan district attorney was "pursing a political agenda" by targeting a Republican.

Responding to DeSantis' comments, Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, told Punchbowl News on Monday, "I think [DeSantis is] gonna see slippage in his polls. He's already seen slippage the past couple of weeks. I think you're going to see President Trump continue to solidify his position in the Republican nomination."

Trump himself has insisted that an indictment would have no impact on his third White House bid.

"This is the new normal, the president has been battle-tested," his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told ABC News on Friday, "This operation has been fine-tuned since 2016. Dealing with these types of news cycles, you learn to get good at it. We have a full-spectrum response operation on the campaign that can deal with anything that comes our way."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign by email for further comment.

ATTACHMENT FORTY FOUR – From MSNBC

FACING POSSIBLE INDICTMENTS, TRUMP DERIDES CALLS FOR PEACE

Ted Cruz once explained that Donald Trump had “a consistent pattern of inciting violence.” That pattern is becoming more obvious and more dangerous now.

March 24, 2023, 8:00 AM EDT

By Steve Benen

Before Donald Trump was elected to the nation’s highest office, he had a habit of incorporating violent rhetoric into his campaign pitch. As a Washington Post analysis explained six years ago, “Even if you don’t believe Trump has technically incited violence (which he has been sued for), he clearly nodded toward violence at his campaign rallies. Sometimes it was veiled; other times it was unmistakable.”

About a year earlier, after Trump warned of “riots” if he were denied the GOP presidential nomination, Sen. Marco Rubio tried to warn voters. “The great thing about our republic is that we settle our difference in this country at the ballot box, not with guns or bayonets or violence,” the Florida Republican said, adding, “Forget about the election for a moment; there’s a broader issue in our political culture in this country. This is what happens when a leading presidential candidate goes around feeding into a narrative of anger and bitterness and frustration.”

Around the same time, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas explained that Trump had “a consistent pattern of inciting violence.”

Trump was elected anyway, and he brought his preoccupation with violent rhetoric with him to the White House — culminating, of course, in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

After leaving office, the former president continued to make occasional references to violence, though as the threat of criminal indictments grew more serious, Trump’s rhetoric grew less subtle.

This past weekend, for example, amidst hysterical nonsense about what he perceived as the nation’s unraveling, the Republican practically begged his followers to demonstrate on his behalf. “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” he wrote on his social media platform.

A few hours later, in case this was too subtle, the former president published another message, which began, “IT’S TIME!!!” After assorted whines — including claims about “evil” White House officials — Trump added, “WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. THEY’RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”

One of his right-wing allies, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, told reporters that Trump didn’t use the word “peaceful,” but it’s what he meant. “Of course, he means peaceful,” the Georgia Republican said. “Of course, President Trump means peaceful protests.” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy added that Trump doesn’t actually want public protests, despite what he wrote.

It was against this backdrop that the former president published another item yesterday in which he derided calls for peace:

“EVERYBODY KNOWS I’M 100% INNOCENT, INCLUDING BRAGG, BUT HE DOESN’T CARE. HE IS JUST CARRYING OUT THE PLANS OF THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS. OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!”

A Washington Post report noted soon after, “Trump is not explicitly urging his supporters to turn to violence. Still, the seeming message here is that a peaceful response might be insufficient. To label it a dog whistle would be an understatement.”

Overnight, he kept going. In a missive published at 1:08 a.m. eastern, Trump called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA,” while suggesting that if he were indicted in New York, it might cause “potential death [and] destruction” that “could be catastrophic for our Country.”

In Trump’s first year in office, Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted that he’d never “promoted or encouraged violence.”

At the time, it was a difficult line to take seriously. It’s far worse now.

ATTACHMENT FORTY FIVE – From

TRUMP TO HOLD RALLY IN TEXAS UNDER SHADOW OF POSSIBLE INDICTMENT

BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 03/25/23 6:00 AM ET

Former President Trump is gearing up to hold his first rally of the 2024 presidential cycle on Saturday as he grapples with a potential indictment. 

Trump will travel to friendly territory in Waco, Texas, for the campaign event, which is set to be in stark contrast to his campaign’s more low-key events so far this cycle. 

However, Saturday’s rally will take place as a Manhattan grand jury weighs Trump’s role in a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. 

“He’s hitting the rally circuit at the right time,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist.

“When you look at how he’s trending in the polls, plus it looks like Bragg’s case is dead in the water, he’s got momentum,” he added, referring to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), who is investigating Trump for potential financial crimes related to the hush money payments. 

Trump sent the political world into a frenzy last week when he wrote on Truth Social that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday. However, with no indictment this week, the focus will shift to next week when the grand jury reconvenes. 

On Friday ahead of the rally, Trump warned of “potential death & destruction” if he is indicted. 

“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?” Trump wrote on Truth Social early on Friday. 

The same kind of foreboding rhetoric could continue into Saturday’s rally. 

“I think voters want to see what Donald Trump’s plan is if he returns to office,” said Brian Seitchik, a GOP consultant and Trump campaign alum. “I think what we’re going to get is the latest example of the injustices President Trump has to endure. We’re going to hear more about what he doesn’t get enough credit for.” 

Trump is also grappling with three other legal battles. One of Trump’s lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran, spent Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C., after he was ordered to answer questions before a grand jury investigating the potential mishandling of classified documents at Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago. The former president is also facing a second Washington, D.C., investigation into his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. 

And earlier this week, the former president’s legal team moved to put an end to an investigation in Georgia looking into Trump’s efforts to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The former president’s legal team blasted the probe as “confusing, flawed, and, at times, blatantly unconstitutional” in a 50-page filing on Monday. 

The former president has spent much of this week on his social media website Truth Social attacking the investigations into him and claiming that they are politicized. On Thursday, Trump called for the removal of every law enforcement official investigating him. 

A slew of Republican leaders and officials, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), have also echoed Trump’s claims that the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into him is politicized.

“This one seems to be the weakest and the easiest to politicize and that mission of politicizing this investigation and sort of coupling all of them together into one big ‘they’re just trying to screw me effort,’ this is the best one to do that with,” Seitchik said. 

“I don’t prescribe to the notion that this is a good thing. I don’t see how being indicted is ever a good thing,” Seitchik added. 

But O’Connell described “the Bragg saga” as “a gift to Donald Trump.” 

“It shows you what Republicans are talking about when they say two tiers of justice and the idea that members of the Democratic Party will use the legal system to go after political opponents. That’s what truly animates Republicans,” O’Connell said. 

In addition to spending time this week commenting on the three investigations, the former president has also attacked his chief potential rival in the Republican presidential primary, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

Trump swiped at DeSantis earlier this week after the Florida governor used his response to the news of a potential Trump indictment to spotlight the allegations against the former president. 

“Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future, as he gets older, wiser, and better known,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that linked to a story making claims against DeSantis.

The attacks come as Trump continues to lead DeSantis in primary polling, but DeSantis consistently comes in second place. Observers note that the rally, coming before DeSantis officially launches his presidential campaign, is a prime time for Trump to attack him. 

“There’s no question that he is going to use this time between now and when DeSantis officially announces to define Ron DeSantis and if he didn’t do that it would be political malpractice,” said one Republican strategist. “You want to define your opponent before your opponent can define themselves.” 

“We all know that Trump has a very special way of doing that,” the strategist added.

But, so far, compared to his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, Trump’s 2024 campaign events have been decidedly more low-key and scripted. 

“I suspect they are trying to script him a bit more and have him focus on what they write and draft,” said a second GOP strategist. “You’ve seen a renewed emphasis on that with him of late.” 

“But I think if he has a feeling one way or another on the indictment or feels chippy on DeSantis or you fill in the blank, I think it will be a combo of boring, scripted, and off-the-cuff haymakers,” the strategist continued. “As we’ve seen with him, he can do both of those in the same sentence.” 

The location and timing of the former president’s first campaign rally of the 2024 cycle have also raised some eyebrows. The rally coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Waco Seige, which took place just outside of the Texas city. The standoff, in which 86 people were killed, was between the federal government and a religious cult known as the Branch Davidians.

However, the Trump campaign has brushed off the notion that the rally and the anniversary are connected. 

“President Trump is holding his first campaign rally in Waco in the Super Tuesday state of Texas because it is centrally located and close to all four of Texas’ biggest metropolitan areas—Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio—while providing the necessary infrastructure to hold a rally of this magnitude,” said Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman. “This is the ideal location to have as many supporters from across the state and in neighboring states attend this historic rally. It also happens to be the home to the Baylor Bears, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in America.”

The second GOP strategist likened the decision to hold the rally in Texas to baseball’s spring training season. 

“Teams go to Florida and Arizona during spring training to play exhibition games, not necessarily start their starting pitcher for nine innings but to test things out,” the strategist said. “If you were going to go test out your organization and your message and just try to get back on track, going to a friendly place like Texas probably isn’t a bad way to do it rather than trying to dive into Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, or Nevada.” 

ATTACHMENT FORTY SIX – From

From ABC

TRUMP TO HOLD 2024 RALLY IN WACO UNDER SHADOW OF POSSIBLE INDICTMENT

The former president is being investigated for hush money allegations.

By Alexandra Hutzler

March 25, 2023, 2:56 PM

Former President Donald Trump will address supporters in Texas on Saturday as he faces a possible indictment.

The rally at Waco Regional Airport is being billed by his team as the first of his 2024 campaign, though he's held smaller events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina since launching his White House bid back in November.

MORE: Trump campaign insists he won't be deterred by possible indictment

It will be Trump's first campaign event since he claimed last weekend he would be arrested this past Tuesday in connection to a $130,000 payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential race.

The campaign won't be deterred by the prospect of charges stemming from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's investigation, those in Trump's orbit told ABC News, adding it may be an opportunity to rile up his base.

The former president has taken on a defiant attitude as he assails Bragg and encourages protest on his social media. In one post, he warned of "potential death and destruction" if he were to be indicted. As ABC News has previously reported, the DA has been presenting a case for some time and the grand jury is expected to reconvene on Monday.

The tone of Trump's posts makes Waco a noteworthy backdrop for Saturday's rally. The Texas town was the site of the 1993 face-off between government agents and the Branch Davidian religious sect. The 51-day siege resulted in the deaths of 82 Branch Davidians -- at least two dozen of whom were children -- as well as four federal agents.

The campaign stop is coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the deadly standoff, which lasted from Feb. 28 to April 19, 1993.

"Waco is kind of the genesis of a lot of the discontent about government and the use of violence to be able to react to it," Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, told ABC News.

Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign's spokesman, told the New York Times the location was selected "because it is centrally located and close to all four of Texas' biggest metropolitan areas -- Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio -- while providing the necessary infrastructure to hold a rally of this magnitude." The statement made no mention of Waco's history.

When asked by Newsmax whether he was "stoking the fire of Waco" by holding his rally there Saturday, Trump dodged.

"I hear there's tens of thousands of people," Trump told the rightwing outlet Friday night, though it is unclear how many participants are expected to attend. "The line is already miles long trying to get in."

"We're gonna have a great time in Waco," he added.

Musician Ted Nugent, who said he will be performing at the rally, tweeted he’s going to "unleash a firebreathing Star-Spangled Banner" and referred to McLennan County, where Waco is located, as "the epicenter of conservative American Dream spirit/values."

But Trump's niece, Mary Trump, noted the choice of Waco for the rally's setting in her effort to undercut the rally by encouraging people to register but not show up.

"Donald has a rally in Waco this Saturday. It's a ploy to remind his cult of the infamous Waco siege of 1993, where an anti-government cult battled the FBI. Scores of people died. He wants the same violent chaos to rescue him from justice," she tweeted Thursday, encouraging her followers to reserve tickets and "make sure most of the seats are empty when the traitor takes the stage."

Amid the chatter over Waco's history, Rottinghaus noted the city also encompasses the traditional traits for a campaign stop: It's located in a county Trump won by 23 points in 2020 and is close enough to urban areas to potentially draw a large crowd that is favorable to the former president.

"Donald Trump needs to defend the South and Texas is fertile ground for a stand," Rottinghaus said.

The Lone Star State will play an important role in the Republican primary, as it has the second-highest number of delegates. Republicans in Texas will cast their votes for the party's presidential nominee on March 5, 2024, alongside several other states as part of the cycle's Super Tuesday.

Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are so far among some of the candidates to officially throw their hat in the ring for the party's nomination, but others -- including former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis -- are considered likely contenders.

ABC News' Olivia Rubin contributed to this report.

ATTACHMENT FORTY SEVEN – From

From USA Today

Biden steers clear of talking about possible Trump indictment ahead of 2024 campaign

By Joey Garrison

WASHINGTON — As the nation braces for the possible indictment of Donald Trump, the response from President Joe Biden has been silence.

Biden is steering clear of the topic on everyone's mind – whether Trump will become the first former president to face criminal charges. The White House seems convinced the best strategy is to stay out of it.

In a week that saw Biden award medals to Bruce Springsteen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, welcome the cast of "Ted Lasso" and make his first presidential visit to Canada, the president said nothing about the Manhattan district attorney's criminal investigation into Trump's hush-money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign. 

"Silence is the best policy for him on this right now," said Todd Belt, professor and political management program director at George Washington University. "There's an old saying, if the enemy is digging themselves deeper, don't throw them a rope."

Why Biden is staying quiet 

By staying away from Trump's legal matters, Biden is respecting the traditional White House approach not to weigh into pending investigations or influence law enforcement, particularly within a state or local jurisdiction. 

Trump famously abandoned such norms by frequently demanding the arrests of his political enemies.

By not engaging, Biden is also avoiding comments that Republicans could use to reinforce their accusations of a politically biased justice system and Trump witch hunt. 

House Republicans opened an investigation into the "weaponization" of the Justice Department this year and accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of a "politically motivated prosecutorial decision" after Trump falsely predicted his arrest would come Tuesday.

"He doesn't want to give Republicans anything to work with," Belt said of Biden. "They are hypersensitive of anything that looks like the politicization of the judiciary."

What would an indictment mean for 2024?

Trump, of course, is not just any former president. He's the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and possible election opponent of Biden in a rematch of 2020. 

Biden, who has said he intends to run again for president, is widely expected to announce his reelection bid in the coming weeks or months.

"The last thing the White House should do, or any other political leaders, is to put their hands on the scale of justice," said longtime Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. "This is about the former president and we don't know what's going to happen. I think it would be premature if the White House decided to weigh in."

Some political observers have speculated an indictment could boost Trump's standing in the Republican primary with his core supporters who might see him as a martyr. 

For Biden, a Trump indictment could help crystalize the contrast he hopes to make in 2024 between a White House thahe'll argue restored competence and the chaos of Trump.

