Donald Trump appears to be on the brink of indictment, and one columnist argued that's worth the risk of sparking civil unrest.
The Manhattan district attorney's office has indicated the former president is likely to face criminal charges related to hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, and Trump has been priming his followers to react violently to any threat to his power, wrote New York Times columnist Charles Blow.
"Could an indictment and prosecution of Trump cause consternation and possibly even unrest? Absolutely," Blow wrote. "Trump has been preparing his followers for his martyrdom for years and evangelizing to them the idea that any sanctioning of him is an attack on them. This transference of feelings of persecution and pain from manufactured victimhood is a classic psychological device of a cult leader."
Trump supporters already stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a last-ditch effort to keep him in the White House, and Blow argued that further unrest was a necessary risk to prove this remains a nation of laws.
"Trump is the impresario of incitement. He’ll use any attempt to hold him accountable to agitate and activate his loyalists," Blow wrote. "That’s not a reason to avoid vigorously and swiftly pursuing him legally, but rather a reason to do it. If we establish a precedent that amassing a significant threat to society is a ward against enforcement of the law, it makes a mockery of the law."
On Monday, prosecutors in the Manhattan grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump's $130,000 hush payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels called David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer and a longtime ally of the former president, to the stand.
It's unclear immediately why Pecker, who was instrumental to bringing down Trump's former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, was called. But, wrote Jordan Rubin for MSNBC.com, a possible reason is to expose false claims by Robert Costello, a Trump-aligned lawyer who testified to the grand jury last week to try to discredit the claims made by Michael Cohen.
"Costello said he told the grand jury that Cohen acted on his own to make the payment, without Trump," wrote Rubin. "It struck me as a somewhat strange point at the time, because even if it’s true, it doesn’t necessarily negate a charge of falsifying business records, if in fact that’s a charge prosecutors are seeking. That’s because such a charge wouldn’t have to hinge on the motive for making the payment but rather the cover-up. So Trump’s knowledge ahead of time is arguably beside the point, at least for that charge."
"Yet, to the extent that the grand jurors are assessing Costello’s credibility generally, they might want to hear from Pecker about whether he has additional testimony that directly contradicts Costello’s," said the report. "One would imagine that Pecker’s direct knowledge of Trump’s role would have been brought before the grand jury the first time he testified. But it’s possible that Costello’s testimony raised specific questions that required recalling Pecker."
Pecker, who received immunity in exchange for his cooperation in the Cohen prosecution, played a role in Trump's prior hush payment schemes, setting up a "catch-and-kill" arrangement for a story on an alleged Trump affair with model and former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal.
In January, it was reported that Pecker was meeting with New York prosecutors to provide evidence to them in the hush payment case.
ALSO IN THE NEWS: How 'additional charges' may be coming for Trump
One of the young children killed at the Nashville, Tennessee private Christian school shooting on Monday was the daughter of the school's pastor, reported The Daily Beast on Monday.
Six people in total were killed in the attack, including three children aged eight and nine, and three faculty.
"The student, one of six people killed alongside the shooter at the Covenant School, was identified by police as Hallie Scruggs. Her father is Chad Scruggs, Covenant Presbyterian Church’s pastor, the Nashville Presbytery confirmed to CBS News," reported AJ McDougall and Emily Shugerman. "Hallie was the Scruggs family’s youngest child, according to a memorial post by a self-described sister church, Redeemer Presbyterian Church. The post said that Chad Scruggs had graduated from Presbyterian Church in America’s Covenant Theological Seminary with a master of divinity degree in 2007."
"According to its website, the Covenant School was founded in 2001 as a ministry of the church, and the two share an address. Chad Scruggs, who did not immediately return a request for comment by The Daily Beast, is also identified as an ex-officio member of the school’s board of trustees on the site," said the report.
"The other ex-officio member of the board listed is Katherine Koonce, the 60-year-old school head and another victim of Monday’s shooting," the report added.
The shooter involved in the attack, who was killed at the scene, has been identified as 28-year-old Audrey Hale. Initial reports identified Hale as a woman, but police have stated Hale in fact identifies as a transgender man. Hale reportedly had a "manifesto" that referenced another location as well as Covenant School.
Former President Donald Trump is facing a very likely indictment by prosecutors in Manhattan for bookkeeping fraud related to his $130,000 hush payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to prevent 2016 voters from learning about their alleged affair. He also faces serious legal liability from an elections investigation in Georgia and two federal cases being probed by special counsel Jack Smith.
But even with just the Manhattan investigation, there is no guarantee the charges will stop at an accounting misdemeanor. On MSNBC Monday, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance told anchor Ari Melber that other charges are possible out of that grand jury.
"How do prosecutors try to build beyond only campaign finance?" Because then ... it hangs or falls on the jury's view of the criminal intent or motivation in that window, in that October window, whereas if there's anything else, Joyce, I mean, business records, tax, other things that were mischaracterized, are those potential counts in New York as well?"
"The short answer is, there are other possible charges," said Vance. "I don't think it has to have been exclusively motivated by the campaign. That wouldn't make any sense in the real world. People have dual motivations all the time, and one of the early rulings in the John Edwards trial, which was for similar charges, albeit federal, suggested that a dual motivation was acceptable. You know, that's not directly on point, Ari, but it's a pretty good indication.
Specifically, argued Vance, "there could be, for instance, a tax avoidance motivation that would violate New York state law."
"There are a lot of other possibilities," said Vance. "We're working in the blind because we don't know what evidence the Manhattan D.A. has elicited from witnesses in front of his grand jury. But it's possible that there could be additional charges we just don't know about yet as well."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
Joyce Vance says more charges could be coming for Trump www.youtube.com
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