Olmert, Sarkozy, Schroeder, Marcos, Soeharto, Moo-hyun, Najib, Trump: Corruption
High alert, all uniformed New York City police officers have been ordered to be on duty Friday beginning at 7 a.m., according to an NYPD memo. Currently 7.52 am in Baltimore and in NYC. Trump attorney tells that the former president is expected to be arraigned on Tuesday. Gentle reminder that there is no rule that you have to express your opinion before reading the indictment. Before the Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald Trump on Thursday, a witness gave about 30 minutes of testimony. The witness’s identity isn’t publicly known.”
The judge who oversaw the Trump Organization’s tax fraud trial will preside over the former president’s arraignment next week, a court administration official say. The new charges against Trump aren’t so much unprecedented, as they simply charge Trump’s biological person with the same crimes for which his corporate persons have already been convicted. The grand jury testimony of David Pecker has tied Mr. Trump directly to the payment to Ms. McDougal and to an alleged broader scheme to suppress negative stories about Mr. Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina this morning told "the president will not be in put in handcuffs." Under the Constitution, the House tweets. If the Senate retweets, it goes to the POTUS, who favs it into law. The House tweets, and as long as it doesn’t get the Ratio, the Senate retweets. It then goes to the President who favs it into law or mutes.
Israel's Olmert, Italy's Berlusconi, France's Jacques Chirac (embezzlement) & Nicolas Sarkozy (influence peddling), Indonesia’s Soeharto, South Korea's Roh Moo-hyun (corruption, then, committed suicide) & Park Geun-hye (corruption), Taiwan's Chen Shui-bian (bribery), Malaysia's Najib (corrutption, 1MDB), Ferdinand Marcos (corruption), and now Trump (United States).
Even then, it was hard to know at the moment that history was unfolding before your eyes. Trump 1st former US president charged with a crime. Trump charges (at least until this morning, 7.52 am in NYC) are 34 counts related to falsifying business records.
Awkward: how lucky for the U.S. Congress that the Trump indictment news broke just hours after they left for their two-week recess. Members weren't looking forward to constant questions on that.
The salacious spectacle will immediately become a defining one for the 2024 campaign For Trump, it presents a chance to play victim again For Biden, it creates a favorable split screen For GOP, it is an early test on how to handle the former president. For a man whose presidency was defined by one obliterated norm after another, the indictment sets up yet another never-before-seen spectacle — a former president having his fingerprints and mug shot taken, and then facing arraignment. The prosecutors likely want [Weisselberg’s] cooperation not just with the hush-money case but also a broader investigation into Mr. Trump’s business practices.
Arriving at a time of deep political divisions, the charges are likely to reinforce perspectives of those who see accountability as long overdue and those who, like Trump, feel he is being targeted for political purposes by a Democratic prosecutor. The indictment injects a local district attorney’s office into the heart of a national presidential race and ushers in criminal proceedings in a city that the ex-president for decades called home. Trump (originally) is Queens resident. Queens is an endlessly beautiful, complex and fascinating borough despite its indicted men.
It's been almost exactly 50 years since the world first heard Donald Trump's name, on the front page of the New York Times in Oct 1973, when he and his dad were accused of breaking the law. It has taken 50 years to actually get an indictment against him for breaking a law. Today.