Still, Democrats see no upside for Biden to acknowledge the potential indictment, at least now.

"Joe Biden can contrast himself as a law-abiding president with Donald Trump who was a relatively lawless president and lawless individual, but he does not need to engage in overheated rhetoric at this stage," said Lis Smith, a Democratic campaign strategist. "There's no need for Joe Biden to jump in front of a moving train here."

The White House condemns violent protests without discussing Trump

The heart of the New York investigation into Trump appears to focus on a $130,000 payment that Trump's longtime lawyer and political fixer Michael Cohen arranged from Trump to Daniels to prevent her from publicizing her claim of having had sex with Trump before the 2016 election.

Biden faced no direct questions about the case or Trump's possible arrest the only time he faced reporters this week: a joint press conference in Ottawa, Canada with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  

White House officials declined to weigh in – other than to condemn violent protests that Trump warned could result from an indictment and to say the federal government has not tracked any specific security threats.

"The president has been very clear when it comes to Americans who want to protest, they should do it peacefully," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

When asked whether Biden believes it is appropriate for a person who is under indictment to run for office, Jean-Pierre would not comment, citing the Hatch Act, which limits political activity from public employees.

"Not going to speak to politics," she said. "I'm just going to leave it there."

ATTACHMENT FORTY EIGHT – From

FROM AUSTIN AMERICANSTATESMAN X10

As speculation continues to swirl on whether he might soon get indicted in New York, former President Donald Trump is headed to Texas on Saturday for his first major 2024 presidential campaign rally.

The event, scheduled for 5 p.m. at Waco Regional Airport, about 100 miles north of Austin, will provide an early peek into Trump's messaging as he seeks the Republican nomination for president for a third straight election.

He was first elected president in 2016 and lost his bid for reelection to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

Marjorie Taylor Greene expected at Trump rally, other guest speakers unknown

A number of guest speakers, who the campaign has not publicly identified, will precede Trump's arrival. Signs point to one of them possibly being Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican U.S. Representative from Georgia, who is among Trump's most loyal supporters in Congress. Greene is scheduled to hold a fundraising event earlier in the day at a gun club near Waco.

The timing of the rally is raising eyebrows due to Waco's history with extremism and government overreach. Trump's arrival coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Branch Davidian compound's siege, where federal agents had a weekslong standoff with an anti-government cult. It ended in a botched raid that left 76 people, including 25 children, dead.

The campaign says it chose Waco as a campaign stop for logistical reasons, as the central Texas city of about 140,000 residents is a modest drive from many of the state's major metropolises. Waco is three hours from Houston and San Antonio, and under two hours from Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth. Waco is the county seat in McLennan County, which went for Trump in the 2020 election by a wide margin over Biden.

Donald Trump's niece Mary Trump attempting sabotage of rally via ticket reservations

Blogger Mary Trump, the former president's estranged niece, is attempting to sabotage her uncle's rally by encouraging people to get tickets and not show.

"If we book the 50,000+ venue, we can make sure most of the seats are empty when the traitor takes the stage. We can no longer fail to hold powerful men accountable for their crimes against our country,” she wrote Thursday on Twitter.

Waco city officials are expecting around 15,000 people at the rally.

Trump has not yet been arrested, warns of 'death and destruction' if charged

The visit comes at the end of an eventful week for Trump, who predicted, wrongly for now, that he would be indicted and arrested in connection to a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump denies making the payment and insists the criminal investigation is a politically charged prosecution by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.

In a message Friday on Truth Social, Trump warned of "potential death and destruction" if he's charged in the probe.

"What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?" Trump wrote. "Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA!"

Trump, however, is arriving in Waco after a promising week politically, as a poll from Monmouth University found he is the clear favorite for the GOP nomination in 2024. When respondents were asked who they want to see as the nominee, 41% named Trump and 27% named Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Most of the poll interviews were done before reports about the potential indictment.

The results marked a sudden turn for Trump, who was tied with DeSantis in a February poll and trailed him in a December poll. DeSantis has not announced his candidacy for president, though political insiders have said the governor's campaign launch is forthcoming.

ATTACHMENT FORTY NINE – From

From the Independent U.K.

ON THE GROUND IN WACO, THE TRUMP FAITHFUL DON’T BELIEVE HE’LL BE INDICTED: ‘IT’S COMPLETE GARBAGE’

Queues started to form early on Saturday morning at Waco Regional Airport where field after field was filled with vehicles decked out in Trump flags, reports Josh Marcus in Waco, Texas

Investigators might be closing in on Donald Trump – in New York for hush money; Georgia for election meddling; Washington for mishandling classified documents – but the former president shouldn’t be all that worried, according to his loyal supporters who gathered in Waco, Texas, on Saturday for the kickoff of the 2024 Trump campaign.

“I don’t think it’ll stick,” Trump supporter Karey Cottrell told The Independent of the potential charges in New York, which are expected to drop some time next week.

“It’s complete garbage,” she added. “It’s ridiculous. I didn’t think they would stoop this low.”

Queues started to form early on Saturday morning at Waco Regional Airport where field after field was filled with vehicles decked out in Trump flags.

Many who spoke to The Independent believe that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s probe, into alleged hush money payments made by Mr Trump to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign, is an exercise in partisan politics.

“They’re just attacking him,” said Steve Harris, a retired statistics professor, who lives in Waco. “It’s ridiculous to indict somebody on something when the statue of limitations ran out a long time ago.”

(Manhattan prosecutors will likely argue the statute of limitations hasn’t run out, given pandemic-era legal extensions and Donald Trump’s regular travel in and out of New York, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group.)

The MAGA faithful say that the multiple legal probes against Mr Trump - who has survived two impeachments, a special counsel investigation, and numerous lawsuits and probes throughout his life - will flame out.

“For almost eight years, that’s what they’ve been doing,” rallygoer Tammy Pavelka told The Independent. “He’s draining the swamp, so they’re after him.”

Mention of Mr Bragg, the New York prosecutor, was particularly unpopular at the rally.

“Bragg, he’s just looking for popularity,” Ms Pavelka said.

Another man was seen holding an “Arrest Alvin Bragg” t-shirt.

Some believe that the investigations are part of a wider plot against the former president.

Attendee Shelley Harrison, of Dallas, said that officials are targeting Mr Trump because he helped expose “child trafficking issue,” - a QAnon conspiracy theory which purports that Democrat and media elites are responsible for child trafficking.

“He knows too much,” she said. “He’s exposing the truth. They don’t want people to believe him.”

For others, even if Mr Trump did make the hush money payments, it doesn’t really matter.

Rusty Lee, who works in the oil and gas industry near the Louisiana border, attended the rally decked out in a full American-flag print suit and oversized Trump mask, which was leading to a lot of request for selfies.

He’s been to five or six other Trump rallies, and said that if he was a billionaire facing allegations of an affair, he would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to make that go away, too.

“It doesn’t bother me,” he said. “I didn’t hire this man as a moral leader. I have a pastor for that.”

Plus, Mr Lee added, Mr Trump, like every other president before him, has managed to make it this far without facing criminal charges.

“That’s JV [Junior Varsity] stuff man,” he said, making an amateur sports reference. “He’s gone through a lot worse than that...Trump’s clean. If he wasn’t, he’s spent so many years in the spotlight, and something comes out now. Come on.”

But Mr Trump seems far from nonchalant about the potential criminal charges.

In a late-night Truth Social post attacking Mr Bragg, Mr Trump warned of “potential death and destruction” should charges be brought against him.

But in Waco, the music is blasting, the merch flying off the shelves, and the machinations of prosecutors and special counsels seem very far away

ATTACHMENT FIFTY – From the Austin American Statesman

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT TRUMP'S RALLY IN WACO AMID POSSIBLE INDICTMENT

By Nate Chute

Months after announcing his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump plans to hold his first campaign rally in Waco, Texas, on Saturday, March 25.

The political event has been scheduled even as Trump claimed he would face arrest this week. Indictment charges against the former president could be announced this week, but whether the former president is taken into custody remains to be seen.

Here's what we know about plans for the rally and the details of the indictment involving the former president.

Trump rally scheduled at Waco Regional Airport

Saturday's event is set to take place at Waco Regional Airport. Parking for the event opens at 8 a.m. local time, and doors open at noon.

Guest speakers have yet to be announced, but they will take the stage prior to Trump, who is scheduled to begin delivering remarks at 5 p.m.

Attending the event requires registration, with a maximum of two tickets per registrant.

Does choosing Waco as location for Trump rally a political message tied to a religious cult?

Experts on political violence point to the significance of choosing Waco as Trump's first rally for his 2024 campaign.

"Waco is hugely symbolic on the far-right," said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism in an interview with USA Today. "There's not really another place in the U.S. that you could pick that would tap into these deep veins of anti-government hatred — Christian nationalist skepticism of the government — and I find it hard to believe that Trump doesn't know that Waco represents all of these things."

Thirty years ago, multiple agencies, including Texas law enforcement, the U.S. military, and ATF and FBI agents, laid siege to the compound of a sect of Christians known as the Branch Davidians. Led by David Koresh, the compound was located 13 miles from Waco.

The siege began after federal officials attempted to serve a warrant for group members for illegally stockpiling weapons. Over 300 firearms and nearly 2 million rounds of ammunition were later recovered.

On the first day of the siege in late February 1993, four ART agents and four Branch Davidians were killed in a gunfight. On the final day in mid-April, the building housing the Branch Davidians caught on fire during a tear gas attack and burnt to the ground. Koresh and 75 others inside, including 25 children, died.

Dig deeper:Why experts say Trump holding his next rally in Waco, Texas sends a message to the far right

The tragedy, often framed as the "Waco massacre," spilled over into a right-wing militia movement in the 1990s and continues to sew a distrust of the federal government. It also led people like Timothy McVeigh to follow through on carrying out the Oklahoma City bombing just two years later as an act of revenge. The bombing resulted in 168 people, including 19 children, being killed.

"Waco has a sense of grievance among people that I know he's (Trump's) got to be trying to tap into," Beirich said. "He's being unjustly accused, like the Branch Davidians were unjustly accused — and the deep state is out to get them all."

Trump's indictment and Stormy Daniels payment

New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg hasn't said how his office is investigating Trump. Still, a hush-money payment then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen arranged from Trump to porn actress Stormy Daniels could potentially be used to build a case for how the Trump Organization falsified business records and violated campaign finance law.

The $130,000 payment aimed to prevent her from publicizing her claim of having had sex with Trump before the 2016 election. Trump has denied wrongdoing but admitted to making the payment to Daniels. He also declined to testify before a grand jury conducting criminal proceedings in Manhattan.

If Trump's arrested, do we know if he'll be handcuffed?

Should Trump be indicted, he would become the first former president ever charged with a crime. The process of his arrest is less clear, especially because being indicted does not always mean you are arrested. Charges can also be dropped after an indictment.

His lawyers have said he will surrender and routine arrest in New York would involve Trump being fingerprinted and photographed for a mug shot. But a scene of Trump being escorted by law enforcement in handcuffs in front of media cameras is potentially less likely, especially after Trump's call for supporters to "protest" his arrest in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

Learn about the process:What is an indictment? Why would Trump get arrested? Here's what we know.

A court date for an arraignment could come several days after an indictment is announced, and Trump could be released following his arraignment, too.

Whether the terms of his arrest allow Trump to leave New York and return to his home at Mar-A-Lago in Florida or a rally in Texas, remain to be seen.

ATTACHMENT FIFTY ONE – From

Tallahassee.com

Dan Patrick, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene among speakers at Trump rally in Waco

By Nate Chute

Before former President Donald Trump was scheduled to take the stage at a campaign rally in Waco, several guest speakers shared a message with those in the crowd.

The list of speakers was not made public prior to the event, which is the first campaign rally for Trump's 2024 campaign for president. The city of Waco estimated earlier this week that about 15,000 people would attend the rally at Waco Regional Airport.

Here's a running list of who has spoken at the event in no particular order:

Ted Nugent plays Star-Spangled banner on guitar

At the start of former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Waco, rocker Ted Nugent plays the Star-Spangled Banner on his guitar. @CBSNewsTexas

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is the first speaker. He says if Donald Trump gets indicted he’ll win 2024 “automatically” Says Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis should endorse Trump

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (explains) why Trump rally is in Waco

Patrick disputed reports that the Trump campaign chose Waco for the rally due to the anniversary of the Branch Davidian cult compound's siege by federal agencies in Waco in 1993.

"There's not really another place in the U.S. that you could pick that would tap into these deep veins of anti-government hatred — Christian nationalist skepticism of the government — and I find it hard to believe that Trump doesn't know that Waco represents all of these things," said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism in an interview with USA Today.

Patrick, however, suggested Trump asked him to pick a place for his rally, and he suggested Waco.

"Thats the reason he's here," Patrick said.

Current and former members of Congress

Republican U.S. representatives such as Matt Gaetz of Florida and Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia attended the rally.

Reps. Roger Williams, of Texas District 25, and Wesley Hunt of Texas District 38, were also in attendance. Both have endorsed Trump for president.

Former Rep. Mayra Flores, who lost her seat in Texas' 34th district in the November 2022 election, also spoke at the rally.

And also...

Texas pastors Ramiro A. Peña, Robert Jeffress

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller

Sid Miller spoke in favor of several Trump policies.

MONDAY, 3/27

ATTACHMENT FIFTY TWO – From Vanity Fair

DONALD TRUMP HAS HIJACKED THE NEWS CYCLE WITH INDICTMENT WATCH

Since announcing his impending “arrest” (which hasn’t happened yet), the former president has resumed his role as the media’s main character—he’s even returning to Fox News—and has Republicans rallying behind him. It’s feeling eerily like 2016.

BY MOLLY JONG-FAST

MARCH 27, 2023

For the past week or so, we’ve been hostage to another strange Trump news cycle, a flashback to the many we lived through in the half dozen years between his escalator ride at Trump Tower to his helicopter exit from the White House. For a while, it looked like Donald Trump was out of our lives and retreating to his own Palm Elba. Now all of a sudden everything is 2016 again and we’re glued to CNN news alerts. 

After initial reports of possible charges in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, the “Trump arrest” news cycle truly kicked into gear early on the morning of March 18 with post on Truth Social: “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE AND FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” Two hours later, a spokesman said the former president had not written his post with direct knowledge of the timing of any arrest, while adding, “President Trump is rightfully highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system.”

