Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
It appears former President Donald Trump will cooperate with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, at least to a point.
Friday, as first reported by Politico, Trump announced via his campaign that he would turn himself in on Tuesday and begin the process of fighting what he has characterized as baseless accusations of fraud.
Trump is expected to arrive at the courthouse via motorcade and then proceed inside for his arrest, processing, and arraignment. By all indications, conservatives will stage a protest throughout the proceedings.
“The radical left Democrats have lied, cheated, and stolen in their maniacal obsession to ‘get Trump,’” the former president posted on Truth Social in all-caps, “but now they’ve gone too far, indicting a totally innocent man in an act of obstruction and blatant election interference. How much more are American patriots expected to take???”
Trump has been charged with 30 crimes related to alleged hush money payments made to various women with whom he has been accused of engaging in sexual relations. Friday, the Associated Press revealed that at least one of those charges will be a felony.
“They have closely studied 11,000,000 pages of documents, financial records, and tax returns (some gotten illegally!), billions of dollars worth of deals and transactions, and they’ve got nothing,” Trump wrote in a different Truth Social post, which was also in all-caps. “After 8 years of various politically motivated investigations, hoaxes, scams, and witch hunts, this must make me the most honest and honorable man anywhere in the world. Nobody in history has ever been through the scrutiny that I have.”
Meanwhile in Manhattan, officials are bracing for what figures to be a circus, of both the political and media variety, near the courthouse this Tuesday.
Media vans have already clogged the streets around the venue and Republicans have promised a protest.
It remains unclear how Trump’s arrest and arraignment will proceed, but the Trump campaign indicates the former president expects to be back in Florida by Wednesday.
D.A. DENIES CONGRESSIONAL REQUESTS
Bragg’s office sent a six-page letter to the chairs of three Republican House Committees – Reps. Jim Jordan (Judiciary), Bryan Steil (House Administration), and James Comer (Oversight and Accountability) – saying that the House of Representatives lacks jurisdiction to oversee a state-level criminal proceeding.
“Yesterday, the District Attorney of New York County filed charges against Donald Trump for violations of New York law,” the letter reads. “The charges filed yesterday were brought by citizens of New York, doing their civic duty as members of a grand jury, who found probable cause to accuse Mr. Trump of having committed crimes in New York.”
The letter continues, “Like any other defendant, Mr. Trump is entitled to challenge these charges in court and avail himself of all processes and protections that New York State’s robust criminal procedure affords. What neither Mr. Trump nor Congress may do is interfere with the ordinary course of proceedings in New York State.”
But, what Bragg’s letter misses – whether intentionally or unintentionally – is that there is no precedent for a former president facing a criminal trial at any level.
Republicans have argued that since the New York justice system receives federal funds, it is subject to Congressional oversight. Bragg disputes this conclusion.
POLL NUMBERS FAVOR TRUMP … AMONG REPUBLICANS
It’s no longer a question of if prosecutions of Donald Trump help or hurt him, but a matter of how much and with whom.
A pair of polls, one from Marist and another from Quinnipiac, show Trump’s stock among Republicans is again on the rise. However, the same polls show that Trump is behind Biden in favorability.
There is some indication that conservatives are winning the battle of messaging in the wake of the indictment.
Sixty-two percent of respondents to the Quinnipiac Poll, regardless of affiliation, said they believed the indictment was motivated by politics rather than the law. Seventy percent of independents shared this opinion.
But 57% of respondents to the same poll stated they felt the indictment should disqualify Trump from reelection.
In the Marist poll, 56% of respondents said they felt Bragg’s investigation had been fair, more than 60% said they did not want Trump to be president again, and 46% said they believed he had done “something illegal.”
From a purely financial standpoint, Trump’s indictment has quickly helped him. The Trump campaign announced Friday that $4 million in campaign donations had arrived within 24 hours of the indictment.
“This incredible surge of grassroots contributions confirms that the American people see the indictment of President Trump as a disgraceful weaponization of our justice system by a Soros-funded prosecutor,” a press release reads.
The campaign says 25% of donations were from first-time donors and that the average donation was $34.