() — America’s political and legal institutions are bracing for the next dire test posed by former President Donald Trump.
Trump’s prediction this Saturday that he could be arrested this week, and his attempt to provoke a preemptive backlash, made it seem more real than what until now would only have been the theoretical possibility that a former president and 2024 candidate would be impeached. criminally. And he noted that the United States is headed for an even more politically divisive test that will test his influence on the Republican Party.
The real estate developer, former reality star and former commander-in-chief is facing multiple investigations after seeking to overturn the 2020 election and for his handling of classified documents after leaving office. But his most immediate exposure may be in a case involving an alleged secret money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
As of the weekend, Trump had not received any official notification that he will be impeached. by Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, a Democrat. But the grand jury process appears to be in its final stages and Trump’s legal team has been preparing for the possibility of an indictment, sources told .
The case revolves around whether Trump illegally covered up a $130,000 payment made by his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to Daniels to hush up an alleged past relationship before the 2016 election. The episode could potentially amount to a violation of privacy law. campaign finance. Trump says he did nothing wrong and has denied having an affair with Daniels.
But the former president launched a signature effort to discredit attempts at accountability, trying to intimidate prosecutors, mobilize his grassroots supporters and pressure top Republican officials to join him. All Americans have a constitutional right to free political expression, but the former president’s call this weekend to his loyalists — “Protest, Take Back Our Nation” — has had an ominous tone since he showed on January 6, 2021, that he was willing to incite violence to further their interests.
Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, told ‘s Paula Reid on Sunday that there would be dire consequences if Trump were charged with a simple misdemeanor, one of the possible outcomes of the Manhattan investigation. “It’s going to cause chaos, Paula. I mean, it’s a very scary time in our country,” Habba said. But she also said “no one wants anyone to get hurt” and that Trump supporters should be “peaceful.”
Trump is taking advantage of and underlining his dominance of the Republican Party
An impeachment would again test the certainty of the Trump-era GOP: that the former president’s grip on the GOP’s most ardent supporters is so great that most of its lawmakers and officials feel compelled to appease him in order to preserve their political careers.
Trump’s effort to politicize the case and divert attention from the allegations against him has already worked, as his main allies in the House Republican leadership attack Bragg.
The party leader kevin mccarthy called this Sunday “the weakest case that exists.” The California Republican, who has directed GOP-led commissions to investigate whether the Manhattan district attorney used federal funds to investigate paying hush money, told a news conference that he had already I’ve spoken to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan—who is investigating the “weaponization” of the government against political opponents—about looking into that issue.
But the Republican leader also said that people should not protest what may or may not happen and insisted that Trump did not want that either. “If this is going to happen, we want peace of mind out there … without violence or harm to anyone else,” McCarthy said.
Further underscoring Trump’s firm grip on the Republican base, his social media post caused several of his Republican critics to line up with him. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is considering a campaign to challenge Trump for the 2024 nomination, told ABC News: “It just feels like politically charged impeachment here. And I, for one, feel like it’s not what the American people want to see.”
New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has said it is time for Republicans to put Trump behind them, told Jake Tapper on ‘s “State of the Union” that the Bragg investigation was “generating a lot of sympathy for the former president.” “I had coffee this morning with a few people, and none of them were big Trump supporters, but they all said they felt he was being attacked,” Sununu added.
The serious challenges the nation would face if Trump were impeached
The possibility that the former president will be impeached soon has serious implications.
— The impeachment of a former president would be unprecedented in US history and would mark another dubious distinction for twice-defendant Trump, who sought to disrupt a storied tradition of peaceful transfers of power and lied about his 2020 election loss There is no tradition of successor governments persecuting former US leaders. So even if the cases against Trump are legally justified, prosecutors in New York, as well as in Georgia and at the Justice Department, face a dangerous and unexplored moment.
— The situation is even more tense because Trump is already an active candidate for the 2024 White House race and has already entrenched his campaign in a narrative of persecution, especially with regard to investigations into his conduct after the latest elections. He also promises a “retribution” presidency against his enemies if he wins the Oval Office again.
— If impeached, Trump will continue to enjoy constitutional protections and the presumption of innocence before any trial. At a fragile national moment, other political figures and the media will also face pressure not to respond to their efforts to inflame the situation. Trump is already trying to portray potential prosecutions against him by the Justice Department as politically motivated weapons of justice, in a way that he presents a new challenge to President Joe Biden, his past and possibly future opponent. in the general elections.
— An impeachment would potentially upend the 2024 Republican presidential primary, with Trump bullying opponents into supporting his claims of innocence and casting any failure to do so as siding with what he sees as a politically-gained partisan investigation. Neither Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible Republican candidate, nor former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, already in the race, have yet commented on a situation that presents them with a risky dilemma. But both would have a vested interest in preventing the 2024 primary campaign from revolving exclusively around Trump casting himself as a political martyr.
— The first races for the Republican nomination are almost a year away, so it’s impossible to judge how Republican primary voters and the national electorate would react to any accusations against the former president. Sununu, who has also been considering a presidential run, accused Democrats of building sympathy for Trump with investigations like Bragg’s in a way that could “drastically shift the paradigm as we approach the 2024 election.” But there has already been a palpable sense among some voters that it is time to move on from the drama, chaos and legal thickets that Trump’s behavior constantly generates. The former president’s attempt to bring his election-denying supporters to power cost Republicans in swing states dearly in last year’s midterm elections. An impeachment would add to the debate over whether Trump’s personality and political appeal are so damaged that he could not win a general election.
— An indictment in the Daniels case would not be Trump’s only legal problem, or possibly the most serious. The Justice Department’s investigations into his role in the Jan. 6 mob attack on the US Capitol and Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election are still expanding. A separate grand jury investigated Trump’s pressure on local officials to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said in late January that decisions in the investigation were “imminent.” While an indictment in New York could be seen as a political boost to the Trump campaign, it’s hard to see how a large number of charges or trials in multiple cases would allow him to fully focus on a credible presidential bid.
— Any prosecution against Trump would be based on the principle that no one, not even a former president, is above the law. But given the unusual nature and complexity of the case and the view by some legal experts that a conviction could be challenging, there will also be questions about whether the former president’s notoriety would be a factor in the decision to impeach him. His lawyers could argue that someone less famous or politically active would have received different treatment.
— There is also the question of whether the political division and trauma of putting Trump on trial would be in the broader national interest, at least in a rather narrow case that seems to have less lasting constitutional implications than those related to the January 6 investigations . History may not look favorably on any failed process.
The fact that the Daniels case dates back to an election that is now more than six years old, even as the nation faces another campaign for the White House, could also raise questions for the public, especially given the uncertainty surrounding the case for anyone outside the little bubble of research. Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly told ‘s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday that “no one in our nation is or should be above the law.” But he also said: “I hope that if they press charges, they have a strong case, because this is unprecedented. And there are certainly risks involved here.”
Kelly’s comment emphasized how Trump, nearly eight years after bursting onto the scene with an upstart presidential campaign, is once again breaking convention about the role of presidents and former presidents in national life. He again may be about to jump to the center, in the most controversial way, of the national psyche and political debate.