Bottom of Form

But it didn’t matter that Trump’s spokesman seemed to walk back Trump’s “truth,” as posts on his Truth Social platform are ironically called, or that “TUESDAY” (March 21) came and went with no indictment from the Manhattan DA’s office. (The grand jury is reportedly meeting again Monday.) None of those things mattered, as Trump, yet again, hijacked the news cycle—this time by announcing his impending arrest. As The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser wrote of this chaotic moment: “The political class’s collective capacity for analyzing and digesting events that have not yet occurred, which still might not occur, and whose details are presumably crucial to understanding how they will play out, was on full display.” 

Here we get to the central dilemma of covering Trump. By virtue of the fact he was president, and is currently leading the 2024 Republican pack, much of what Trump says and does is arguably newsworthy. But Trump is at best a bad actor and at worst a complete sociopath, known to “flood the zone with shit” in the immortal words of Steve Bannon. So the idea that we, in the media, should take his word for it when he makes some wild claim seems at best misguided. 

Though it would be impossible to ignore a pending indictment of a former president, could the breathless, nonstop indictment watch have been avoided? Theoretically, yes? But there is a muscle memory many of us have from covering Trump, a kind of Stockholm syndrome from the constant nonstop flood of news. And it’s easy to fall back into old patterns. 

Trump, as president, was an assignment editor from hell, driving a news cycle over everything from preposterous ideas, like buying Greenland, to terrifying ones, like bombing North Korea. By virtue of the fact that Trump was president, his tweets, his utterances, and his weird foibles led to countless headlines and cable news chyrons. Just as Trump was able to reclaim his role as assignment editor, another familiar story emerged: Republicans holding themselves hostage to Trump. 

The GOP was presented with yet another opportunity to decouple itself from the albatross that had significantly cost their party in three straight elections. But instead of using a possible indictment as a way to rid themselves of the former guy, Republicans have been literally falling all over each other to defend him, despite not being sure what, if any, charges will be filed. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy warned of “politically motivated prosecutions,” while Republican defenders hit airwaves. 

On CNN’s State of the Union, Kentucky congressman and frequent Trump defender James Comer wasn’t sure what he was defending Trump from on Sunday morning, but he seemed sure Trump was innocent. “Are you arguing that people who commit business crimes are not committing crimes?” asked CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Is this a business crime? We’re talking about a federal election crime,” Comer responded. “My understanding,” Tapper said, “is that he’s being investigated for falsifying business records.”

The Republican rush to defend Trump was so deeply embarrassing you’d think it might have led to a moment of GOP introspection. But alas, the crew that is always so worried about the weaponization of the federal government used its power in Congress to target Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg even as his office has yet to charge Trump with anything. Comer and another Fox News frequent flier, Jim Jordan, wrote to Bragg: “You are reportedly about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.” With Trump fully in the media spotlight, and Republicans rallying behind him, even critics acknowledged how the former president could benefit. “This indictment is a billion dollar gift-in-kind from Democrats to Trump’s ‘24 campaign,” former representative Peter Meijer tweeted.  

Trump reportedly raised $1.5 million over his “indictment” in just three days and has enjoyed a polling bump (while Ron DeSantis’s recent performance on the national stage has worried GOP donors). Never one to let a possible scandal go unexploited, Trump used the potential indictment as a centerpiece of his Waco, Texas, rally on Saturday, telling the crowd: “You will be vindicated and proud. The thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited, and totally disgraced.” At one point, Trump put his hand on his heart during the playing of a rendition of the national anthem as sung by the J6 Choir, a group of imprisoned rioters, while behind him a large screen played footage from the insurrection at the Capitol. The weekend rally also happened to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the government standoff in Waco with doomsday sect the Branch Davidians. 

Trump’s stance of being anti-anyone-who-doesn’t-support-him was pretty clear to anyone watching. As I write this, Trump still hasn’t been indicted but he has used the threat of any possible consequences for his actions to once again become the main character of the news cycle. He’s even slated to return Monday night to Fox News, a recent target of his ire due to its glowing DeSantis coverage. It seems very likely that Trump can parlay this main-character status into another GOP presidential nomination. Like global warming, Trump is on the horizon again and it feels like we are powerless to stop it.  

ATTACHMENT FIFTY THREE – From NBC News

TIMELINE & TAKEAWAYS: TRUMP NEWS LIVE UPDATES: GRAND JURY RETURNS TODAY AS POTENTIAL INDICTMENT LOOMS

David Pecker, former CEO of American Media and publisher of National Enquirer, was the witness at today’s grand jury hearing in the Trump hush money probe.

A) Why is David Pecker relevant?

Rebecca Shabad and Laura Jarrett

David Pecker, who testified Monday before Manhattan’s grand jury, played a key role in Trump’s efforts to silence ahead of the 2016 election women with whom he had affairs, prosecutors in the previous federal case said.

Pecker’s testimony is likely key to the Manhattan prosecution’s argument that the purpose of the hush money payments was to suppress negative information from becoming public before that election.

Pecker, a longtime ally of Trump’s, was the CEO of the parent company that owns the National Enquirer, American Media Inc. In November 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had personally asked Pecker to silence women who might come forward with details of Trump’s sexual relationships with them. Payments were made to ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels.

In December 2018, federal prosecutors said that AMI admitted to paying $150,000 in hush money to McDougal. The money was to buy the exclusive rights to her story so that Trump allies could ensure the story wouldn’t become public and influence the 2016 election.

Previously, federal prosecutors granted AMI immunity. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to several crimes, including improper campaign contributions for his $130,000 payment to Daniels. Federal prosecutors said Cohen acted in coordination with and at the direction of Trump.

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2h ago / 3:51 PM EDT B

Former National Enquirer CEO testified before Trump grand jury

Adam Reiss

David Pecker was the witness at today's grand jury hearing in the Trump hush money probe, NBC News confirmed. He is the former CEO of American Media and publisher of National Enquirer. This would be his second appearance before the grand jury. 

Pecker was granted immunity in the federal case regarding Cohen.

American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer, was referred to in court papers in the Cohen case, along with a $150,000 payment made to ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleges she had an affair with Trump more than a decade ago.

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3h ago / 2:39 PM EDT

JoElla Carman

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C) 5h ago / 1:03 PM EDT

Trump suggests the investigations into him are 'election interference'

Rebecca Shabad

The former president posted on his social platform, Truth Social, on Monday, saying, "ELECTION INTERFERENCE THROUGH PROSECUTORS IS THE NEW 'BALLOT STUFFING' FOR THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!!!"

In another post, he railed against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, saying that "everyone is waiting to hear from a local George Soros backed D.A" about whether "he is going to 'criminally indict' me for NO CRIME."

Trump said that "every prosecutor" and the Federal Election Commission "took a pass" on charging him for these payments.

"One year ago he, Alvin Bragg, said 'NO WAY.' Now he’s looking at it again? He should prosecute Mark Pomerantz & Cohen!" Trump said, referring to a former Manhattan special assistant district attorney and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

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D) 6h ago / 12:06 PM EDT

New York lawmakers hit Trump for 'racist' threats against DA Bragg

Rose Horowitch

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., and New York state lawmakers criticized Trump for "bullying" Bragg and reiterated their support for the district attorney at a news conference today.

"No racism. They need to stop it because we know what it is," said Iesha Sekou, founder and CEO of Street Corner Resources, a Harlem-based nonprofit that aims to reduce gun violence. "Trump knows this is racism, making Black people wrong for doing the right thing."

"We stand for peace, but Trump needs to know: no punks here," Sekou continued.

In a Truth Social post, Trump referred to Bragg, New York's first Black district attorney, as an "animal." He has continued to target Bragg in social media posts. Last week, Bragg was sent a death threat.

Espaillat also criticized Republican lawmakers for not standing up to Trump.

"For the so-called party of law and order, many of them are not behaving in that fashion," Espaillat said. "We will not have another Jan. 6 in New York City."

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E 6h ago / 11:39 AM EDT

Who is the new witness? Here's who we know it isn't

Garrett Haake and Rebecca Shabad

The witness who is testifying before the Manhattan grand jury Monday is not Cohen, Daniels or a witness requested by Trump's lawyers, NBC News confirms.

That's based on conversations with the relevant attorneys.

It's unclear, however, who the witness appearing before the grand jury is. The number of relevant witnesses who have not been called before this grand jury over the last two months is small.

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f) 6h ago / 11:30 AM EDT

Fox News host calls Trump 'insane' for opening Waco rally with Jan. 6 video

Rose Horowitch

Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade ripped into Trump for opening his weekend rally in Waco, Texas, with a clip from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, calling the former president's decision "insane" in a Monday morning episode of "Fox & Friends."

At the rally, Trump walked onstage with a “Justice for All” video playing. The video features a choir of men incarcerated for their role in the Jan. 6 riot singing the national anthem, interspersed with clips of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. It also included images of the riot.

“He should be running from that, period,” Kilmeade said. “I don’t care his point of view; that is not a good thing for him. I thought that was absolutely awful. Even though he is winning in the polls, that will not help.”

Trump is also under investigation for his role in the Jan. 6 riot and the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Kilmeade criticized Trump for spending "80% of the time complaining about court cases" instead of touting his own record and talking about current foreign policy issues.

"That’s going to be the conversation at the kitchen table," the anchor said.

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g) 7h ago / 10:50 AM EDT

Meanwhile, in Fulton County, Georgia ...

Summer Concepcion, Blayne Alexander and Charlie Gile

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been ordered to respond by May 1 to Trump’s motion last week to squash the special grand jury’s report on whether there were any “coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections” in the battleground state by Trump and his allies.

Judge Robert McBurney, the supervising judge overseeing the special purpose grand jury, issued the order this morning to Willis. He also directed Willis’ team to include an opinion on whether Trump’s motion requires a hearing.

The district attorney’s office told NBC News last week it would respond to Trump’s motion, and the order by McBurney puts a deadline on that response.

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h) 8h ago / 10:05 AM EDT

Another witness is expected to appear before grand jury today

Adam Reiss and Rebecca Shabad

Another witness is expected to appear today before the Manhattan grand jury investigating the Trump hush money case, a source with direct knowledge of the situation told NBC News.

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i) 8h ago / 9:55 AM EDT

DA arrived at 8 a.m. today

Katherine Koretski

Bragg arrived at his office at about 8 a.m.

District Attorney Alvin Bragg arrives at his office this morning.Katherine Koretski

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J) 8h ago / 9:55 AM EDT

Bragg pushes back after House Republicans escalate oversight into Trump hush money case

Summer Concepcion and Julie Tsirkin

Bragg has dismissed another letter by three House Republican chairmen seeking more information related to the hush money probe that could lead to an indictment of Trump.

In a letter to Bragg on Saturday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil argued that Congress should be privy to documents and testimony in the ongoing investigation into a $130,000 payment made during Trump’s 2016 campaign to Daniels.

“Contrary to the central argument set forth in your letter, this matter does not simply involve local or state interests,” the lawmakers wrote. “Rather, the potential criminal indictment of a former President of the United States by an elected local prosecutor of the opposing political party (and who will face the prospect of re-election) implicates substantial federal interests, particularly in a jurisdiction where trial-level judges also are popularly elected.”

Read the full story here.

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k) 8h ago / 9:55 AM EDT

Trump lawyer calls post attacking Bragg ‘ill-advised,’ says ‘I’m not his social media consultant’

Summer Concepcion

Trump’s lawyer distanced himself Sunday from his client’s escalating attacks on Bragg as he weighs criminal charges against the former president.

“I’m not his social media consultant,” Joe Tacopina said in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” when host Chuck Todd pressed him about whether he would advise a client to attack a prosecutor personally. “I think that was an ill-advised post that one of his social media people put up and he quickly took down when he realized the rhetoric and the photo that was attached to it.”

Todd responded: “You’re referring to the baseball bat thing, which, of course, was featured in the New York Post cover. New York Post thought it was a pretty, pretty rough hit.”

Read the full story here.

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L) 8h ago / 9:55 AM EDT

Trump’s base splinters on Ron DeSantis

Jonathan Allen and Dan Gallo

Tammy Condra has very strong views about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his possible run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“DeSantis will never win. DeSantis is a loser,” the 56-year-old, self-described “stay-at-home goddess” from Fredericksburg, said during a rally for Trump in Waco, Texas, on Saturday. “He is deep state.”

Like most voters here, many of whom drove long distances to stand for several hours under the hot sun on a regional airport tarmac, Condra is committed to seeing Trump win back the White House.

But her feelings about DeSantis are hardly universal among Trump supporters, which may help explain why the former president often reserves his most personal criticism of the Florida governor for more private settings.

ATTACHMENT FIFTY FOUR – From CBS

A NEW YORK GRAND JURY IS EXPECTED TO INDICT DONALD TRUMP. GETTING A CONVICTION WON'T BE EASY

Credibility of lawyer Michael Cohen, and Trump's intent, may hamper Manhattan district attorney

By Mark Gollom · CBC News · Posted: Mar 27, 2023 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: March 27

Inside a Manhattan courthouse, a grand jury has been weighing evidence to decide whether former U.S. president Donald Trump should be indicted on charges relating to hush money payments made in 2016 to a porn actress.

Trump has denied an affair with the actress, Stormy Daniels, but the payment made to her, to keep her quiet, is not in dispute.

That payment was recorded by the Trump Organization as a legal expense. And it's that recording that has the former president facing a possible criminal trial. He could be charged with falsifying business records, a misdemeanor, and also face a more serious charge of falsifying business records in the first degree — a felony.

But making that case, some legal experts say, could be challenging for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who may have a hard time proving Trump's intent. It doesn't help that Bragg's star witness is a convicted felon.

"This case is going to have serious, serious problems," said Mark Bederow,  a criminal defence attorney and former Manhattan, N.Y., prosecutor.

"It's in many ways stunning that the decision here  ... appears to be green light," he said of the expected decision by prosecutors to pursue formal charges. "It's stunning to me."

But others say Trump shouldn't be too confident; the case against him could be stronger than some have suggested. U.S. attorney Norm Eisen, who was co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee for Trump's first impeachment trial, praised Bragg's efforts to take this case to a grand jury.

"The allegations here are of a very serious criminal wrongdoing. And I think the proof is strong," Eisen said.

The case centres around a $130,000 US payment made by Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to Daniels through a shell company set up by Cohen. Cohen was then reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.

The potential legal problems for Trump are two-fold. Did he falsify this business transaction in the Trump Organization by recording the payment to Daniels as a legal expense? And, more seriously, if he falsified the record, was the intent to commit another crime, specifically, evading campaign finance laws?

