Trump is the only one talking about an indictment tomorrow. The authorities have said nothing and even Trump's lawyers have said he's just making it up. It seems likely that he is going to be indicted soon though-- either in the New York case, the Atlanta case or the federal case. Meanwhile, MAGAverse is growling and threatening, hoping to turn an arrest into an advantage for themselves. This morning, Charlie Sykes suggested to his readers that they should be alarmed because…
Trump has spent years now (1) delegitimizing the justice system, while (2) celebrating, embracing, and promising pardons to the violent seditionists of January 6.
Lest we forget, Trump called for the “termination” of the Constitution so he could be returned to power.
In the absence of legal consequences for the architects of the attack on the Capitol, and the tacit acceptance by the rest of the GOP, we should consider January 6 a dry run for what is to come.
This morning, Trump escalated, appealing directly to the NYPD, suggesting that officers not protect prosecutors and other officials who he called “THE ‘DEFUNDERS’ & ‘COP HATERS’ OF THE RADICAL LEFT THAT WANT TO PUT THEIR GREATEST CHAMPION & FRIEND IN PRISON…”
Writing for The Atlantic yesterday, Tom Nichols warned that Trump is at it again, summoning a violent mob to his defense. He “upped the ante by saying, in effect, that it doesn’t matter what’s in the indictment. Instead, he is warning all of us, point-blank, that he will violate the law if he wants to, and if you don’t like it, you can take it up with the mob that he can summon at will. This is pure authoritarianism, the flex of a would-be American caudillo who is betting that our fear of his goons is greater than our commitment to the rule of law. Once someone like Trump issues that kind of challenge, it doesn’t matter if the indictment is for murder, campaign-finance violations, or mopery with intent to gawk: The issue is whether our legal institutions can be bullied into paralysis… [I]f an indictment is in fact pending, our legal institutions and the people who serve in them should proceed with stoicism and determination. Trump, once again, is stress testing our institutions, and if he can scare off a state indictment by threatening a riot, he’ll do it again. After all, he thinks he got away with it on January 6, 2021— and so far, he has.”
Also yesterday, Juliette Kayyem explained how an indictment of Trump would offer the Secret Service a chance to restore its tarnished reputation. “After years in which some agents acted as Trump’s loyal servants,” she wrote, “the Secret Service must get back to basics. Although the agency faced considerable challenges before Trump became president, by the end of his presidency, its critics charged that its loyalty to the United States had been subsumed by its loyalty to a man. Trump regularly grifted off the service, charging it exorbitant hotel fees for his own protection on his properties. Trump broke the tradition of separating politics from protection when he appointed the deputy assistant director of the Secret Service, Anthony Ornato, to be his own deputy chief of staff; the service seemed a willing accomplice to Trump’s agenda. The roles played by both Ornato and the service in the January 6 insurrection were, at best, an embarrassing mess and, at worst, a sign that the service was not salvageable… As a former president, Trump is still a protectee. As a former president, though, he is also no longer in charge. He does not control the environment; he can make noise, but he cannot dictate the terms of his arrest. He may want a perp walk for fundraising purposes, but nobody has to promise him one… When a court demands that a person who is being detained be brought forward so that it can assess the legality of the detention, it issues a writ of habeas corpus— loosely, ‘produce the body.’ That is a clarifying way to think of the service’s role in the days ahead.”
This morning William Rashbaum, Jonah Bromich and Alan Feuer covered how NYC is preparing for MAGA blowback if Trump is indicted this week. They predicted that “The unprecedented arrest of a former commander in chief— one whose devoted supporters once staged a violent attack on the Capitol— will be anything but routine.” Trump and some of his neo-Nazi allies are determined to milk the event for all it’s worth— and he has already called on his followers to “protest… Take our nation back!” The trio of Times reporters wrote that he “has made it clear he plans to use the charges as part of a campaign strategy to rile up his base.”
In the wake of Trump’s public call for action, there were scattered signs that his followers were planning to protest on his behalf. The New York Young Republican Club announced on Sunday that it would hold a “peaceful protest of Alvin Bragg’s heinous attack” on Trump at an undisclosed location in Lower Manhattan on Monday evening.
On Saturday afternoon, the far-right provocateur Laura Loomer, who lives in Florida, declared on Twitter that she was organizing a pro-Trump rally outside Mar-a-Lago… to “protest Alvin Bragg’s WITCH HUNT.” But hours later, Loomer deleted the tweet and encouraged people to attend Trump’s upcoming political event in Texas instead.
On Twitter over the weekend, the far-right influencer Jack Posobiec called for Trump’s supporters to launch a “MAGA strike” and withdraw their money from banks en masse in an apparent effort to harm the financial system. Other Trump supporters circulated the main telephone number of Bragg’s office on social media and encouraged people to call and demand that charges not be filed against Trump.
Far darker messages were posted on pro-Trump chat boards like Patriots.win, a website formerly known as TheDonald.win, according to a review of social media by the the New York Times and by Advance Democracy Inc., a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that conducts public interest research. In its final report last year, the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 determined that TheDonald.win served as an important nexus for people to discuss and make plans for the Capitol attack.
In the hours after Trump’s message was posted on Saturday, some posters on Patriots.win, mostly writing under pseudonyms, called for people to join together to protect Trump.
“Surround Mar-a-Lago or wherever he currently is,” a person named “sir-coffee” wrote, “and prevent law-enforcement from entering.”
Other posters called for a violent response to Trump’s arrest and said they would welcome harm being done to Bragg.
“I’d celebrate someone taking out that criminal DA,” someone using the name “trauncher” wrote.
If Trump is indeed indicted and arraigned, it will be one of the most unusual and closely watched court proceedings in New York history. And accommodation may be made for the former president.
While it is standard for defendants arrested on felony charges to be handcuffed, it is unclear whether they will make an exception for Trump because of his status. Most defendants have their hands cuffed behind their backs, but some white-collar defendants who are deemed to pose less of a danger have their hands secured in front of them.
After an arraignment, Trump would likely be released on his own recognizance because an indictment likely would contain only nonviolent felony charges; under New York law, prosecutors cannot request bail in most such cases.
Trump will almost certainly be accompanied at every step of the process— from the moment he is taken into custody until his appearance before a judge— by armed agents of the United States Secret Service, who are required by law to protect him at all times. Security in the courthouse is provided by New York State court officers, an agency with which the Secret Service has worked in the past.
…Surrender, some might argue, is not in the confrontational former president’s DNA, and he often seems to relish antagonizing and attacking the prosecutors who have investigated him.
In the unlikely event that the former president refuses to surrender, he would put Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, his leading but undeclared rival for the Republican nomination, in an awkward political position. Under law, the role of DeSantis would be essentially ministerial and he would have few legal options other than approving an extradition request from New York.
Still, if New York prosecutors sought Trump’s extradition, DeSantis would face an unenviable dilemma. He would be compelled to choose between authorizing an arrest warrant for Trump and inflaming his base, or attempting in some way to aide his Republican rival, and possibly face legal action as a result.
This was Trump trying to pressure DeSantis yesterday:
Remember the good old days when accused politicians welcomed having their day in court to clear their names? Instead of focusing on Trump's call for "protests" news agencies would do better to focus on what has happened to the people who heeded his last call for protests. Many were injured many were indicted.