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Bringing Donald Trump to a Manhattan courthouse next week for his arraignment presents unique security challenges, but that's not a former top law enforcement official's biggest concern.
The former president plans to fly to New York on Monday before appearing in court the next day to face as-of-yet unknown charges in connection with alleged hush money payments to former adult film star Stormy Daniels, The Washington Post reports.
On Friday, Secret Service agents toured the courthouse to map out a path for Trump’s court appearance, the report said.
“This particular event is unprecedented involving the president, but we know how to handle the UN General Assemblies,” former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said Friday during an appearance on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blizter.
“The NYPD knows how to handle high profile defendants who are arraigned at 100 Center Street, so I'm confident that this will be a well-orchestrated, well-organized event with lots of security.”
But Johnson's biggest concern is the former president's fiery rhetoric.
“What goes through my mind well, frankly, is something on a national level. I'm very concerned about the former president's rhetoric right now,” Johnson said.
READ: We played Trump’s J6 Choir song for members of Congress — here’s how they reacted
“Phrases like ‘death and destruction,’ and referring to the Manhattan DA as an ‘animal.’ His rhetoric has abandoned all sorts of moderation. and we've kind of seen this before in the run up to January 6.
“No mention of peaceful demonstrations, if anyone is inclined to come out and demonstrate on his behalf, and I'm very concerned that some form of violence someplace would be inevitable as a result of this.”
Trump on Friday found a new target for his attacks: New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
“The Judge ‘assigned’ to my Witch Hunt Case, a ‘Case’ that has NEVER BEEN CHARGED BEFORE, HATES ME,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website.
“His name is Juan Manuel Marchan, was hand-picked by Bragg & the Prosecutors, & is the same person who ‘railroaded’ my 75-year-old former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, to take a ‘plea’ deal (Plead GUILTY, even if you are not, 90 DAYS, fight us in Court, 10 years (life!) in jail. He stron- armed Allen, which a judge is not allowed to do, & treated my companies, which didn't ‘plead,’ VICIOUSLY. APPEALING!”
RELATED: Audio tape of Trump is devastating for his case — and supports Michael Cohen: former prosecutor
Trump’s statements typify the rhetoric that has Johnson alarmed.
“His base may be shrinking, but it only takes one or two, as you know,” Johnson said.
“And so, this type of rhetoric makes behavior acceptable that shouldn't be acceptable, and for the deranged among us, violence inevitable.”
Watch video below or at this link.
CNN 03 21 2023 18 20 27 www.youtube.com
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Trump's attorneys are sounding like fascists — as they accuse everyone else of fascism: former prosecutor
March 31, 2023
Following former President Donald Trump's indictment by a Manhattan grand jury over hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, his attorney Joe Tacopina made the rounds on TV news and compared the situation to one you would see in fascist regimes — a comment echoing Donald Trump Jr., who last night compared Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.
"We shouldn't pick the person and try to find the crime," said Tacopina on CBS Mornings. "If you read the prosecutor's book, what he said was, they had Donald Trump, they despised and loathed him. He was looking for a crime to fit the person. That's Nazi Germany, that's Communist China. We don't do that in this country."
But if anything, argued former federal prosecutor John Flannery on MSNBC's "The Beat" Friday, it's Tacopina and fellow Trump defenders who are behaving like fascists.
"We don't assume anyone's guilt, but it's not exactly a thunderbolt out of the blue that the Manhattan D.A., after going through this, when the lawyer was convicted, when the CFO was convicted, suddenly it got here," said anchor Ari Melber. "I want to err with a warning, a comparison that is in many ways controversial. The Trump lawyers are out and they are comparing this indictment to what the Nazis did." He played the clip of Tacopina.
"You know, I think we should flip places on who the fascists are," said Flannery. "The language of that attorney fits more the accusation he is making than that it should stick to anyone else."
Flannery's comments are similar to those of Timothy Snyder, an expert on authoritarian regimes at Yale University, who has sounded the alarm about the current direction of the Republican Party under Trump, particularly Trump's invocations for his supporters to take to the streets in response to the charges against him.
"The charge here involves three components, I think," said Flannery. "One is, I can grab, so this is the sexual part of it. Two, fraud, natural for Trump. And I say that because usually when we have a public figure like this, they spend all their time telling us what they didn't do and why they didn't do it. Instead, he accuses the government of making things up, when we see so much of it publically we know it wasn't made up and that it's true. And the third part, of course, is that he combines the sex and the combines the fraud at a time in an election when it's very close with Hillary Clinton, and he's 'anybody can grab the whatever', and he's doing this. No one can tell me this was a light element in his strategy to win that election using the electoral votes."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
John Flannery calls Trump's lawyers fascistic www.youtube.com
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Trump supporter convicted of election interference after 2016 plot to trick Hillary Clinton voters
March 31, 2023
A social media influencer was convicted Friday in connection with a plot to undermine Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Department of Justice said.
Douglass Mackey, also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was convicted of conspiracy against rights for a “scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote,” the agency said.
Mackey faces up to 10 years in prison.
“Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a news release.
“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote.”
Mackey amassed some 58,000 Twitter followers and was ranked as the 107th most important influencer ahead of the presidential election in February, 2016, by the MIT Media Lab.
Prosecutors alleged that Mackey in the months leading up to the 2016 election conspired with other influential Twitter users, among others, to spread disinformation encouraging Clinton supporters to cast invalid votes via text message or social media, the DOJ said.
In the days leading up to the election, Mackey sent tweets suggesting the importance of limiting “black turnout,” tweeting an image depicting an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign.
The ad stated: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,” and “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”
The fine print at the bottom of the deceptive image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by Hillary For President 2016.”
The tweet included the “#ImWithHer” hashtag.
At least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or some variant of the 59925 text number, which had been used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and his co-conspirators.
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