· Trump fined nearly $1 million for what judge calls 'frivolous' lawsuit

· Stormy Daniels hush-money case could imperil Trump as grand jury reportedly meets

Cohen has pleaded guilty to violating U.S. campaign finance law in connection with the payments. Federal prosecutors say the payments amounted to illegal, unreported assistance to Trump's campaign. However, they declined to file charges against Trump himself.

Now, nearly five years after Cohen's guilty plea, Trump may face his own charges related to the payment. Here are the challenges the district attorney may have in making the case, and the difficulties Trump's legal team could face defending him. 

The potential misdemeanor

Under New York state law, it's a crime to falsify business records. 

"It's as simple as it sounds, if you falsify business records for any purpose, and you do so intentionally, then you can be convicted of a misdemeanor," Bederow said. 

But David Shapiro, a financial crimes specialist and former FBI special agent, said indicting Trump for a misdemeanor would be "unusual." Normally, he said, prosecutors seek indictments for serious crimes. 

"A misdemeanor, normally you wouldn't even hear about it. It wouldn't rise to the level of a district attorney's awareness. It would stay in a local court," he said. "What gives this case potential heft is the scheme to defraud."

The potential felony

The payment to Daniels occurred during Trump's campaign for president. The legal issue here is whether the recording of the payment in Trump's books was falsified in order to evade federal campaign finance laws.

The allegation is that paying for Daniels' silence, and avoiding the embarrassment of an alleged affair, would help Trump's presidential campaign, and therefore should be considered a campaign expense. Such an expense would be required to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. But the amount paid to Daniels would have exceeded the legal limit of $2,700 US. 

"[If] it's a cover up to essentially evade federal campaign finance law, [Trump] can now be prosecuted for a felony," said Leo Glickman, a New York-based lawyer who specializes in campaign finance, election and voting rights law.

"The idea here is that the only reason why he paid off Stormy Daniels was to advance his candidacy for president."

But Bederow believes it could be difficult to prove Trump's intent was to defraud. A jury, he said, could conclude it was reasonable that Trump's only purpose of concealing the payment was to avoid embarrassment with his wife or children for any connection he had to Daniels, and to prevent harm to his business reputation.

"That has nothing to do with necessarily either intending to defraud, or more importantly, trying to conceal a crime," Bederow said.

Demonstrating that the whole arrangement was to cover up Cohen's payment to ensure such knowledge wouldn't hurt his presidential campaign, will be a "hell of a task, I think, for the prosecution here," Bederow said.

· Trump says he expects to be arrested on Tuesday, calls for protests

But attorney Norm Eisen, co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment trial scoffed at that potential defence. He said Trump would have to show there was no element of campaign intentionality, "no element whatsoever," regarding the payment to Daniels.

"Who does he think is fooling? Even for a serial fabricator like Donald Trump, this is beyond the pale," said Eisen, the attorney who worked on Trump's impeachment. "I do not accept that bad defence will succeed. No jury will buy that."

The credibility of Cohen

One of Bragg's biggest liabilities, said Bederow, could be his key witness: Michael Cohen.

"Michael Cohen is the worst witness imaginable that a prosecutor could have for several different reasons," Bederow said.

Most significantly, Bederow said, Cohen is a convicted felon, having pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges and of lying to the U.S. Congress. 

"It's not often that the star witness literally has a conviction for making false statements under oath," Bederow said. "It's not a good starting point for any prosecutor."

Bederow said it's obvious that Cohen has a personal disdain for Trump, which could raise questions about his motivation to testify.

But prosecutors often have to rely on people who themselves were culpable in a crime, Eisen said.

"[Cohen] accepted responsibility for what he did wrong. And his story on the hush money payment has absolutely not varied right since he began cooperating. I know because he was one of the first witnesses that I talked to when we were doing the impeachment." 

Eisen agreed that the cross-examination of Cohen would be "colourful and tough." 

"I believe he's telling the truth. He's rough around the edges and colourful himself but I think he's going to withstand cross-examination."

Statute of limitations

Trump could benefit from the time it's taken Bragg to bring a case against him to court.

The statute of limitations for this kind of litigation is usually five years. And since the payment was made in 2016, more than six years have passed.

· Where Donald Trump's criminal and civil cases stand

However, if a defendant has been out of state, then the statute of limitation can be "toiled" or suspended during that period. And Trump, having been in D.C. for four years as president, was out of state.

"But it's hard to believe the legislature would have intended ... that serving as president of the United States counts as being out of state," Shapiro said.

ATTACHMENT FIFTY FIVE – From Time

TRUMP’S LATEST DANCE PARTNER: EVERYONE TRYING TO INDICT HIM

BY PHILIP ELLIOTT  MARCH 27, 2023 2:22 PM EDT

If you believe that politics carries more than a passing similarity with theater, as the late activist Harvey Milk argued, then it’s worth dusting off a classic 1975 script from John Kander and Fred Ebb to explain this current moment in Republican politics. Toward the end of the first act of Chicago, celebrity murderess Velma Kelly reaches an uncomfortable realization: her star power is limited by the churn of news, and to stay on top she needs a fresh schtick to capture the fickle public’s attention. What she needs is a collaborator. “I simply cannot do it alone,” actresses like Chita Rivera, Bebe Neuwirth, and Catherine Zeta-Jones have sung in a mix of panic and defeat.

At this moment, Donald Trump is America’s real-world Velma Kelly: boxed into a corner, his ability to command headlines fragile, and his future contingent on allying with the news story that poses his biggest threat. And, in this case, his Roxy Hart isn’t one person, but several—all those in New York and Washington and Georgia working to make Trump the first ex-President in history indicted on criminal charges. Without the dancing partner of legal threats, Trump’s return to power is less certain; with prosecutors like Alvin Bragg as his foil, Trump might be able to take his vaudeville act all the way to the top once again thanks to a public that cannot look away from a figure willing to play fast and loose.

The legal circle around Trump appears to be tightening, with the Manhattan District Attorney apparently the nearest to issuing an indictment over alleged fraudulent bookkeeping that bought an adult film star’s silence about an affair just before the 2016 election. Elsewhere, Georgia prosecutors are continuing their investigation into Trump’s hamfisted efforts to undo Joe Biden’s win in the state. Federal prosecutors are digging into Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left the White House, plus his role in the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

With characteristic pluck, Trump has harnessed those campaign-ending-for-anyone-else threats into rallying cries. Other candidates would see them as daunting obstacles on the path to power; for Trump, they’re a useful asset that can further convince his flock that he—and they—face victimhood at the hands of the elites. Candidates facing far less serious peril would speak of these challenges in a sotto voce; Trump turns them into his 11 o’clock belt from center stage.

“Either the Deep State destroys America or we destroy the deep state,” Trump said Saturday evening at his rally in Waco, Texas, whose timing and location were hard to ignore. As Americans remembered—and some even mourned—the U.S. government’s deadly siege of a cult compound in Waco exactly 30 years prior, Trump was nursing his supporters’ distrust of government and even fact-based history.

For a spell earlier this year, Republicans seemed at least open to exploring other alternatives to a third Trump nomination for the White House. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seemed the most likely contender. But the urge to be RonCurious has faded, and his poll numbers similarly took the hit. Trump’s precarious position has forced Republicans—and even some independents—to rethink their antipathy for the ex-President. They may not love Trump, but they can’t help but to feel some suspicion at the prospect that a payment to save a married businessman the embarrassment of having a porn star detailing their alleged sexual encounters would be what ends Trump. The potentially attached bookkeeping crimes and maybe even the under-valuing of Manhattan properties to dodge tax liabilities isn’t great, but also probably not disqualifying in the minds of a lot of Republican voters.

Hence, the rallying moment behind Trump. Much like an anti-hero—in politics, theater, and Taylor Swift lyrics alike—the public finds the draw to cheer for them strong.

Without the legal threat staring down Trump, he would have to lean even more heavily on his record, his grievances with other corners of the government, or maybe even outline what exactly he would do if elected to a second term. (Besides bringing “vengeance” against his enemies, of course.) Even then, those aren’t exactly enough to keep a skeptical GOP set salved against more Trump blisters that, two years after he left the White House, are just starting to heal. The uncertainty over indictments and the subsequent drama carries with it much the same anxiety that accompanied both of Trump’s history-making impeachment trials, events that forced many Republicans to defend Trump lest they find themselves excommunicated and recast in this production.

To be sure, as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie observed, indictments don’t help anyone. But Trump may prove they don’t exactly hurt, either. The former President has raised millions so far from his self-announced pending arrest. The threat to his candidacy has drawn support from even some who flirted with NeverTrumpism. The stubborn streak inside the GOP that Trump fed for years is tough to shake, and the defiance incumbent with Trumpism has changed the political DNA for a lot of these voters.

Trump is unlikely to have been as strong at this point heading into the second quarter of this calendar year without the unexpected boost from prosecutors. His mainstream defenders don’t much like it, but they’ll take anything that helps the Republican Party’s chances of making Joe Biden a one-term President. Much like Trump’s realization that he needed something to jazz up his act, the GOP is casting about with its own Velma Kelly-esque “act of desperation,” to borrow from the script, to find a new partner. Yet no one in the wings has anything like Trump’s star power. At least not at this point in Act One of 2024.

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ATTACHMENT FIFTY SIX – From the New York Times

FORMER NATIONAL ENQUIRER PUBLISHER TESTIFIES AGAIN IN TRUMP INQUIRY

The grand jury investigating a hush-money case against the former president met again on Monday, but the timing of any potential indictment remained unclear.

By William K. Rashbaum, Kate Christobek, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich March 27, 2023Updated 4:07 p.m. ET

The former publisher of The National Enquirer testified on Monday before the Manhattan grand jury hearing evidence about Donald J. Trump’s role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The publisher, David Pecker, also testified in January, soon after the grand jury was impaneled by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. The grand jury has heard from at least nine witnesses — including Mr. Pecker, who has gone in twice — and is expected to vote on an indictment soon.

Mr. Pecker, who was seen leaving the building where the grand jury sits at about 3:30 Monday afternoon, was a key player in the hush-money episode. He and the tabloid’s top editor helped broker the deal between the porn star, Stormy Daniels, and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time.

Ever since Mr. Trump predicted his arrest a little more than a week ago, all eyes have turned to the grand jury, which operates in secret.

And while the grand jurors could vote to indict the former president as soon as this week — in what would be the culmination of a nearly five-year investigation — the exact timing of any charges remains a mystery.

The Possible Indictment of Donald Trump

· Specter of Violence Looms: In a social media post, Donald Trump warned of “potential death and destruction” if he was indicted. Hours later, the Manhattan district attorney’s office received a threatening letter.

· Suppressing October Surprises: The payoff to Stormy Daniels that has a Manhattan grand jury weighing criminal charges against Trump can trace its lineage to political skulduggery in 1968 and 1980.

· Perp-Walk Fixation: As Trump focuses on how an indictment would look, he has appeared significantly disconnected from the severity of his potential legal woes.

· From Ally to Antagonist: Michael Cohen once said he would take a bullet for Trump. Now, Cohen is hoping to help prosecutors put him away.

It is subject to the quirks of the grand jury process in Manhattan, which include scheduling conflicts and other potential interruptions.

This particular grand jury meets on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, though it typically has not heard evidence related to the Trump investigation on Thursdays. The panel need not meet each of those days, but only convenes when the Manhattan district attorney’s office summons the jurors.

The timing of an indictment might also depend on the jurors’ availability. Sixteen of the 23 grand jurors must be present to conduct any business (and a majority must vote to indict for the case to go forward). For the prosecutors to seek a vote to indict, the jurors in attendance that day must previously have heard all key witness testimony.

The prospect of an indictment has raised a number of questions about the contours of the potential case facing Mr. Trump, who would become the first former American president to be indicted.

Mr. Bragg's prosecutors are focused on the $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels, who agreed to keep quiet about her story of an affair with Mr. Trump in exchange for the payoff. Mr. Cohen made the payment during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

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In recent weeks, Mr. Bragg’s office signaled to Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the former president could face criminal charges by offering him the chance to testify before the grand jury, people with knowledge of the matter have said. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is near; it would be unusual for prosecutors to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.

In New York, potential defendants have the right to answer questions in front of the grand jury before they are indicted, but they rarely testify, and Mr. Trump declined the offer.

Prosecutors have now questioned almost every major player in the hush-money episode, again suggesting that the district attorney’s presentation is nearing an end.

Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing — as well as any sexual encounter with Ms. Daniels — and unleased a series of escalating attacks on Mr. Bragg. Mr. Trump has referred to the investigation as a “witch hunt” and called Mr. Bragg, who is Black and a Democrat, a “racist” and an “animal.”

In a post this month on his social network Truth Social, Mr. Trump declared, without any direct knowledge, that his arrest was imminent, calling on his supporters to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” — rhetoric reminiscent of his posts in the lead-up to the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

While the focus of Mr. Pecker’s testimony is unclear, he could provide valuable information for prosecutors. A longtime ally of Mr. Trump, he agreed to keep an eye out for potentially damaging stories about Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign.

For a brief time in October 2016, Ms. Daniels appeared to have just that kind of story. Her agent and lawyer discussed the possibility of selling exclusive rights to her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump to The National Enquirer, which would then promise to never publish it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”

Mr. Pecker didn’t bite. Instead, he and the tabloid’s editor, Dylan Howard, decided that Mr. Cohen would have to deal with Ms. Daniels’s team directly.

And when Mr. Cohen was slow to pay, Mr. Howard pressed him to get the deal done, to prevent Ms. Daniels from revealing their discussions about suppressing her story. “We have to coordinate something,” Mr. Howard texted Mr. Cohen in late October 2016, “or it could look awfully bad for everyone.”

Two days later, Mr. Cohen transferred the $130,000 to an account held by Ms. Daniels’s attorney.

ATTACHMENT FIFTY SEVEN – From ABC

TRUMP LIVE UPDATES: FORMER PUBLISHER OF NATIONAL ENQUIRER SEEN LEAVING DA'S OFFICE

The grand jury was expected to hear from at least one witness on Monday.

ByAaron Katersky

Last Updated: March 27, 2023, 4:30 PM ET

A grand jury is continuing to weigh charges against former President Donald Trump in connection with the Manhattan district attorney's probe into the 2016 hush payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

No current or former president has ever been indicted for criminal conduct.

Latest headlines:

· Former publisher of the National Enquirer seen leaving DA's office

· Manhattan grand jury expected to reconvene Monday

· Republicans urge Alvin Bragg to comply with their request for documents, testimony

· Mayor Adams’ office condemns threat to DA Bragg

Here is how the news is developing today. All times Eastern. Check back for updates.

