Trump v. the Facts
Facts don’t matter to SCOTUS or to House Republicans. But they matter to juries like the one empaneled for Trump’s trial in Manhattan.
DONALD TRUMP’S MANHATTAN TRIAL picks up again today. Expect Hope Hicks, a former Trump favorite who worked closely with him in his company and then as White House communications director, to testify soon. Michael Cohen, too.
Last week, Trump’s longtime pal David Pecker delivered devastating testimony about the corrupt scheme that he, Cohen, and Trump hatched in 2015: Buy silence from potential authors of scandalous stories from Trump’s past that might otherwise see the light of day and interfere with his prospects for election in 2016.
To juries under solemn oath, evidence matters. Conversely, its absence also matters when Trump’s MAGA team in Congress produces vaudeville skits flailing around to impeach President Joe Biden. The effort looked like slapstick when “star” Republican witnesses couldn’t connect the president to any wrongdoing, and were themselves indicted or turned out to be Russian intelligence tools.
Things work differently in criminal trials, though: Juries use their common sense to deliver convictions when prosecutors present evidence proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. We’ve seen it in cases involving every Trump-related criminal defendant, from Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in 2018 to Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro in 2024.
We also saw it in January’s jury verdict of guilty against the Trump Organization. That case was prosecuted by the Manhattan team now trying Trump himself before the same judge, Juan Merchan.
In addition, there are the judgments against Trump himself, though civil in nature. Two different juries delivered crushing verdicts totaling $88 million in damages for defaming E. Jean Carroll by denying his sexual assault on her in the mid-1990s.
And lest you think facts might not matter to Trump supporters who may have made their way onto the jury in Trump’s criminal case, remember this: In Manafort’s prosecution, juror Paula Duncan left her MAGA hat in her car along with her political preferences—she voted to convict Manafort because the evidence of guilt was overwhelming.
A conviction in the Manhattan prosecution could transform the dynamics of the 2024 election. CNN’s latest poll found that 24 percent of Trump’s own voters would reconsider voting for him if he were convicted.
WHILE IT’S NOT TIME to give up hope for criminal and electoral accountability, it is time to accept that the Supreme Court majority is not coming to save us; if anything, it’s coming to save him.
Last Thursday’s oral argument relating to presidential immunity left no doubt about it: The so-called “conservative” justices have abandoned conservative jurisprudence. It says, Do not be an activist judge or a legislator. Only decide the precise case before you.
But that precept goes out the window, apparently, when power for a right-wing authoritarian is at stake. Most of the Republican-appointed nominees danced on the head of philosophical pins rather than face the January 6th facts in front of their noses.
“I’m not discussing the particular facts of this case,” announced Justice Samuel Alito. The same for Justice Brett Kavanaugh: “Like Justice Gorsuch, I’m not focused on the here and now of this case. I’m very concerned about the future.”
These justices’ insistence on taking the case, then slow-walking the schedule, and now focusing on how to protect the office of the presidency into the future means, perversely, that in the actual case before them, they are creating the conditions to let the man who nearly destroyed the Constitution get off scot-free. All while setting the stage for him to complete the task. Certainly if he is elected, the prosecutions against him will vanish faster than you can say “Dictator on Day One.”
BACK ON EARTH ONE, though, facts still matter—and not just in trial courtrooms.
That’s the message of the MAGA-led House’s failure to impeach President Biden. As a recent HuffPost headline put it, the Republicans’ impeachment of Biden “was doomed from the start.” Why? The drummed-up investigation “bought into long-debunked conspiracy theories peddled by their leader, Donald Trump.”
Fox News, where Sean Hannity produced more than 325 episodes on Hunter Biden (yes, really!), has suddenly gone quiet on the whole partisan impeachment affair. On Sunday, Fox’s Trumpist host Maria Bartiromo unexpectedly grilled Jim Jordan, telling the Judiciary Committee chairman that “people are sick and tired of congressional investigations that go nowhere.”
Meanwhile, the Senate summarily dismissed the MAGA House impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas before a trial even began. In the words of Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), “There was nothing close to high crime or misdemeanor. . . . It would be irresponsible for us to treat it as serious exercise.”
And now we watch the Supreme Court majority treating as a serious exercise the laughable claims of Trump to criminal immunity. The good news is that we have a reliable jury system in Manhattan moving toward a verdict and an unflinching prosecutor for whom facts matter.
Even more importantly, as Americans, we have the opportunity this fall to vote for the only presidential candidate who lives in reality and is committed to the rule of law. We can seize it and together ensure that our freedoms survive—and that justice is served.
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