It’s a different week, but the story is the same for Donald Trump.
He’s due back in New York on Thursday under a dark legal shadow to answer further questions about his behaviour, just a week after becoming the first ex-president to face criminal charges.
Trump pled not guilty last week in a case involving a hush money payment to an adult film actor. He’s slated to return to the city where he built his reputation to give a deposition in a separate civil action alleging that he and three of his adult children manipulated Trump Organisation finances in a multi-year scheme to benefit themselves.
The two trips represent the merging court battles that are putting Trump’s tried-and-true approach of delay, denial, and distraction to the final test.
The ex-president is not guilty of anything, despite the torrent of judicial proceedings, and he rejects culpability in all cases. However, it indicates that at least Trump, as well as those of those most active in disseminating his election fraud propaganda beyond the 2020 election, may be compelled to account for behaviour that critics and political opponents have long maintained violates the law, truth, and decency.
It’s likely that the enchanted life of the real estate billionaire turned reality star turned twice-impeached ex-president is going to come crashing down around him. But Trump is not going into this judicial storm without a fight. His lawyers filed new files and digressions in some of the numerous cases against him on Wednesday, while his Republican House majority allies stepped up their efforts to protect him.
Trump’s attorneys, for example, have asked a judge to postpone for one month a civil sexual assault and defamation trial filed by former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, which was scheduled to begin later this month. His defence team is requesting a “cooling off period” following his indictment in the Manhattan case for fabricating company documents, stating that jurors will have the charges “top of mind” when they are read.
The most significant legal threats could be on the way.
Surprisingly, these cases may not represent the most serious legal threats to Trump. He is awaiting word on whether he will be indicted in special counsel investigations into his hoarding of confidential papers and his behaviour leading up to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol insurgency. And Trump and his supporters involved in the democracy-damaging scheming after the 2020 election are still unsure whether they will face charges in yet another investigation, this time in Georgia, over his attempt to steal President Joe Biden’s victory in the swing state.
This is an unusual flood of serious legal threats to confront one person, let alone someone charged by the Constitution with “ensuring that the laws are faithfully executed.” The enormous personal and legal strain on Trump raises the question of how he will be able to completely concentrate on the all-consuming work of running a presidential campaign. As a defendant in many legal matters, his schedule would be dictated by court dates rather than campaign rallies.
Trump is hardly the only one facing a legal squabble.
The first day of jury selection in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox News begins on Thursday, and could include evidence from Fox anchors and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Dominion, a voting technology business, claims the right-wing network ruined its reputation by spreading bogus accusations about Dominion equipment rigging the 2020 election. Fox has faced severe embarrassment in the run-up to the trial, following the release of text messages showing some of its most famous opinion hosts scoffing at Trump’s claims, which they nonetheless promoted on air, and top executives warning that telling the truth to viewers would be bad for business. To recover damages from Fox, Dominion must demonstrate that the network acted with actual intent in spreading the lies.
The case, which AWN legal analyst Eli Honig predicted this week would be a “full-blown legal and journalistic disaster” for Fox, took another ominous turn on Wednesday when a judge sanctioned the conservative network for possible evidence withholding and said he plans to appoint an outside attorney to investigate.
“I’m very uncomfortable right now,” Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis said after reprimanding the network’s lawyers from the bench on Wednesday. Fox disputes wrongdoing in both the judge’s problem and the broader case, stating that it was simply covering Trump’s charges of electoral fraud and that a conviction would violate press freedom.
Trump’s return to New York on Thursday follows a deposition he gave last year before the complaint against him and the Trump Organisation was filed, in which he asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in response to more than 400 questions. In a civil lawsuit, if a defendant invokes the Fifth Amendment, a jury can draw a “adverse inference” against them.
The former president replied to James’ lawsuit, filed by a Democrat, in the same manner he does to every claim of wrongdoing: by accusing legal authorities of conducting a political vendetta against him.
Similarly, he has responded to his indictment in Manhattan by accusing District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, of attempting to prevent him from winning the presidency in 2024. In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox on Tuesday, the ex-president said he would never pull out of the presidential campaign if convicted, and that his opponents were using the “old Soviet process” to accuse him of crimes he denied committing.
Trump’s tried-and-true approach of delaying accountability was on display again Wednesday, when lawyer Joe Tacopina requested the court handling the Carroll lawsuit to postpone the trial until the end of May. Tacopina expressed concern that the intensive media coverage of Trump’s arraignment last week could contaminate the jury pool. “To be sure, President Trump is a constant source of media attention. “However, the current situation is unique because, as stated above, the recent coverage is about alleged sexual misconduct, which is at the heart of this litigation,” Tacopina wrote to Judge Lewis Kaplan.
Carroll’s lawyers, though, claimed Trump’s request was without substance and that a month’s postponement would do nothing to dampen public interest in the trial. “In any case, Trump is exceptionally ill-suited to complain about fairness when he has instigated (and sought to benefit from) so much of the very coverage about which he now complains,” Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, wrote to the judge.
Carroll claims Trump raped her in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, and Trump has denied sexually abusing her. She initially sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he disputed the rape and claimed she manufactured the accusation to boost book sales.
Trump responds
The former president, who has long been notorious for exploiting the legal system to further his personal and political interests, announced a $500 million lawsuit on Wednesday saying that Michel Cohen breached his contract as his former personal attorney.
The decision immediately fueled concerns that Trump was attempting to intimidate or silence Cohen, who testified before the Manhattan grand jury and is expected to play a significant role in Bragg’s prosecution. Prosecutors claim that Trump attempted to conceal hush money payments to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels in order to protect his 2016 presidential campaign.
On “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Wednesday, AWN legal analyst Karen Friedman Agnifilo said Trump looked to be trying to avoid the judge’s caution that the case should not be litigated in the court of public opinion. “The timing is suspect, the claims are suspect, and I don’t see how this is going to work logistically,” said Agnifilo, a former Manhattan chief assistant district attorney.
Meanwhile, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan increased his apparent effort to derail Bragg’s probe – or, at the very least, to discredit Bragg in the eyes of voters – in the latest move by Trump’s allies to battle the case in public before it even reaches the courtroom. On Monday, the Ohio Republican unveiled a list of witnesses for a field hearing of his committee in New York, as he tries to prove that Bragg went after Trump for political purposes.
Trump may face some consequences. But he’ll do everything he can to stop it. Anything else would be uncharacteristic.