---

Mar 27, 4:30 PM EDT

Former publisher of the National Enquirer seen leaving DA's office

David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, was seen leaving the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office with his lawyer on Monday.

Pecker testified before the grand jury for about an hour, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Pecker, who allegedly helped arrange the payment to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, previously spoke to the grand jury in January.

The district attorney’s office may have called Pecker to bolster Michael Cohen’s earlier testimony about the purpose of the payment.

---

Mar 27, 8:00 AM EDT

Manhattan grand jury expected to reconvene Monday

The Manhattan grand jury weighing charges against former President Donald Trump is expected to reconvene on Monday, sources tell ABC News.

The grand jury may hear from another witness on Monday.

Mar 26, 4:48 PM EDT

GOP oversight chair defends getting involved in NY Trump probe

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Sunday defended taking the escalatory step of getting Congress involved in the Manhattan district attorney's investigation of Donald Trump by using his position to request answers from the prosecutor, Alvin Bragg.

"If Mr. Bragg wants to come in and explain to us what he what he's doing, and he makes a good explanation, he makes a good argument and we see that we're in an area where we shouldn't belong, such as the Republicans -- some of the Republican senators -- say, then we will back off," Comer, R-Ky., said on CNN. But, he added, "I don't believe that Bragg would be doing this if Donald Trump were not running for president, and that's something that we would like to ask Mr. Bragg as well."

Pushed by CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who said Bragg is investigating potential violations of state and not federal crimes, Comer said, "This is about politics. This is a presidential candidate."

Comer insisted that he would be more accepting of the investigation if it was being brought by the Department of Justice rather than a local district attorney, though he later said he wanted all "meddling" to end.

Bragg's office has signaled that they may be moving closer to a charging decision -- such as for falsifying business records, sources have said -- in relation to $130,000 that Trump paid the adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election in order to prevent her from going public with an affair claim.

Trump denies all wrongdoing, including a relationship with Daniels.

He falsely said that he would be arrested last week and has urged protests.

-ABC News' Adam Carlson and Cheyenne Haslett

Mar 25, 7:46 PM EDT

Republicans urge Alvin Bragg to comply with their request for documents, testimony

In a new letter Saturday, the Republican leaders of three powerful House committees responded to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's rebuff of their request for documents and testimony related to the Trump probe.

Reps. Jim Jordan, James Comer and Brian Steil argued in the 8-page letter they have legislative purpose for demanding such material.

Bragg's office pushed back against the chairmen's original request on March 20, stating it would "not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process."

Leslie Dubeck, Bragg’s general counsel, responded that it was "an unlawful incursion into New York's sovereignty."

In a new statement Saturday, Bragg's office said it is "not appropriate for Congress to interfere with pending local investigations."

"This unprecedented inquiry by federal elected officials into an ongoing matter serves only to hinder, disrupt and undermine the legitimate work of our dedicated prosecutors," his office said.

Read more about the GOP request for information on the Trump case here.

-ABC News' Lauren Peller

ATTACHMENT FIFTY EIGHT – From Prospect.org

Donald Trump Deserves to Be Indicted

But not just for the Stormy Daniels affair; the most corrupt president in American history has gotten away with far too much.

BY RYAN COOPER

MARCH 27, 2023

Donald Trump was produced by America’s culture of elite impunity. He flagrantly abused the bankruptcy system to enrich himself while driving his casinos and hotels into the ground. He allegedly avoided paying tens of millions of dollars in inheritance taxes. Over two dozen women have credibly accused him of sexual assault. And he got away with it every time. Even when his habit of stiffing his contractors and losing money by the billions made his reputation so bad that nobody in New York real estate would work with him anymore, NBC producers rescued his reputation with The Apprentice, bending over backwards to make him appear to be a business genius by reverse-engineering episode narratives after Trump randomly fired contestants on a whim.

So it should come as no surprise that Trump’s sole serious legal jeopardy thus far comes years after the fact, and for one of his least important alleged legal violations. The worst president in history, who tried to overturn the Constitution and democracy itself, might get busted—if the Manhattan district attorney doesn’t lose his nerve—over paying off a porn star hush money to keep quiet about a 2006 affair. It’s akin to busting Al Capone on tax evasion, except if Capone had arranged the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre live on the radio.

To be clear, the Daniels story, at least as she tells it, was a serious legal violation. Daniels says that back in 2006 she had sex with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel. Then in late October 2016, Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 to keep quiet. Trump in turn paid back Cohen with two checks disguised as a retainer. The Trump campaign, of course, was so eager to bury the story because, had it gotten out, he thought it might have hurt him politically. The affair (which Trump apparently admitted on Truth Social recently) happened only about a year and a half after Trump married his wife Melania, and a few months after the birth of his son Barron. There would have been a frenzied swarm of media coverage over such a salacious, titillating story.

Cohen was convicted of tax fraud and campaign finance violations in 2018 for his role in the scheme, and testified before a House committee that “Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a home equity line of credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign.”

Trump escaped any punishment in the initial Cohen probe. But now Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is investigating whether Trump committed fraud by labeling the hush money reimbursement as a “retainer agreement,” even though no such agreement existed.

All that surely deserves a great deal of legal scrutiny. So does the Trump campaign conspiring with National Enquirer publisher David Pecker to spend $150,000 buying rights to a story from Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleged she had a monthslong affair with Trump in 2006-2007, and then burying it. (I had completely forgotten about that one before writing this article.)

The cancer of elite impunity was sooner or later going to produce someone like Trump.

But neither of these is remotely comparable to Trump’s worst violations of the law, Constitution, and basic principles of democratic government.

The emoluments clause in the Constitution, for instance, prohibits the president from accepting any money from state-level officials or foreign governments without the consent of Congress. The reason, obviously, is to prevent corruption—the Founding Fathers didn’t want Britain or whoever to get a puppet government by handing huge bribes to the president. Not only was Trump the first president to refuse to place his vast business empire in any kind of trust while in office, he had numerous Bribes Here hotels, where foreign delegations could place money directly into his pocket—one of them literally leased from the federal government. The Saudis in particular were notorious for buying up blocks of rooms for months at a time, but they weren’t the only ones. (The Supreme Court, of course, signed off on all this.)

And that was only part of a sprawling labyrinth of corruption. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington counted up about 3,700 conflicts of interest over his time as president—holding official presidential business, Republican political events, and diplomatic conferences at his properties; charging the Secret Service tens of thousands of dollars to use his golf carts; constantly promoting his businesses through official channels, and on and on. No politician in American history has been half so shameless about using high office to stuff money into his own pockets.

Finally, there is Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. No president in American history had ever totally refused to concede defeat, or used the lame-duck period to spread lunatic lies about election fraud, or attempted to bully state governments into inventing new votes for him, or sicced a violent mob on Congress in a (temporarily successful) attempt to disrupt the legal certification process and get Vice President Pence to declare him president. It was the kind of tin-pot dictator behavior familiar from any of a dozen U.S.-backed coups.

January 6th was a crime, of course. 18 U.S. Code § 2383 stipulates: “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto” can be punished by up to ten years in prison and a permanent ban on holding federal office. If Trump did not violate this statute, then words have no meaning.

But Trump’s attempted putsch was also a crime against the very idea of the law itself. Liberal and centrist lawyers often quibble with arguments that Trump should have been prosecuted years ago, because they helplessly believe that all is for the best in the best of all possible legal systems here in America. Trump has not been indicted yet, which means that for some reason he shouldn’t have been.

The real reason Trump hasn’t been indicted for his major crimes is that the people in charge of that decision—Attorney General Merrick Garland, above all—are all part of the culture of elite impunity that produced Trump in the first place. He hasn’t been prosecuted for the same reason George W. Bush didn’t get busted for his torture program and Barack Obama didn’t get prosecuted for assassinating American citizens without trial: Presidents are, for practical purposes, above the law. And this is true of titans of industry, or virtually any powerful person. The cancer of elite impunity was sooner or later going to produce someone like Trump, who is just taking that culture to its logical end point of dictatorship.

The wisdom of the ancients—reflected in the above law against rebellion—is clear about what to do with a would-be despot like Trump: remove him from the political board, however you can. So while Bragg may not be focusing on Trump’s worst crimes, should his indictment come through, he is to be commended for doing something at least. Let’s hope it is just the first of many.

TUESDAY, 3/28

ATTACHMENT FIFTY NINE – From nr

REPORT: NO TRUMP INDICTMENT BY BRAGG THIS WEEK, NOR NEXT WEEK, NOR...

By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY March 28, 2023 10:11 PM

Though it doesn’t say how, the New York Post reports that it “has learned” that there will be no indictment of former President Trump this week by the grand jury that is hearing evidence presented by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.

In fact, if the Post’s information is correct – and we’re not in a position to evaluate that – the panel will hear no further Trump evidence this week, and is not expected to resume considering the case next week, either.

As we’ve explained at length (e.g., here and here), the investigation is focused on whether Trump falsified business records in accounting for the reimbursement of $130,000 his former self-described “fixer,” Michael Cohen, paid to complete a hush-money deal with porn star Stormy Daniels – whose real name is Stephanie Clifford and who claims to have had an affair with Trump about a decade before his 2016 election as president. The arrangement, known as a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), was completed (I’m trying not to say consummated) a few days before the 2016 election. Trump reimbursed Cohen through monthly payments in 2017 that were made to look like the payment of legal fees, even though they were, in fact, reimbursement of a debt.

Falsification of business records is a misdemeanor in New York, with a two-year statute of limitations – meaning (a) such offenses are virtually never prosecuted by the office of Bragg, a progressive prosecutor pursuing an anti-enforcement, anti-imprisonment agenda, and (b) this particular offense is almost certainly time-barred. To make the case even arguably viable, then, Bragg has to inflate it into a felony, which has a five-year statute of limitations. But the felony would require proof that Trump intended the falsification of records to conceal another crime he knew he had committed. Here, Bragg’s evidence that Trump committed another crime appears dubious, and any claim that Trump knew he was committing another crime and acted with the intent to do that seems untenable.

It has been widely reported that the other crime Bragg could accuse Trump of concealing is a campaign-finance violation. But, as I elaborated on over the weekend, campaign-finance laws in the context of presidential elections are federal; Bragg does not have jurisdiction to enforce them. Even if he did, it is highly unlikely that Trump’s reimbursement of Cohen with private funds could be deemed an in-kind campaign donation. Moreover, Trump’s obvious motivation for falsifying records – if, indeed, Bragg can prove that Trump knew about the bookkeeping details, which is questionable – was not to conceal another crime (which it’s not clear he committed or knew he was committing), but was to keep the hush money arrangement from his wife, among others (which is why the NDA was done in the first place).

Because grand-jury proceedings are secret and the DA’s deliberations about cases happens behind closed doors, we can’t say for sure what is happening. Bragg appeared poised to charge Trump ten days ago. Now that looks less likely. Bragg has moth-balled the case once before out of concern over its weakness; now it’s just as weak but another year has gone by, so it’s even more stale.

Even some intensely anti-Trump Democrats (such as Van Jones) have urged that Bragg stay his hand. That is precisely because they are intensely anti-Trump: Their fear is that a weak prosecution brought by Bragg would discredit more serious investigations of Trump, involving his efforts to reverse the 2020 presidential election and his illegal retention of government intelligence at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

We’ll continue watching it closely. If the Post is right, though, it may be weeks before we hear of any new developments in Bragg’s Trump investigation, assuming there are going to be any new developments, which is uncertain.  

ATTACHMENT SIXTY - From the New York Times

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE POTENTIAL INDICTMENT OF DONALD TRUMP

The grand jury that is hearing evidence in the hush-money investigation might not meet on Wednesday, and the timing of any potential indictment remains unknown.

By Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich and William K. Rashbaum

March 28, 2023

An indictment of Donald J. Trump has been widely anticipated since the former president predicted his arrest earlier this month, but the timing of any charges remains a mystery.

Two people with knowledge of the grand jury’s schedule said that, as of Tuesday afternoon, the panel was not expected to meet on Wednesday. But grand jury proceedings are kept secret and timing can change.

The timing of any vote to indict is subject to the quirks of the grand jury process in Manhattan, which includes scheduling conflicts and other unexpected interruptions.

The special grand jury hearing evidence in the Trump investigation meets on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The panel need not meet each of those days; it only convenes when the district attorney’s office summons the jurors.

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Although the panel has typically heard evidence unrelated to that inquiry on Thursdays, on that day last week, the prosecutors leading the Trump investigation were in front of the grand jury.

The timing of an indictment might also depend on the availability of the jurors themselves. Sixteen of the 23 grand jurors must be present to conduct any business (and a majority must vote to indict for the case to go forward). For the prosecutors to seek the vote, the jurors in attendance that day must have previously heard all key witness testimony.

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Still, the prospect of an indictment has raised a number of questions about the contours of the potential case facing Mr. Trump, who would become the first former American president to be indicted.

Alvin L. Bragg, the district attorney, is focused on Mr. Trump’s involvement in the payment of hush money to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with him. Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time, made the payment during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

While the facts are dramatic, the case against Mr. Trump could hinge on an untested legal theory. A conviction is far from assured.

Here’s what we know, and don’t know, about the longest running investigation into Mr. Trump:

How did this all begin?

Prosecutors could argue that the payment to Ms. Daniels effectively became an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, under the theory that it benefited him by silencing her.

In October 2016, during the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Ms. Daniels was trying to sell her story of an affair with Mr. Trump.

The Possible Indictment of Donald Trump

· Specter of Violence Looms: In a social media post, Donald Trump warned of “potential death and destruction” if he was indicted. Hours later, the Manhattan district attorney’s office received a threatening letter.

· Suppressing October Surprises: The payoff to Stormy Daniels that has a Manhattan grand jury weighing criminal charges against Trump can trace its lineage to political skulduggery in 1968 and 1980.

· Perp-Walk Fixation: As Trump focuses on how an indictment would look, he has appeared significantly disconnected from the severity of his potential legal woes.

· From Ally to Antagonist: Michael Cohen once said he would take a bullet for Trump. Now, Cohen is hoping to help prosecutors put him away.

At first, Ms. Daniels’s representatives contacted The National Enquirer to offer exclusive rights to her story. David Pecker, the tabloid’s publisher and a longtime ally of Mr. Trump, had agreed to look out for potentially damaging stories about him during the 2016 campaign, and at one point even agreed to buy the story of another woman’s affair with Mr. Trump and never publish it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”

But Mr. Pecker didn’t purchase Ms. Daniels’s story. Instead, he and the tabloid’s top editor, Dylan Howard, helped broker a separate deal between Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels’s lawyer.

