From The Hill, March 31:
Former President Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury Thursday, making history as the first executive — sitting or former — to face criminal charges.
The indictment comes after District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) initiated a probe investigating Trump’s involvement in organizing hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.
The charges, explosive in any context, are made even more so because Trump is running again for the White House in 2024, and leads the field by a huge margin in the nascent race for the GOP nomination.
Here are five takeaways from Thursday’s extraordinary development.
Charges filed, but specifics unclear
The indictment — which contains the specific charges — will remain under seal until Trump appears in court for his arraignment on Tuesday, unless Bragg successfully asks a judge to unseal it early.
The specifics remain unclear, but a source familiar with the proceedings confirmed to The Hill that it includes a felony.
Bragg has been probing a $130,000 hush money payment that Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels in October 2016, just weeks before the presidential election.
A hush payment by itself is legal, but outside legal experts have suggested the indictment is likely to focus on charges of falsifying business records. Prosecutors would first need to show that Trump, with an intent to defraud, was personally involved in improperly designating reimbursements a legal expense.
That still amounts to a misdemeanor under New York law, carrying up to one year of jail time per count.
But the inclusion of a felony charge suggests prosecutors believe they can make a case tying the record falsification to another crime, augmenting the maximum jail time to four years per count.
Trump has acknowledged the payment to Daniels, though he denies her claim the two had sexual relations. Trump’s attorneys have also claimed that Trump made the payment to protect false information from hurting his marriage. They have contended he did not make the payment to influence the election, nodding to the possibility that Bragg could seek felony charges by asserting the payments violated campaign laws in some fashion.
Trump will be in court next week....
....MUCH MORE
Sometimes it is rewarding to look beyond the action downstage that the director wants you to focus on and observe what is going on in the background.
Here Elon Musk's security detail give a perfect demonstration of ignoring the ostensible focal point to detect any incongruity in the field of vision that would otherwise be missed unless attention is deliberately directed away from the spectacle:
Elon Musk’s security detail. 💪🏻pic.twitter.com/mOGkJYdynZ
— Dave Lee (@heydave7) January 25, 2023
Musk is leaving the courtroom in the February "Funding Secured" trial. We used the above video in the post: "Jury find Musk, Tesla not liable in securities fraud trial following ‘funding secured’ tweets"
