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For most people, involvement in crime would represent a lifelong scandal. Especially if it has to do with the unprecedented arrest of a former US president.
For Donald Trump, this is not a weekend scandal.
The trail that led to the indictment that made history on Tuesday began in the second weekend of October 2016.
His presidential campaign was up by an old video which crudely jokes about holding female genitals.
On the same day, WikiLeaks began to release hacked emails from the Clinton campaign, in the chain of events that led to the investigation of Robert Mueller Russia.
That’s when Stormy Daniels quietly entered American history.
The porn star plans to go public with her past with Trump, at a politically vulnerable time for her. That weekend, Trump’s fixer began working on a US$130,000 payment to buy him silence.
What happens next is the key, accordingly statement of fact released by the prosecutor of New York City: Trump tried to delay the payment, until after the November elections, so that it would not hurt the presidential bid.
After the campaign, Trump wrote a series of checks, reimbursing the fixer, Michael Cohen, for payments through shell companies. With the safe election over, other women, Playboy models, and gossip-peddling doorman exempt from non-disclosure agreements.
Why the 2016 timeline is key to Trump’s case
This is why the details are relevant.
Trump’s acquittal on the charges, 34 counts of falsifying business records, hinged on evidence that the falsified records concealed an earlier underlying crime.
New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg said on Tuesday about the crimes he sees as the basis for the case, and two are related to the election.
One of them is New York State law 17-152 against the promotion of candidature by unlawful means. Other federal restrictions on campaign contributions are above $2,700.
Bragg’s accusations, in a nutshell: Trump created a false paper trail to hide the facts from voters, and he violated two election laws, which make it a felony.
They will ask the judge, and possibly the jury, to ignore the fact that Trump has never been charged with violating either of those two election laws.
Does this warrant the first prosecution of a former US president in the 234 years of the American republic? Depends on who is asking.
“The rule of law is dead in this country,” Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina told reporters outside court.
“If this guy’s name wasn’t Donald J. Trump, there’s no scenario we’d be in today.”
He is far from alone in these criticisms.
Those expressing skepticism about the case go beyond Trump’s admirers and include critics like Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who criticized the allegations as overreach.
The same goes for election law scholars Rick Hasenwho called it a legal and political mistake.
So did Trump’s former aide and current nemesis John Bolton, who told CNN: “This is it [case] even weaker than I fear.”
But as we learned in the head-spinning weekend of October 2016, when it comes to the Trump scandal, sometimes, what is in public view is the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Trump is besieged by legal threats.
They include the consequences of the 2020 election; January 6 attack; mishandling confidential documents; obstruction of justice, and this case is swirling around in Washington, DC, and Atlanta.
It’s telling that Trump spent more time in his Mar-A-Lago speech late Tuesday complaining about another case, next to Stormy Daniels.
“This [Stormy Daniels case] probably the least of Trump’s worries,” said Juan-Carlos Planas, a former Republican state lawmaker in Florida, and state attorney general, who is now a Democrat and a special attorney in the election.
Prediction: This case opens the floodgates
Planas said he believes the charges against Trump are solid, but the case will depend on whether Trump wins procedural arguments, such as whether the statute of limitations has run out. The limit is five years but it works expandedunder pandemic rules and also for New Yorkers living abroad.
A former New York prosecutor and current law professor, Bennett Gershman, concurs with Planas on three points.
No, he said, the money case isn’t the strongest against Trump. Yes, it is possible to gain confidence. And, finally, in his opinion, this is just the beginning.
“[The New York case] the dam broke,” Gershman told CBC News.
“The floodgates are now open. … This may not be the biggest case, a few months from now.”
The legal threat is increasing on many fronts
Look at the really bad legal news on Trump all week.
This includes the case of whether Trump illegally took classified documents with him after leaving the White House, then obstructed federal efforts to recover them.
Washington Post report federal authorities have evidence Trump faces greater legal danger in the case of documents than publicly reported; that Trump personally examines the box, seeking to continue for some material, then told his aides to mislead the authorities by claiming that everything has been returned.
Fox News reports that Trump’s Secret Service agents have been ordered to testify on Friday in the Washington, DC-based investigation.
Then there’s Georgia.
Trump is under investigation for trying to overturn the 2020 election. This includes a January 2021 phone call in which he asked state officials find another 11,000-plus votes for him, plus an effort to name a alternative election board.
The former chief justice has given several media interviews – a bad decision, perhaps. In it, he said that his team advised him long list of charges.
That is now in the hands of the Fulton County district attorney.
Then there was the special counsel in Washington, Jack Smith. They are investigating two cases: Mishandled classified documents, and lead-up to January 6.
Capping off the bad side of the legal news, Trump lost a bid in Federal Court to keep his former aide from testifying on January 6.
The good news for Trump is that he is still the easy front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, with a formidable advantage in early polls.
‘So what? He slept with a porn star!’
The spirit of the supporters was on display in the streets of New York City.
Vito DiChiara, a former employee at Fox News, came from his home on Long Island to show his support for the former president.
He called the allegations a case of interference in the 2024 election from the Democrats: “They are afraid of Donald Trump.”
Mary Muldoon asked rhetorically what the big deal was: “So what? She’s sleeping with a porn star – she doesn’t want her husband to know!”
He suggested it was no worse than what the congressmen had spent millions of taxpayers’ money for decades to address various sexual harassment and other workplace incidents in Congress.
He’s right – it happens that way. But neither they, nor we, know if this is the end of Trump’s legal troubles, or just the beginning.
Trump survived the scandals of the fateful weekend in October 2016; first, the Access Hollywood tape, then the Russian probe.
Sometimes, there’s a surprise to come, like Stormy Daniels, waiting in the wings, to arrive on the stage of history.
-With files from Katie Simpson in New York
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