It was the airport trip seen round the world — or at least all over cable news.
Tuesday Reads: Trump Arrest and Arraignment Day
Posted: April 4, 2023 Filed under: just because 34 CommentsGood Day, Sky Dancers!!
Trump has succeeded in turning his indictment and arrest into a complete circus. The media will never learn. They will continue giving Trump endless publicity until the day he finally becomes a dictator and shuts them all down.
Yesterday CNN and MSNBC spent hours showing Trump’s motorcade leaving Mar-a-Lago, proceeding to the airport and, flying to New York City and then another motorcade driving to Trump Tower. They showed video of his 35-year-old plane take off and landing and showed shots of it in the air.
Paul Farhi writes at The Washington Post:
Since Trump arrived at Trump Tower, the cable networks have set up remote broadcasting booths nearby. This morning they are still at it–waiting breathlessly for Trump to emerge for his arrest and arraignment. Trump must be thrilled to be getting so much attention. The only thing he hasn’t gotten yet is violence from his cult supporters, but that could still happen.
Trump himself chose to create this circus. He was offered the chance to be arraigned via Zoom, but he preferred to travel to New York and create more chaos.
I can’t get past the Rolling Stone paywall, unfortunately.
This is from Time Magazine: How Trump Is Negotiating the Details of His Indictment to Maximize the Drama.
Donald Trump didn’t choose to be indicted. He didn’t pick the date he’d have to show up in court. But once the Manhattan District Attorney filed charges against him, he began to choreograph the spectacle that would follow.
As Trump made the journey from Florida to New York on Monday to face the prosecution brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, supporters waved Trump flags along the road outside, news cameras followed his motorcade roll out of the gates of his Mar-a-Lago Club, and the major networks aired live footage of him at Palm Beach International Airport walking up the stairs of his newly refurbished red-white-and-navy-blue plane, which he has characteristically branded Trump Force One.
It was one of the few times since leaving office that Trump garnered the ubiquitous media attention he once enjoyed as president—except it was all on his way to being booked for an alleged crime.
Trump’s legal team spent the weekend negotiating the details of how and when Trump would turn himself in. The former president plans to spend the night in Trump Tower in Midtown before surrendering himself at the lower Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday, where he will be arraigned and forced to provide fingerprints and pose for a mug shot. Though New York does not normally release mug shot photos, Trump’s is widely expected to leak.
Trump’s supporters are already prepared to lionize the image. “We’ll have a mug shot. For the record, it will be the most manly, most masculine, most handsome mug shot of all time,” joked Hogan Gidley, a former Trump White House spokesman who still speaks regularly with Trump. “I can say that definitely, before having even seen it.”
It turns out there won’t be a mug shot, because Trump will be arrested and arraigned at the courthouse, where they don’t have the equipment for much shots
Marjorie Taylor Greene is in New York at a protest organized by the Young Republicans Club, but she’s being drowned out by counter protesters making noise. NBC’s Ben Collins is reporting live from the scene.
Last night Michael Isikoff got some information about the charges against Trump. From Yahoo News: Trump to be charged Tuesday with 34 felony counts, but spared handcuffs and mug shot.
Donald Trump will be placed under arrest on Tuesday and informed that he has been charged with 34 felony counts for falsification of business records, according to a source who has been briefed on the procedures for the arraignment of the former president.
A New York City police arrest report summarizing the charges against Trump will then be prepared and entered into the court system before he is led into a courtroom to be formally arraigned on the charges, none of which are misdemeanors.
But, the source said, Trump will not be put in handcuffs, placed in a jail cell or subjected to a mug shot — typical procedures even for white-collar defendants until a judge has weighed in on pretrial conditions. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which has been consulting with the Secret Service and New York City court officials, concluded there was no reason to subject the former president to handcuffs or a mug shot….
The charge of falsification of business records can be prosecuted in New York state as a misdemeanor. But Bragg’s office bumped up all the charges to Class E felonies — the lowest level of felonies in the New York state penal code — on the grounds that the conduct was intended to conceal another underlying crime, according to the source.
Under the New York State penal code, a conviction for the Class E felony of falsifying business records can result in a prison term of up to four years. But as a practical matter, that seems extremely unlikely. “No one gets jail time for that as a first offender,” said a New York law enforcement official.
The evidence for the underlying crime that escalated Trump’s alleged misdemeanors to felonies is still not clear and won’t be until the indictment is unsealed on Tuesday. But it is believed to relate to the payment of $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels during the closing weeks of the 2016 election to conceal an extramarital encounter with Trump.
Here’s how Harry Litman interpreted this information about the charges:
The Daily Beast reports on how Trump is spending his time while awaiting his big moment in court: Trump Spends Last Hours Before Arrest Doing What He Loves Best: Posting.
Former President Donald Trump spent his last few hours before being arrested Tuesday doing what he loves the most—posting every last one of his thoughts online. In a series of rants on his own personal social media platform, Truth Social, he accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of leaking his indictment, debuted a new nickname for The Washington Post (Washington COMPost), called for Bragg to indict himself for some reason, and tried to turn the tables on his past—and likely future—opponent by saying that it is Joe Biden, and not him, who is guilty of obstruction. “Now, if [Bragg] wants to really clean up his reputation, he will do the honorable thing and, as District Attorney, INDICT HIMSELF,” Trump wrote. “He will go down in Judicial history, and his Trump Hating wife will be, I am sure, very proud of him!”