Mr. Cohen paid $130,000, and Mr. Trump later reimbursed him from the White House.

In 2018, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to a number of charges, including federal campaign finance crimes involving the hush money. The payment, federal prosecutors concluded, amounted to an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign.

In the days after Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea, the district attorney’s office opened its own criminal investigation into the matter. While the federal prosecutors were focused on Mr. Cohen, the district attorney’s inquiry would center on Mr. Trump.

So what did Mr. Trump possibly do wrong?

When pleading guilty in federal court, Mr. Cohen pointed the finger at his boss. It was Mr. Trump, he said, who directed him to pay off Ms. Daniels, a contention that prosecutors later corroborated.

The prosecutors also raised questions about Mr. Trump’s monthly reimbursement checks to Mr. Cohen. They said in court papers that Mr. Trump’s company “falsely accounted” for the monthly payments as legal expenses and that company records cited a retainer agreement with Mr. Cohen. Although Mr. Cohen was a lawyer, and became Mr. Trump’s personal attorney after he took office, there was no such retainer agreement and the reimbursement was unrelated to any legal services Mr. Cohen performed.

Mr. Cohen has said that Mr. Trump knew about the phony retainer agreement, an accusation that could form the basis of the case against the former president.

In New York, falsifying business records can amount to a crime, albeit a misdemeanor. To elevate the crime to a felony charge, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime.

In this case, that second crime could be a violation of election law. While hush money is not inherently illegal, the prosecutors could argue that the $130,000 payout effectively became an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, under the theory that it benefited his candidacy because it silenced Ms. Daniels.

Will it be a tough case to prove?

Even if Mr. Trump is indicted, convicting him or sending him to prison could be challenging. For one thing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers are sure to attack Mr. Cohen’s credibility by citing his criminal record. (Prosecutors might counter that the former fixer lied years ago on behalf of his boss at the time, and is now in the best position to detail Mr. Trump’s conduct.)

The case against Mr. Trump might also hinge on an untested legal theory.

According to legal experts, New York prosecutors have never before combined the falsifying business records charge with a violation of state election law in a case involving a presidential election, or any federal campaign. Because this is uncharted territory, it is possible that a judge could throw it out or reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor.

Even if the charge is allowed to stand, it amounts to a low-level felony. If Mr. Trump were ultimately convicted, he would face a maximum sentence of four years, though prison time would not be mandatory.

How did prosecutors convey that charges were likely?

Prosecutors in the district attorney’s office have signaled to Mr. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges.

They did this by offering Mr. Trump the chance to testify before the grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the inquiry, people with knowledge of the matter have said. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close; it would be unusual for prosecutors to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.

In New York, potential defendants have the right to answer questions in front of the grand jury before they are indicted, but they rarely testify, and Mr. Trump declined the offer.

Prosecutors have also questioned at least nine witnesses before the grand jury — including almost every major player in the hush money saga, again suggesting that the district attorney’s presentation is nearing an end. A prospective defendant can request that jurors hear from a witness on his or her behalf, but the jurors can choose whether they wish to do so.

Will Mr. Trump definitely be indicted?

There is still a faint possibility that Mr. Trump will not face charges. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have met privately with the prosecutors in hopes of fending off an indictment.

Once the grand jury witnesses have concluded their testimony, the prosecutors will need to present the charges and explain the law to the grand jurors, who will vote on an indictment. It is not clear how long that process will take, as the charges remain unknown. Although it is not a foregone conclusion that the grand jury would indict Mr. Trump, such panels routinely vote to bring the charges that prosecutors seek.

Until then, Mr. Bragg could decide to pump the brakes. As of now, however, that seems highly unlikely.

What has Mr. Trump said in his defense?

Mr. Trump has referred to the investigation as a “witch hunt” against him that began before he became president, and has called Mr. Bragg, who is Black and a Democrat, a “racist” who is motivated by politics. Last week, he escalated his rhetoric, calling Mr. Bragg an “animal” and insulting by name one of the lead prosecutors on the case. The former president has consistently denied having had an affair with Ms. Daniels.

Earlier this month, Mr. Trump, in a post on his social network Truth Social, declared that his arrest was imminent, calling on his supporters to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” — rhetoric reminiscent of his posts in the lead-up to the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Trump’s team has launched a series of political attacks on Mr. Bragg and is prepared to falsely portray any charges as part of a coordinated Democratic Party offensive against him.

ATTACHMENT SIXTY ONE – From GUK

TRUMP’S VERBAL ASSAULTS POSE RISKS TO PROSECUTORS AND COULD FUEL VIOLENCE

Trump has resorted to ‘incendiary rhetoric’ to deter investigations and to rile up his base, experts say, and shows no sign of letting up

Peter Stone in Washington Tue 28 Mar 2023 05.00 EDT

Donald Trump’s demagogic attacks on prosecutors investigating potential criminal charges against him are aimed at riling up his base and could spark violence – but show no signs of letting up as a potential indictment in at least one case looms, say legal experts.

At campaign rallies, speeches and on social media, Trump has lambasted state and federal prosecutors as “thugs” and claimed that two of them – who are Black – are “racist”, language designed to inflame racial tension.

He has also used antisemitic tropes by referring to a conspiracy of “globalists” and the influence of the billionaire financier George Soros, who is Jewish.

Trump’s drive to undercut four criminal inquiries he faces is reaching a fever pitch, as a Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry looks poised to bring charges against Trump over his key role in a $130,000 hush-money payment in 2016 to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had an affair.

In his blitz to deter and obfuscate two of the criminal investigations, Trump has resorted to verbal assaults on two Black district attorneys in Manhattan and Georgia, calling them “racist”, even as he simultaneously battles to win the White House again.

In a broader attack on the four state and federal investigations, at a Texas rally on Saturday Trump condemned the “thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system”, while on his Truth Social platform last week he warned of “possible death and destruction” if he is charged in the hush-money inquiry.

But now Trump’s incendiary attacks against the federal and state inquiries are prompting warnings that he could be fueling violence, as he did on January 6, with bogus claims that the 2020 was stolen from him and a mob of his backers attacked the Capitol, leading to at least five deaths.

“Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, amplified through his social media postings and his high-decibel fear-mongering in Texas, pose clear physical dangers to prosecutors and investigators,” said the former acting chief of the fraud section at the justice department, Paul Pelletier. “With Trump’s actions in promoting the January 6 insurrection serving as a cautionary tale, the potential for violent reactions to any of his charges cannot be understated.”

Ex-prosecutors see Trump reverting to tactics he has often deployed in legal and political battles.

Trump’s invective, say experts, will not deter prosecutors as they separately weigh fraud, obstruction and other charges related to January 6 and other issues, but echo scare tactics he has used before – as in his two impeachments – and may help Trump’s chances of becoming the Republican nominee by angering the base that could influence primary outcomes.

“None of these accusations about the motives of prosecutors, however, will negate the evidence of Trump’s own crimes. A jury will focus on the facts and the law, and not any of this name-calling. The Trump strategy may work in the court of public opinion, but not in a court of law,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan.

That may explain why Trump has received more political cover from three conservative House committee chairs, who joined his effort to intimidate the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, by launching investigations to obtain his records and testimony, threats that Bragg and legal experts have denounced as political stunts and improper.

The legal stakes for Trump are enormous, and unprecedented for a former president, as the criminal inquiries have been gaining momentum, with more key witnesses who have past or present ties to Trump testifying before grand juries, and others getting subpoenas.

Two investigations led by special counsel Jack Smith are separately looking into possible charges against Trump for obstructing an official proceeding and defrauding the US government, as he schemed with top allies to block Joe Biden from taking office, and potential obstruction and other charges tied to Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office.

Further, the Fulton county Georgia district attorney, Fani Willis, has said decisions are “imminent” about potentially charging Trump and others who tried to overturn Joe Biden’s win there in 2020 with erroneous claims of fraud.

Much of the investigation’s work has involved a special grand jury that reportedly has recommended several indictments, with a focus on Trump’s high-pressure call on 2 January 2021 to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, beseeching him to just “find” 11,780 votes to help block Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing, and denounced the inquiries as “witch-hunts”.

Little wonder, though, that Trump’s squadron of lawyers has lately filed a batch of motions in Georgia and Washington, with mixed success, to slow prosecutors as they move forward in gathering evidence from key witnesses and mull charges against Trump.

“Blustering in court or in the media about the supposed bias or racism of the Fulton county and Manhattan county prosecutors will not convince a court to remove a democratically elected prosecutor, and certainly the Republicans in the House of Representatives have no legal authority ability to influence the course of criminal justice in New York state proceedings,” said Bruce Green, a Fordham law professor and ex-prosecutor in New York’s southern district.

The charges of racism against the prosecutors is more of an indication of the weakness of his claims than most anything else he has said

Green said: “None of Trump’s moves, such as calling prosecutors racists, are likely to throw any of the prosecutors off their game: prosecutors tend to be focused, determined and thick-skinned.”

Likewise, ex-US attorney in Georgia Michael Moore told the Guardian the Trump attacks on the two black prosecutors are “completely baseless. The charges of racism against the prosecutors is more of an indication of the weakness of his claims than most anything else he has said.”

Moore scoffed, too, at the moves by Trump’s House Republican allies.

He said: “It’s rich to me that the Republicans in the House claim to be the party of limited government, but as soon as they get in power and look like they might lose another election, they immediately use their big government power to meddle in a matter that purely belongs to the local jurisdiction.”

NYU law professor Stephen Gillers said he sees similar dynamics at play in Trump’s tactics.

“Trump cannot stop the judicial process, although he can try to slow it. But he can undermine its credibility through his charges and by mobilizing his supporters. I see what he’s doing now as aimed at them, just as he tried to discredit the election returns in their eyes and anger them with baseless charges over the ‘steal’'.”

The weakness of Trump’s legal moves was revealed in two court rulings in DC requiring testimony before grand juries from former top aides including ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the January 6 inquiry, and one of his current lawyers, Evan Corcoran, in the classified documents case.

The two rulings should give a good boost to the special counsel in his separate investigations of Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss on January 6 when Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s win, about which Meadows must now testify, and Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House, about which Corcoran has to testify.

As the four investigations intensify, more aggressive moves by Trump and his lawyers to derail potential charges in Georgia, Manhattan and from the special counsel are expected before, as well as after, any charges may be filed.

“If I were on the prosecution teams in Manhattan or Georgia, I would expect Trump to assert every defense he can think of, including accusing the prosecutors of misconduct,” McQuade said.

A judge on Monday ordered Willis to respond by 1 May to the Trump team’s motion seeking to bar her from further investigating or charging Trump, and wants all testimony from 75 witnesses – including Meadows and Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani – before the special grand jury rejected.

The judge’s order was in response to a Trump legal motion that McQuade said “appears to be baseless”.

Former Watergate prosecutor Philip Lacovara told the Guardian that Trump’s lawyers are deploying different legal tactics in the investigations.

“The Georgia strategy is partly a strategy of delay,” in which the Trump team is “raising dozens and dozens of objections, many of which are specious, in the hope that one will be sufficient to work on appeal and to keep him out of jail,” Lacovara said.

In Manhattan, he added, they are trying “to create the impression that this is a highly visible political stunt to exclude Trump from running”.

That tactic could help in “trying to pollute the jury pool” since a hung jury would be good for Trump. “All he needs is one juror who believes this is all a concocted plot.”

Former DoJ officials and experts expect Trump and his lawyers will keep up a frenzied stream of hyperbolic attacks and legal actions.

“This is more of what we saw during the election,” said former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer, who served in the George HW Bush administration. “He throws up gibberish and obstruction.”

ATTACHMENT SIXTY TWO – From NBC

N.Y. GRAND JURY NOT EXPECTED TO VOTE ON POSSIBLE TRUMP INDICTMENT THIS WEEK

The panel is not expected to meet Wednesday, three sources said.

March 28, 2023, 3:19 PM EDT / Updated March 28, 2023, 3:49 PM EDT

By Jonathan Dienst and Zoë Richards

The New York grand jury considering possible criminal charges against former President Donald Trump related to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election is not expected to be asked to vote on an indictment this week, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The grand jury is not expected to meet Wednesday, the sources said, the next day the panel had been regularly scheduled to convene.

The grand jury concluded its activities Monday without having voted on any indictment stemming from allegations made by Daniels, an adult film star who said she had an affair with Trump beginning in 2006.

NBC News reported in late January that prosecutors had convened a grand jury to hear testimony in New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s probe into the $130,000 payment to Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. The investigation has been focused on allegations that Trump falsified business records in connection with the payment.

Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, pleaded guilty in 2018 to making the illegal payment to Daniels for the “principal purpose of influencing” the 2016 presidential election, saying in federal court that he did so on Trump's orders and that Trump paid him back.

Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison in connection with the payment and other crimes, testified before the Manhattan grand jury this month.

The grand jury heard from an additional witness in the investigation Monday.

The panel has been meeting Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The sources cautioned that the schedule is subject to change but said that the grand jury for now is expected to return Thursday to hear a matter separate from the Trump hush money case.

Trump has repeatedly said he did not have a relationship with Daniels, and he has denied any wrongdoing regarding the payment.

“I never had a relationship with her. I never had an affair with her. It’s all made up," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an interview that aired Monday night.

Trump, who maintained that the payment to Daniels was not a campaign contribution, also claimed that Bragg's probe was an effort to cheat in elections by his opponents. “It’s called election interference,” he said on Fox News.

WEDNESDAY, 3/30 Dawn until 3:30 PM

ATTACHMENT SIXTY THREE – From Newsweek

Trump Lawyer Claims Hush Money Probe Is 'Dead' as Investigation Continues

BY EWAN PALMER ON 3/29/23 AT 4:11 AM EDT

Pause

A lawyer for Donald Trump has claimed the hush money investigation into him is "dead," one week from the day the former president claimed he would be arrested as part of the probe.

Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan told Newsmax that the "weak" case against the former president is ending with no indictment for the Republican. Halligan's claim appeared to be more of a suggestion rather than an indication from authorities, adding that if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's inquiry is not "dead" then "it should be."

Trump made an uncorroborated claim that he would be arrested in New York on Tuesday, March 21, as part of the investigation into whether the $130,000 he arranged to be paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep an alleged affair the pair had a secret before the 2016 election amounted to a campaign violation. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and denies having an affair with Daniels in 2006.

It is widely believed that a grand jury in New York who have been hearing evidence would soon be voting on the historically significant decision on whether to indict the former president. However, NBC reported, citing unnamed sources, that the grand jury will not meet on Wednesday as scheduled and any indictment vote will not take place this week.

