Just before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump urged supporters at a Washington rally that morning to march to the Capitol. In response to his rallying call, Trump loyalists tried to stop the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s White House victory, breaking through doors and windows of the building and leaving officers beaten and bloodied.
Trump was told that violence was breaking out but as the riot raged, he sat watching TV, posting inflammatory tweets and refusing to send help.
Many Republicans have sought to ignore the evidence against Trump’s conduct that was exposed in the Jan. 6 investigation by a special House committee.
Trump broke his oath to defend the Constitution, and was derelict in his duty as commander in chief to protect the Capitol from a mob attacking it in his name. He refused to call the military to send help. Instead, he fed the mob’s anger and let the riot play out.
Two years later Trump has shown no regret over what happened on Jan. 6.
Trump declared in a post on his social media platform on Saturday that he expects to be arrested and taken into custody on Tuesday. He issued a reckless call for his supporters to protest as a New York grand jury investigates hush money payments to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president.
His message seemed designed to preempt a formal announcement from prosecutors and to galvanize outrage from his base of supporters in advance of widely anticipated charges. Within hours, his campaign was sending fundraising solicitations to his supporters, while influential Republicans in Congress and even some declared and potential rival candidates issued statements in his defense.
After his post, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy decried any plans to prosecute Trump as an “outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA” whom he claimed was pursuing “political vengeance.” Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, issued a statement with a similar sentiment.
In a later post Trump raised the prospect of civil unrest: “IT’S TIME!!!” he wrote. “WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. THEY’RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA!PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”
New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg is believed to be considering charges in the hush money investigation, and recently offered Trump a chance to testify before the grand jury. Local law enforcement officials are bracing for the public safety ramifications of an unprecedented prosecution of a former American president.
In an internal email following Trump’s statements, Bragg said law enforcement would ensure that the 1,600 people who work in his office would remain safe, and that “any specific or credible threats” would be investigated.
“We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York,” he wrote, and added: “In the meantime, as with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate.”
There has been no public announcement of any time frame for the grand jury’s secret work in the case. At least one additional witness is expected to testify, further indicating that no vote to indict has yet been taken.
That did not stop Trump from taking to his social media platform to say “illegal leaks” from Bragg’s office indicate that “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK.”
Trump’s legal team has been preparing for the possibility of an indictment. If indicted, he would be arrested only if he refused to surrender. Trump’s lawyers have previously said he would likely agree to surrender at a New York Police Department precinct or directly to Bragg’s office. The grand jury has been hearing from witnesses, including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who says he orchestrated payments in 2016 to two women to silence them about sexual encounters they said they had with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump denies the encounters occurred, says he did nothing wrong and has cast the investigation as a “witch hunt” by a Democratic prosecutor bent on sabotaging the Republican’s 2024 campaign. Trump also has labeled Bragg, who is Black, a “racist” and has
accused the prosecutor of letting crime in the city run amok while he has focused on Trump. New York remains one of the safest cities in the country.
Besides the hush money inquiry in New York, Trump faces separate criminal investigations in Atlanta and Washington over his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election.
A Justice Department special counsel has also been presenting evidence before a grand jury investigating Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida estate. It is not clear when those investigations will end or whether they might result in criminal charges, but they will continue regardless of what happens in New York, underscoring the ongoing gravity – and broad geographic scope – of the legal challenges facing the former president.
The indictment of Trump would be an extraordinary development after years of investigations into his business, political and personal dealings.
If there is evidence for indictment in any of the cases against Trump, prosecutors must not be intimidated from indictment. They must be protected as they seek to hold the former president accountable.
Trump is a former president. He is not a king. In America, no person should be above the law.
Reprinted from The Philadelphia Tribune
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