Ex-GOP Congressman: ‘It’s Not That We Are So Courageous, It’s That We’re…

Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin in On the Town directed by Stanley Donen, 1949

Lower level members of the organization getting disguised as the bosses by enemies who want to manipulate the whole group

vice.com

Trump Cried ‘Lock Her Up.’ Instead, He and His Friends Got Charged With Crimes.

The former president loves to call for his opponents to be jailed. But it hasn’t worked out that way.

Former President Donald Trump loves calling for other people to be charged with crimes. Instead, today, he’ll be formally accused of committing a few himself.

Trump told his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, she’d “be in jail” if he won the election, in the middle of a presidential debate. He accused former President Barack Obama of committing “treason.” He slammed President Joe Biden’s “crime family.” He called a journalist a “criminal” for failing to report news Trump wanted to hear.

But today, Trump will be arraigned in a Manhattan courtroom shortly after 2:00 p.m. EST, on charges widely expected to arise from a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Now that Trump is the one being charged with a crime, Trump and his allies are blasting the move as an unacceptable politicization of the criminal justice system, overlooking the many times Trump lobbied, inside and outside the White House, for his political opponents to be investigated and criminally charged.

They’re also glossing over the fact that Trump is hardly alone among his friends: A truly staggering number of people Trump likes to pal around with—including his advisors, lawyers and top supporters—have also been found guilty of committing a wide variety of crimes, from financial fraud to lying under oath and more.

Viewed in that light, Trump is just the latest of his friend group to catch a case.

Trump’s longtime Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg, is currently wrapping up a five-month sentence in the notorious Rikers Island prison complex after entering a guilty plea on 15 criminal counts ranging from grand larceny to tax fraud.

Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen is now expected to be a prime witness against Trump at the former president’s upcoming criminal trial. Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to eight criminal counts, including tax evasion and orchestrating unlawful contributions to Trump’s presidential campaign. Cohen said he was directed by Trump to set up hush money payments to women who said they slept with Trump before the 2016 election. (Trump denies all charges, and has repeatedly insisted he did nothing wrong.)

Trump’s former campaign and White House advisor, Steve Bannon, was convicted of contempt of Congress last summer, and is now defending himself from a new round of criminal fraud charges related to a private non-profit group that aimed to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. New York prosecutors accuse Bannon of defrauding donors to a charity We Build The Wall. Bannon has pleaded not guilty.

Then there’s Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, who was sentenced to seven years following his convictions for financial crimes, only to be pardoned by Trump. Trump also pardoned his longtime political advisor Roger Stone, who’d been convicted at a jury trial on charges of obstruction, false statements, and witness tampering relating to the Congressional investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Even Trump’s business has been found guilty of committing crimes.

Trump’s company was convicted of all 17 criminal counts against it during a trial in late 2022, which took place in the very same courtroom where Trump’s personal criminal case is now set to play out. He’ll even have the same New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan overseeing his personal case.

Trump’s criminal drama in Manhattan, of course, isn’t the only legal jeopardy he’s facing.

He’s also being investigated by an Atlanta-area prosecutor for his attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in Georgia. And a federal special counsel named Jack Smith is overseeing two investigations. One concerns whether Trump broke the law by stashing secret government documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida; and the other concerns whether Trump committed crimes while trying to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election.

CNBC

Read the indictment against Donald Trump, details of payments to porn star, Playboy model

Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in a New York courtroom for a criminal case related to a hush money payment to porn star St

Former President Donald Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a scheme that directed hush money payments to two women before the 2016 presidential election.

The 16-page indictment against Trump was unsealed Tuesday as he became the first former U.S. president ever to be arraigned on criminal charges.

“Not guilty,” Trump said from his seat to Judge Juan Merchan during the hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The indictment says those payments were part of a broader scheme to suppress claims by the women, porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, that they had sex with Trump, in a bid to keep their stories from affecting Trump’s chances against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Prosecutors also said a Trump-friendly publishing company, American Media Inc., paid $30,000 to a former Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock.

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The Daily Beast

Trump Indictment: He Knew Exactly What He Was Doing

Trump was arrested and arraigned Tuesday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. There's quite a lot to the charges.

...."The defendant DONALD J. TRUMP repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”

That’s how the 13-page Statement of Facts supporting the historic criminal indictment of former president Donald Trump begins, laying out 34 felony counts of falsifying business records connected to Trump’s efforts to hide hush money payouts to porn star Stormy Daniels, former Playmate Karen McDougal, and a doorman who claimed to have information about an undisclosed Trump child.

The 34 counts of falsifying business records are all in the first degree—meaning they’re felonies under New York law. The false records relate to $420,000 in hush money reimbursements to his former attorney Michael Cohen, in connection to attempts to undermine the election by buying the silence of those three people.

“From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects,” that document states.

To carry out the “unlawful scheme,” the statement says, Trump and others “violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York.” It further alleges that the participants “took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme.”

When his lawyers were asked about Trump’s attempts to intimidate the judge and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.—in one post Trump made to Truth Social, the former president is holding a baseball bat in front of Bragg’s head—Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said Trump was merely showing off “an American-made baseball bat.”

The charges largely hang on the allegedly false business records Trump created after winning the election, when he wrongfully classified those hush money payments to his former personal attorney as “legal services” related to an ongoing retainer.

While the false records counts alone would be misdemeanors, Bragg added more muscle by connecting them to the tax and election interference schemes, according to the statement of facts, thereby elevating all the false records counts to felonies.

In reality, the DA alleges, the payments should have reflected the true nature of those checks—purchasing the silence of two women in order to shield his candidacy from further allegations of sexual impropriety in the final weeks of the election."