"I think they just are trying to keep the case alive—but it looks like the case is dead," Halligan said. "If not, it should be. Bragg needs to wrap this case up, stop focusing on someone who doesn't even live in New York City, and focus on protecting those living in New York City from the violent crime going on there."

On Monday, David Pecker, the former head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer tabloid who was said to have turned down the chance to buy Daniels' story about the alleged affair, testified for the second time to the grand jury as part of the investigation.

Halligan said that Pecker answering questions for the second time shows that the case is "weak" and that there is "chaos" from the D.A.'s office.

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Halligan also said Bragg's investigation into Trump is politically motivated, while noting how much the 2024 Republican candidate can still draw a crowd.

"I think it really comes down to who else can get 20,000 or more people to go to Waco, Texas, for a 90-minute speech, who can even get 2,000 people to go watch them speak for 90 minutes," Halligan said.

"That's what this is all about. They hate to acknowledge that President Trump can draw a crowd. He has created a patriotic movement, and it seems that some people just can't stand that."

READ MORE

1. Grand jury schedule sparks new speculation about Trump indictment

2. Silence during Donald Trump's rally hints at huge DeSantis problem

3. Donald Trump's bizarre Alvin Bragg baseball bat "threat" explanation

Local press reports that the true figure of the crowd size at Trump's first public 2024 campaign rally in Waco on Saturday was around 15,000 to 18,000.

In a Truth Social post on Tuesday dismissing Bragg's investigation, Trump said: "How do you indict an innocent man, a former very successful President who is now running and leading in the polls, that every legal scholar, and virtually every 'hater,' says, 'Don't do it, there is no case here?' This is what happens in Third World countries which sadly, the USA is rapidly becoming!"

ATTACHMENT SIXTY FOUR – From From the Los Angeles Times

COLUMN: SCANDAL AFTER SCANDAL, TRUMP HAS DEFIED POLITICAL PHYSICS. WILL THIS TIME BE DIFFERENT?

BY MARK Z. BARABAK

MARCH 29, 2023 5 AM PT

From the moment he blustered his way onto the political stage, Donald Trump defied expectations.

He won the White House despite lacking any government or military experience, a first in the nation’s history. As a candidate and then as president, Trump drew supporters ever closer with his brash, impulsive and decidedly unpresidential behavior — not in spite of it.

When he was denied a second term, Trump failed to recede from politics, as his predecessors have. And now he’s again broken ground — breaking things being a singular capability — as he faces the very real prospect of being the first ex-president ever criminally indicted.

For those reasons, it’s foolhardy to predict the impact of Trump’s legal tangle with Manhattan’s prosecutor, the first of many potential prosecutions facing Trump. He remains, for the moment, the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination and, if so anointed, stands at least a decent chance of reclaiming the White House in 2024.

There is a strong case to be made, however, that things have changed — that Trump’s ability to defy political physics may have ended and his scot-free days are behind him.

POLITICS

Is Trump going to be arrested? Answers to questions about the former president’s legal troubles

March 20, 2023

In 2016, a Trump presidency was notional. He was perceived as an outsider, which many found compelling — a fist raised against Washington and a loud, uncouth voice speaking for the angry and aggrieved who felt they’d gone too long unheard and unheeded by the ruling class. Some reveled in his bombast and the way Trump blithely bulldozed political norms.

Others considered him better than the alternative, the shopworn Hillary Clinton, or made their peace by assuming that once in office, Trump would change — executing a much-anticipated but ultimately illusory “pivot” — and conduct a more conventional presidency.

Now voters know better.

After all the venomous tweets, the incessant lying, bigotry, narcissism and nepotism, the headstrong mismanagement of a deadly pandemic, after two impeachments and, most egregious, the attempted coup he suborned in the service of a lie he continues to promote, there is no doubting the nature of Trump.

Or what his return to the White House would mean.

Chaos envelops Trump like a bomb cyclone. Controversy trails him like the whiff off a cesspool. He warned of “potential death & destruction” if he were criminally charged, displaying once more his recklessness and titanic ego. The prospect of indictment is a dramatic reminder, if one was needed, of the former president’s essential mendacity and moral bankruptcy.

Polls show most Americans have tired of Trump, his wreckage and ruin.

Not those Fifth Avenue Republicans who constitute roughly a third of GOP voters, enough to boost Trump in the primary and make him the candidate to beat for the party’s nomination. (Trump’s famous statement that he could stand in the middle of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose support now seems less a boast than a matter of fact.)

Those die-hards are the ones that pandering Republicans, like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, seek to appease with their claims of Trump’s political persecution and victimhood. Lawmakers representing areas like McCarthy’s deep-red Bakersfield district have only that narrow slice of voters to consider.

POLITICS

Column: There’s a price for parroting Trump’s Big Lie. Will Republicans care?

March 14, 2023

But it’s hard to see Trump gaining support beyond his base if he were indicted in a sordid case involving hush money and extramarital sex, whatever the outcome of the legal process.

And the notion that Trump’s indictment would edge him closer to the White House by firing up supporters seems equally far-fetched; it’s not as though the blindly faithful get to cast three or four extra votes for their flimflam messiah. (Despite the lies they might have swallowed about the corruptibility of our election system.)

Trump’s repellent effect on swing voters and non-MAGA Republicans — especially women living in the nation’s abundant suburbs — has been well proved. It cost Republicans in 2018, when they lost control of the House; in 2020, when Joe Biden won the presidency; and in 2022, when the GOP, despite enormous advantages, failed to win a Senate majority and just barely reclaimed the House.

Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster and no fan of the ex-president, has conducted extensive research over the last several months among GOP primary voters, including some who supported Trump in 2016 and 2020.

“They’re just tired of the circus,” Matthews said.

They may think the many criminal investigations of Trump are “unfair to him,” she went on. “They may think it’s politically motivated. But the fact is the circus continues.”

Perhaps most significant, something else has changed since Trump first browbeat his way to the White House and into the hearts of Republicans: He’s now a certifiable, repeat loser.

“They want to win and they want to beat Biden,” Matthews said of many of those she’s surveyed. “They don’t think Trump can do it.”

POLITICS

Column: Forget decency. In today’s politics it’s all about nastiness and party loyalty

March 8, 2023

It’s easy, amid all the petulance and political machinations, to forget the essentials of the case against the former chief executive.

In 2006, Trump is alleged to have had an extramarital affair with the X-rated actor Stormy Daniels. Ten years later, his presidential bid was on the brink of collapse after the public release of a tape in which Trump is heard bragging of sexually mauling women.

His attorney and fixer at the time, Michael Cohen, took out a home equity loan and paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her mouth shut. Once in the White House, Trump signed checks reimbursing Cohen. The payments were listed as “legal expenses.”

It may be a stretch to hold Trump legally accountable, given the shaky foundation on which the New York case rests.

But the court of public opinion is something else, and the case against Trump is open and shut. The closest he should ever come again to the Oval Office is the chair he used as president and brought with him to Mar-a-Lago.

Best to lock him up in his resort compound and pitch the key into the Atlantic Ocean.

POLITICSWORLD & NATION

ATTACHMENT SIXTY FIVE – From From the Daily Beast x24

Stormy Daniels Set to Host OnlyFans Livestream Q&A Ahead of Possible Trump Indictment

‘By Dan Ladden-Hall Published Mar. 29, 2023 5:24AM ET 

Porn star Stormy Daniels is gearing up to host a Q&A on her OnlyFans account in an event that is likely to be dominated by questions surrounding a potential indictment of Donald Trump. An anticipated indictment of the former president—over allegations of a hush-money payment to Daniels to cover up an affair—is still yet to materialize despite Trump’s claim that he expected to be arrested last week. Nevertheless, Trump has continued to cite the possible indictment in recent attacks on Daniels, who he likes to call “horseface.” “This is going to be entertaining,” Daniels wrote in a Twitter post promoting the livestream Q&A, which is scheduled to take place at 9 p.m. EST Wednesday. “Get your questions ready.” The post says attendees at the events will hear Daniels’ answers “straight from the horse’s mouth.”

ATTACHMENT SIXTY SIX – From Newsweek

TRUMP CELEBRATES SUDDEN CHANGE TO GRAND JURY SCHEDULE

BY NICK REYNOLDS ON 3/29/23 AT 10:30 AM EDT

PauseUnmute

One week after his anticipated arrest by New York City prosecutors failed to materialize, former President Donald Trump has a theory on why the grand jury investigating his role in an alleged hush money scheme has suddenly and, without warning, gone quiet: They've got nothing on him.

Taking to Truth Social on Tuesday morning, Trump—who is currently under investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office for campaign finance violations for paying off former adult film star Stormy Daniels in an effort to influence the 2016 presidential election—speculated the grand jury had grown skeptical of the DA's case, and was refusing to act as a "rubber stamp" for the prosecution.

Late Tuesday night, multiple news outlets reported that the panel convened by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would not be meeting as originally expected Wednesday, marking the second time in a week the panel had canceled its behind-closed-doors proceedings without explanation.

After Trump's predictions of his imminent arrest on March 21 came and went without an indictment, Trump concluded, without offering evidence, that there was only one reasonable explanation for the delays—they simply don't have a case.

"I have gained such respect for this grand jury, & perhaps even the grand jury system as a whole," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "The evidence is so overwhelming in my favor, & so ridiculously bad for the highly partisan & hateful district attorney, that the grand jury is saying, hold on, we are not a rubber stamp, which most grand juries are branded as being, we are not going to vote against a preponderance of evidence or against large numbers of legal scholars all saying there is no case here."

"Drop this sick witch hunt, now!" he added.

Newsweek reached out to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office via email for comment.

The grand jury has continued to meet, including Monday meetings with witnesses like former National Inquirer publisher David Pecker, who played a key role in connecting attorneys for Trump with legal representatives for Daniels in arranging the alleged payments.

However, Trump's statements come amid some questions about the strength of the case, which revolve around whether Trump's off-the-books use of personal funds to pay for a critic's silence about a potential political scandal could merit fraud or an illegal contribution to his campaign.

Some legal scholars who have commented on the strength of other cases against the former president, like Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, have panned the fundamentals of any case Bragg could bring against Trump, with Dershowitz claiming in a Daily Mail op-ed last week that the most serious charge Bragg could possibly bring against Trump would be a misdemeanor.

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Other articles have been written about the case's star witness, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who admitted to making the payment on Trump's behalf, potentially jeopardizing his credibility due to his willingness to engage with the news media.

But the key to charges against Trump might not be the $130,000 hush money payment he and his team could be accused of making: it could be his actions throughout the course of the case.

On Sunday, former federal prosecutor-turned-legal-analyst Glenn Kirschner claimed Trump had committed a series of crimes that would warrant new charges in the case, including the former president's publication of a number of heated posts about Bragg that could be seen as threats against an officer of the law.

Trump's former attorney Joe Tacopina—who has faced concerns his involvement would present a potential conflict of interest that could jeopardize Trump's defense—acknowledged the posts were "ill-advised."

However, Trump's team had previously dismissed Kirschner's legal credibility in prior statements given to Newsweek, saying the former prosecutor was a "notorious trafficker of wild conspiracy theories and dubious legal analysis."

"I would expect nothing more from a clout-chasing MSNBC contributor who has been shunned by the legal community at large," the statement read.

· Fox displays poll showing 61% of people don't want Donald Trump back

It's likely that Daniels won't reveal any new information about the allegations in her livestream.

"It seems she has a pretty consistent story from the beginning," Aronberg said.

Trump has not taken kindly to people close to the situation discussing the case in the past, especially when Cohen testified before the grand jury and discussed his experience with various media outlets the following day.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign by email for comment.

Daniels has not testified before the grand jury, but on March 15, her attorney, Clark Brewster, tweeted that he and Daniels met with the Manhattan prosecutors involved in the case.

"At the request of the Manhattan DA's office Stormy Daniels and I met with prosecutors today," Brewster tweeted. "Stormy responded to questions and has agreed to make herself available as a witness, or for further inquiry if needed."

Newsweek reached out to Brewster's office through an online contact form for comment.

Update 3/29/23, 3:57 p.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from Dave Aronberg.

ATTACHMENT SIXTY SEVEN – From Newsweek x21

Stormy Daniels to Host Q&A Amid Possible Trump Indictment

BY ANNA SKINNER ON 3/29/23 AT 12:47 PM EDT

Pause

· Stormy Daniels will hold a Q&A session on her OnlyFans account Wednesday night, as a grand jury mulls former President Donald Trump's case.

· Trump has been investigated by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in a case regarding an alleged hush money payment to Daniels.

· Daniels is likely to receive questions concerning her alleged involvement with Trump.

Adult film star Stormy Daniels will conduct a question-and-answer session on her OnlyFans account Wednesday night as a grand jury continues to mull the case against former President Donald Trump.

Trump has been investigated by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the case, which centers around an alleged $130,000 payment to Daniels during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Trump allegedly arranged for his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to pay Daniels. Trump has denied all the allegations, including Daniels' claim that they had an affair.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, posted the link to her OnlyFans account on Twitter on Tuesday night.

OnlyFans is an online content-sharing platform. Creators can upload any kind of content, like photography, creative writing or recipes, for example. The platform is particularly popular with sex workers.

Daniels is bound to receive some questions regarding her alleged involvement with Trump, as she dubbed the session "Straight from the horse's mouth," a shot at Trump who frequently refers to Daniels as "horseface."

The livestream session is scheduled for 9 p.m. ET.

"This is going to be entertaining," Daniels tweeted. "Get your questions ready."

The livestream requires a subscription to Daniels' OnlyFans account. It comes amid speculation about the grand jury and a possible indictment that ramped up March 18, when Trump said on Truth Social that he believed he would be arrested the following Tuesday. There has been no indictment, but some attorneys on Twitter are speculating about the jury's schedule this week and what it might mean.

Daniels is hosting her Q&A a day before the grand jury is scheduled to meet again, although it is unclear if they will continue to discuss Trump's case.

Palm Beach County (Florida) State Attorney Dave Aronberg told Newsweek that there are likely no legal ramifications to Daniels answering Trump-related questions on her livestream. But there are risks.

"If she is going to be a key witness for any future prosecution, anything she says can be used to impeach her testimony later on," Aronberg said. "So, if she says something that contradicts what she says at a future trial, those statements can be used against her."

ATTACHMENT SIXTY EIGHT – From Business Insider

THE TRUMP GRAND JURY IS TAKING A WEEKSLONG BREAK, CLOUDING WHEN POTENTIAL CHARGES COULD BE FILED AGAINST THE FORMER PRESIDENT

By Natalie Musumeci, Jacob Shamsian, and Laura Italiano  Mar 29, 2023, 12:36 PM

· The Trump grand jury in Manhattan won't hear the case for nearly a month.

