Take one former president who is again running for the highest office, an alleged infraction of campaign finance laws from seven years ago, and a district attorney willing to gamble his career on an uncertain prosecution. Set it all against the backdrop of an approaching presidential election. Does it sound like a Hollywood B-movie? If it does, that movie might be called, It’s Not Going to End Well. A leak – presumably from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – revealed that the DA had contacted one or more law enforcement agencies on March 16 to arrange a meeting sometime in the coming days. This sparked widespread speculation in media and political circles that Donald Trump is to be arrested. The exact origin of the leak is not entirely clear, though. Fox News reports that a “court source” disclosed news of the proposed meeting.
The 45th president himself also fueled the speculation when he posted on the Truth Social platform, with Caps Lock on for emphasis:
“ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
Why Trump is to Be Arrested – Allegedly
The whole affair, which portends potentially ominous and far-reaching repercussions throughout America’s political landscape, begins in 2016 as Trump embarked upon his White House campaign. By now, most people know the basics of the story. Former attorney Michael Cohen, who was once known as Trump’s “fixer,” paid $130,000 to former adult film star Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels. The payment was allegedly made to buy the porn star’s silence about a supposed affair she had with Trump some ten years prior. The payment of so-called “hush money” is not, in itself, a crime. If it was, quite a number of politicians would have been indicted over the past four or five decades. However, Trump’s political opponents claim the $130,000 constitutes an illegal (and undisclosed) in-kind campaign contribution since, according to their allegations, it was paid out to protect Mr. Trump’s presidential run from potentially damaging publicity.
Though the case is years old and although he has been out of office for two years, news that Trump is to be arrested comes just weeks after he announced his 2024 campaign. Whether accurate or not, the obvious perception, for many, will be that politics has driven the apparently accelerated unfolding of an investigation that has been churning away slowly – and almost completely under the radar – for multiple years without any previous investigating bodies choosing to recommend charges.
Of course, as even some observers on the left have pointed out, Bragg will have to prove intent on Trump’s part – intent to buy Daniels’ discretion to protect his presidential campaign or intent to reimburse Cohen for the money he paid to Daniels. Records indicate that Cohen was paid in installments, after the fact, but these payments were listed as legal expenses. Potentially, that could spell additional legal problems for Trump.
In an article for MSNBC, Loyola Law School Professor Jessica Levinson writes, “First, proving Trump had any sort of intent is always tricky. He doesn’t leave many smoking guns lying around. He doesn’t send emails or texts. He speaks in code. We may know exactly what he means, but then he claims he didn’t say anything of the sort.” Levinson doesn’t appear to put much faith in an indictment over the Daniels affair. That much is clear because the professor doesn’t only raise some legal difficulties for the prosecution, but also goes off on a tangent, claiming “Trump should face criminal charges” for a laundry list of other alleged offenses, including the incitement of a supposed “insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s an opinion piece that almost smacks of desperation. Surely, we can pin something on him, eventually, is what Levinson appears to be saying, but maybe not this Stormy Daniels thing.
If this effort to finally derail Trump’s political aspirations fails – just as all previous attempts have failed – then Bragg will have put an almost certainly irreparable dent in own his legal and political career
One of the key witnesses – perhaps the key witness – is Cohen, a convicted felon who is known to bare a not inconsiderable amount of hostility toward his former boss and who is on the record as having made a variety of wild, or at least unsubstantiated, claims about Mr. Trump. Bragg may have to do a lot better than that if he is to secure the prosecution of a former commander-in-chief and current presidential candidate.
Responding to the rumors – or the leaks – that Trump is to be arrested, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on March 18 tweeted:
“Here we go again — an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump. I’m directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.”
In the year 49 B.C.E., a Roman general named Julius Ceasar led his troops across the Rubicon, a stream that marked the border between Gaul and the Roman Republic. There was no going back. A civil war ensued, which led to the downfall of the Republic. That event gave birth to a metaphor that is used to this day. That is not to suggest the same result in the case of Trump. Rather, the point is that, as it was for Caesar, there is no going back. Politics at the federal level will experience an irreversible change.
If Donald Trump is to be arrested on Tuesday or any other day before the 2024 election, the entire Democrat establishment would have crossed the Rubicon. If Trump were convicted on anything less than clear and unquestionable evidence of a crime, there seems to be no path to a happy ending for Democrats who will have opened – to mix in another metaphor – a political Pandora’s box. Arresting one’s political enemies is not a good look for any supposedly civilized country – or for any party that claims to cherish the democratic system.
Moreover, if the former president is indicted and then acquitted, the fallout for his opponents will be excruciating. Total embarrassment will be only the beginning of their penance. This will be the worst kind of B-movie; one that had not only a shallow and predictable plot and terrible actors, but also didn’t end well.