Yahoo News has a story on the judge in Trump’s case: Who is Juan Merchan, the NY judge handling Trump’s case?
His caseload has featured charges against former President Donald Trump’s company and some of Trump’s closest associates in business and politics.
Now Judge Juan Manuel Merchan is poised to take the historic hush-money prosecution of Trump himself.
udge Juan Manuel Merchan
Merchan, a former prosecutor with 16 years on the bench, is expected to preside Tuesday over the unprecedented arraignment of a former U.S. commander in chief. Trump will appear to answer charges arising from a grand jury investigation into payments made during his 2016 campaign to bury allegations that he had extramarital sexual encounters….
The Colombian-born Merchan, 60, emigrated as a 6-year-old and grew up in New York City. The first member of his family to go to college, he worked his way through school and went on to earn a law degree from Hofstra University in 1994.
He was a Manhattan prosecutor and worked in the state attorney general’s office before then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed him as a family court judge in 2006.
Three years later, Merchan was assigned to a trial court called the Supreme Court in New York. His particular duties now include overseeing a Manhattan mental health court where some defendants get a chance to resolve their cases with treatment and supervision, a program he views as a success story.
Like a lot of New York judges, he’s had experience with headline-making stories.
After skydivers were convicted of misdemeanors for leaping from the World Trade Center’s now-signature tower while it was under construction in 2013, Merchan sentenced them to community service, saying they had ” sullied the memories of those who jumped on 9/11 not for sport but because they had to.”
Merchan also oversaw the real-life case underlying the 2021 Lifetime movie “Soccer Mom Madam,” about a suburban mother with a secret sideline running a high-end Manhattan escort service. The woman, Anna Gristina, now wants to unwind her 2012 guilty plea.
Read more at the link above.
I’m going to end there. Trump should be heading to the courthouse soon. We can use this as a live blog. I hope you’ll share your reactions as we watch history in the making.
peej
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Sky Dancing 
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/get-the-hell-out-of-here-jamaal-bowman-shouts-after-marjorie-taylor-greene-s-car/vi-AA19sTN3?cvid=f80ecee887f645c88387b69b50db93fb&ocid=winp2fptaskbar&ei=8
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/marjorie-taylor-greene-headlines-trump-support-rally-mayors-crowd-message-control-yourselves/4204797/
they ran away !!!
https://theintellectualist.com/members/the-intellectualist/activity/27634/
off-topic, but what Tennesse is doing is fascism
Today is my Daddy’s birthday….we say this is a birthday miracle that tRump is getting arraigned today!
Happy birthday to your Dad!
Best Birthday present evah!!! Happy Birthday to your Dad!!!!
What a fantastic present!
The cameras followed the motorcade to the courthouse. Trump has been arrested and is awaiting arraignment.
The DA just left the courtroom.
Trump came out, looking unhappy. He is still in there; it’s not clear what is happening right now. We are still waiting for the indictment to be unsealed.
There are still photos of him inside the courtroom.
34, Haha! Still not as many counts as he should have been charged with.
He photoshopped a mug shot since the didn’t take one of him. He’s going to use it to raise money. What an Ahole
He’s leaving the courtroom right now.
Still no word on when we will see the charges
CNN has a “bare bones” indictment, not a speaking indictment.
The judge addressed Trump’s attacks on the DA and judge. Blanche said Trump is frustrated; the judge said that’s no excuse.
Trump lawyers are speaking now.
Indictment out, and DA is supposed to have a presser. It’s already 20 minutes late.
next bench appearance on December 4
There’s plenty of damn reasons why he should get the usual procedures of handcuffs and mug shot!
I would agree except that the pervert seems to be drooling over the fundraising potential of a mug shot.
If they did something sensible, like apply the law equally, it’d have to be together with an Olympian gag order covering _everything_.
This is from an article dignified with the category of “analysis.” Not one mention of the media’s role in enabling Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/04/analysis-trump-indictment/
I supposed by law Il Douche only had the appear before the judge, be fingerprinted and enter a plea before he could post bail. But I do wish they had put him in lockup long enough to become somebody’s bitch. The Secret Service could have watched to make sure he lived. THAT would he been SPECTACLE.
Bottom line, this is an individual who publicly and flamboyantly declared he was above the law and went so far as to openly try to seize control of the government by violence after losing an election.
If he never faced justice irreparable damage would have been done to our country. They need to bring charges for every crime they can prove, if only to prove the fat orange turd wrong.
The next cabal that wants to seize control of the government by force may not be so stupid and incompetent. Impotence in the face of a coup attempt encourages others to give it a try.
We NEED to this criminal away.
He didn’t post bail. This isn’t a bailable offense.
“I really don’t care. Do you?”
Although that flight did remind me a little of the emotions surrounding Nixon’s last one.