· The break upends expectations about when an indictment might be filed. 

· It's also possible jurors voted Monday to indict, but the DA's office is slow-walking charges.

The Manhattan grand jury weighing possible criminal charges against former president Donald Trump concering a 2016 a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels will not take up the case again in the next few weeks, a source familiar with the case told Insider.

The grand jury will not revisit the Trump investigation until the week of April 24 "at the earliest," the source said.

For the rest of this week and next week, the grand jury is expected to hear evidence in an unrelated case and take time off for the upcoming Passover holiday. Politico first reported on the break. What, no Easter? Jews!!!

That'll be followed by a two-week hiatus that was already scheduled when the grand jury was first convened by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg earlier this year, a person familiar with the proceedings told Politico.

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The planned time-off clouds when a potential indictment against Trump could be filed.

The Manhattan district attorney's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Insider. Trump's attorney Joe Tacopina told Insider he hadn't heard from the DA's office about any break.

Bragg convened the grand jury to probe whether to bring charges against Trump over his alleged role in paying Daniels $130,000 in the days before the 2016 election to keep quiet about an alleged affair with the porn star.

Trump has denied wrongdoing, denied the affair, and derided Bragg's investigation as a "witch hunt."

Former prosecutors previously told Insider that the district attorney does have the power to slow-walk the filing of an indictment and that the grand jury may have already voted.

"It's entirely possible that they have voted already," the source with knowledge of the case told Insider.

If and when an indictment is filed — meaning the grand jury has formally charged Trump with crimes — Bragg is expected to contact multiple agencies and individuals at approximately the same time.

Those "an indictment has been filed" calls will go out to the Secret Service, the New York Police Department, other law enforcement, and Trump's defense lawyers.

"The Secret Service has been told they will get a heads up" as soon as an indictment is filed, the source said. "That's when the Secret Service will make final plans for how to bring Trump to court. But they're waiting until it's filed."

Grand jury activity has slowed down in the Trump probe

The grand jury investigation has already taken longer than expected.

The Manhattan district attorney's office spent years investigating Trump's finances and won convictions for tax crimes last year against the Trump Organization and executive Allen Weisselberg. Earlier this year, it convened the grand jury to hear the hush-money case, which appears to be smaller in scope than the possible financial crimes prosecutors had previously examined.

Michael Cohen, who facilitated the payments to Daniels ahead of the 2016 election and pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the scheme in 2018, testified for grand jurors earlier in March. After Cohen's testimony, Bragg's office extended an offer for Trump to testify, indicating it was nearly finished presenting evidence to the grand jury.

Trump's attorneys sent Robert Costello, an attorney who told grand jurors on March 20 that Cohen was a liar and couldn't be trusted.

Since then, the grand jury — which typically meets Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons — has appeared to move in fits and starts.

It took breaks and heard from other cases over the following week. Cohen was not called back as a rebuttal witness, his lawyer Lanny Davis said following Costello's testimony.

For Monday's grand jury session, Bragg's office brought David Pecker, a former media executive who participated in a plot to buy the rights to Daniels's story and keep it under lock and key. Pecker had testified earlier in the case and was brought back to testify again.

Alina Habba, who represents Trump in several civil lawsuits, said the slowing pace of the grand jury signaled the district attorney's case was weak.

"They are bringing repeat witnesses in and it appears the grand jury is not having it," she said in a statement. "It is not normal to take a three week break when you are up against a statute of limitations."

It's also possible that grand jurors already voted on Monday to bring charges against Trump and that its future sessions have no bearing on the ex-president's fate, a law enforcement source said Wednesday.

Former prosecutors told Insider that if grand jurors voted on Monday, Bragg's office can hold off indefinitely on filing them, a delay that would give law enforcement and city officials time to plan for make security arrangements ahead of an indictment being announced and Trump's first appearance in court.

Trump, for his part, has used the delays to proclaim his innocence. He previously said, without any basis, that he would be arrested on March 21 — a day that passed without incident.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, he praised the grand jury, which operates in secret.

"I HAVE GAINED SUCH RESPECT FOR THIS GRAND JURY, & PERHAPS EVEN THE GRAND JURY SYSTEM AS A WHOLE," he wrote in all-caps. "THE EVIDENCE IS SO OVERWHELMING IN MY FAVOR, & SO RIDICULOUSLY BAD FOR THE HIGHLY PARTISAN & HATEFUL DISTRICT ATTORNEY."

Trump hush money investigation

· The timeline leading to Donald Trump's possible indictment, from Stormy Daniels and 'hush money' to Michael Cohen's testimony

· How a Trump arrest would play out in NY: Yes, he'll be fingerprinted. No, he probably won't be handcuffed.

· A Trump lawyer risks being disqualified from his criminal defense because Stormy Daniels considered hiring him 5 years ago, experts say

· Trump is 'going about business as usual' and enjoying higher polling on the day he claimed he'd be arrested, his lawyer says

· Trump's legal troubles are threatening to upend the 2024 GOP race, and he's not even charged

ATTACHMENT SIXTY NINE - From the New York Post

Alvin Bragg could take ‘as long as he wants’ to file Trump indictment, experts say

By Priscilla DeGregory March 29, 2023 2:35pm 

MORE ON:DONALD TRUMP

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· Grand jury won’t hear evidence in Trump ‘hush money’ probe for rest of week: sources

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could take “as long as he wants” to actually file an indictment against former President Donald Trump — no matter when the grand jury votes, experts say.

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker on Monday testified before the grand jury that has been hearing evidence against the former president in the DA’s Stormy Daniels “hush money” investigation since late January.

The panel, which sources said won’t convene in the case for the next month, could have voted on whether to indict Trump after Pecker’s testimony — but no one except the jurors and prosecutors would know for sure due to the secretive nature of the closed-door proceeding.

“The DA can take as long as he wants” to file an indictment with the clerk’s office, former Brooklyn prosecutor Adam Uris told The Post.

The main benefits in delaying handing up the indictment would be to buy time for Bragg’s office to negotiate Trump’s surrender for arrest and for the city to beef up security, Uris and other legal experts agreed.

Any delay could be an attempt “to keep the arrest and arraignment process from being a circus,” Uris said. “But it’s going to be a circus no matter what.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could delay filing any potential indictment the grand jury may bring against Donald Trump, experts say.AP

Still, Uris noted Bragg wouldn’t want to wait too long to file an indictment because the defense could argue that the moment the grand jury foreperson signs it, the speedy trial clock — the time by which Trump is entitled to go to trial — starts counting down.

Uris and other lawyers said that given Trump’s calls for supporters to protest if he’s indicted and how polarizing a figure he can be, security will be paramount for the city, the DA’s office and the Lower Manhattan courthouse.

Law enforcement will take “extraordinary steps to ensure the safety of court personnel and members of service, cops, etc.,” Uris said.

“I think an atmosphere has been created that lends itself to the possibility of political violence and I do think that law enforcement will take every opportunity to try to tamp that down.”

A grand jury has been hearing a case about whether to indict Trump in connection with the “hush money” payment made to Stormy Daniels.Getty Images

Bragg could also take any extra time to negotiate a surrender of Trump with his lawyers “as a courtesy. What Trump does with that, that is where the real circus will begin,” Uris said.

“My guess is eventually you will see Donald Trump and a team of lawyers walk into court rather than being led into court,” Uris said.

Another former Brooklyn prosecutor, Julie Rendelman, agreed that because a former president being indicted would be an “unparalleled event,” Bragg would want “as much time as possible” to prepare “for what’s to come and allow law enforcement along with the court to put safety measures in place  for any potential public unrest.”

Experts say one reason that Bragg may delay filing an indictment is to give the city time to prepare and beef up security.AP

“The DA can take as long as he wants” to file an indictment with the clerk’s office, former Brooklyn prosecutor Adam Uris told The Post.

The panel, which sources said won’t convene in the case for the next month, could have voted on whether to indict Trump after Pecker’s testimony — but no one except the jurors and prosecutors would know for sure due to the secretive nature of the closed-door proceeding.

Any delay could be an attempt “to keep the arrest and arraignment process from being a circus,” Uris said. “But it’s going to be a circus no matter what.”

A former prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s Office, Michael Bachner, said that “it’s not that unusual in long-term white-collar criminal investigations” for a DA to delay filing an indictment.

It’s usually done for logistics, security or sometimes even as a courtesy to a defendant — who may have an upcoming wedding, vacation or holiday — to buy them time before they are arrested, Bachner said.

The process of voting on an indictment is much faster than jury deliberations at trial — which can take days and even weeks — since only 12 of the 23 members of the grand jury need to agree and since the bar for an indictment is much lower than for a conviction.

“You go back to the old saying that ‘A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich,'” Uris said, referencing a famous quote by Sol Wachtler, the former chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

Trump predicted his arrest last week and called for supporters to protest.AP

“It’s a much lower bar to clear, so deliberations tend to be a lot quicker,” he said, noting that when he was a prosecutor, he once saw a grand jury take less than a minute to deliberate.

But the experts noted that there is no way to say for sure whether the grand jury has already voted on an indictment against Trump and Bragg was just slow-walking the paperwork.

“It’s a sealed indictment,” Uris said.

“The DA’s Office is pretty much prohibited from talking about it. The jurors are prohibited from talking about it. The only person who can talk about it is the defendant.”

Uris predicted the public will first find out after the DA’s Office notifies Trump’s attorneys, who could then publicize it.

The city and the courthouses have already been prepping for any potential backlash that may come if he’s indicted.AP

“None of us really have a true understanding of what’s going on,” Uris added. “The only people who truly know what’s happening is Bragg and a small circle of prosecutors that are working on this case.”

The grand jury has been hearing testimony and seeing evidence related to allegations that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid former porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her from going public with her claims that she had an affair with Trump.

33

What do you think? Post a comment.

The payment was made in 2016 in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

Prosecutors are reportedly trying to get an indictment on the charge of falsifying business records based on the premise that the payment to Daniels should have been disclosed as a campaign contribution.

ATTACHMENT SEVENTY - From Business Insider

Manhattan DA lawyers feared Stormy Daniels case against Trump was too weak to bring without other criminal charges, report says

By Jacob Shamsian and Natalie Musumeci Mar 29, 2023, 3:23 PM

· Manhattan DA lawyers worried about indicting Trump over "hush money" payments to Stormy Daniels.

· Three lawyers thought the case wouldn't work as standalone charges, according to the Daily Beast.

· The expected charges have numerous weaknesses, experts say.

Three attorneys who worked on the Manhattan district attorney's criminal investigation into Donald Trump believed the anticipated indictment against the former president over hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels was too weak to bring as a standalone case, according to the Daily Beast.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is expected to ask grand jurors to charge Trump with falsifying business records over payments made to Michael Cohen, his former fixer, who in turn paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet ahead of the 2016 presidential election about an affair she said she had with Trump.  

In order to convict Trump on felony charges, prosecutors would need to prove Trump intended to commit or wanted to conceal a separate crime through the payments.

That's a significant hurdle that poses several challenges. Prosecutors could argue that Trump tried to conceal violations of federal campaign finance laws — something Cohen pleaded guilty to in 2018. But a judge might believe the Manhattan district attorney's office is overreaching by enforcing federal law. If the case gets to a jury, jurors may wonder why federal prosecutors didn't bring charges against Trump, or they might not believe Cohen's testimony.

"The Stormy case was the easiest, the most straightforward, but had the risk of being nothing more than a misdemeanor," one source told the Daily Beast.

According to the lawyers who worked on the matter, the "hush money" charges were meant to be part of a broader business fraud case against Trump.

The investigation into Trump began in 2017 under Bragg's predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., triggered by Cohen's congressional testimony about the payments to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

It grew to encompass the finances of the Trump Organization. Prosecutors ultimately brought tax fraud charges against the company and executive Allen Weisselberg — and won in court — but didn't charge Trump with the scheme.

Bragg's resistance to charging Trump with financial crimes frustrated former top prosecutor Mark Pomerantz and led him to quit in early 2022. (Bragg's office has maintained that the evidence collected by Pomerantz wasn't strong enough to bring a winnable case.) Since then, the investigation has moved back to the hush-money payments.

A representative for the Manhattan district attorney's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Experts say the case is far from a slam-dunk

Mark Bederow, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney's office, said a case against Trump solely on the hush-money payments was "likely to fail."

The relatively low stakes and convoluted nature of the anticipated charges could give "reasonable doubt" to jurors hearing the case, according to Bederow.

"They have to demonstrate that his intent was to defraud and also that his intent was also to cover up another crime," Bederow told Insider.

There are a number of possible reasons why Trump might want to hide the payments to Daniels aside from covering up a campaign finance violation, Bederow said.

"What if he did that to protect his own reputation, to protect his wife from humiliation, or some personal reason?" Bederow said. "That's not an intent to defraud."

Trump has already laid the groundwork for this defense, calling the payments to Daniels part of an "extortion plot" in a video posted to social media on Monday. Trump has maintained that he's done nothing wrong and has derided Bragg's investigation as illegitimate. Joe Tacopina, an attorney for Trump, has said he expects any potential charges against his client to "eventually get tossed aside."

Another hurdle, according to former prosecutors, is that the case rests largely on the testimony of Cohen, who pleaded guilty to charges that he lied to Congress about Trump's business plans. Cohen has since sought to change his image as someone who's come clean about Trump, but jurors might view him as someone with an axe to grind.

"The more the case relies on documents instead of the testimony of Michael Cohen, the stronger it will be," Barbara McQuade, the former US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, previously told Insider's Sonam Sheth.

Bederow had more blunt terms about relying on Cohen's testimony in light of his previous guilty plea.

"That's a disaster as a prosecutor," he said. "You wouldn't rely on Michael Cohen to tell you the time of day unless you corroborated it with a clock. That's how awful a witness he is."

Trump hush money investigation

· The timeline leading to Donald Trump's possible indictment, from Stormy Daniels and 'hush money' to Michael Cohen's testimony

· How a Trump arrest would play out in NY: Yes, he'll be fingerprinted. No, he probably won't be handcuffed.

· A Trump lawyer risks being disqualified from his criminal defense because Stormy Daniels considered hiring him 5 years ago, experts say

· Trump is 'going about business as usual' and enjoying higher polling on the day he claimed he'd be arrested, his lawyer says

· Trump's legal troubles are threatening to upend the 2024 GOP race, and he's not even charged

Read next

The Trump grand jury is taking a weekslong break, clouding when potential charges could be filed against the former president