Blanche, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, has previously represented Trump ally Paul Manafort as well as Igor Fruman, a onetime associate of Rudy Giuliani who pleaded guilty in a campaign finance case brought by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office.
In particular, Blanche’s representation of Manafort may have caught Trump’s eye. Blanche led the successful effort to get mortgage fraud and other charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office dropped after arguing they would amount to double jeopardy because the state charges covered the same conduct for which Manafort had already been tried on a federal level.
Manafort was charged by the previous Manhattan district attorney, Cy Vance, a Democrat.
Blanche was vocal during that effort in calling the indictment of Manafort “politically motivated,” a charge Trump has also levied at the current district attorney, Alvin Bragg, also a Democrat.
In his resignation email, Blanche said he was unable to take Trump as a client while remaining at Cadwalader, New York City’s oldest law firm and one of its most elite. “Obviously, doing this as a partner at Cadwalader was not an option, so I have had to make the difficult choice to leave the firm.”
A spokesman for Cadwalader didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The addition to Trump’s legal team came as the former president is set to surrender Tuesday to the district attorney’s office to face criminal charges connected to his alleged role in a scheme to reimburse his former lawyer for a hush money payment made to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 presidential campaign. After he surrenders, Trump is expected to appear in court Tuesday afternoon to be arraigned.
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Rep. Adam Schiff, who led Trump’s first impeachment in the House and sat on the high-profile committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, called DeSantis’ comments “cowardly.” | Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo
Rep. Adam Schiff slammed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Sunday for comments the likely GOP primary candidate made about former President Donald Trump’s indictment.
DeSantis is willing to “say anything, do anything in hopes of becoming president,” Schiff, a California Democrat, told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki during an interview on the former Biden press secretary’s new show, “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
DeSantis, who is expected to enter the 2024 presidential race, criticized the indictment delivered by a New York grand jury on Thursday, calling it “un-American.”
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Turner, the House Intelligence chair, also gently broke from Trump’s assertions that Russia will eventually take all of Ukraine: “It’s certainly not inevitable … there’s a number of people I think that should just stop the speculation.” He did not call Trump out by name, though. He also lamented that “it’s one thing when you have a cancel culture, it’s another one when you have a cancel criminal justice system.”
The coming indictment marks only the beginning of what will be a huge debate within the GOP on whether Trump should be nominated for a third consecutive presidential election. He’s facing other legal woes beyond the hush money case, and each controversy stands to test his support among elected Republicans desperate to retake the White House. At the moment, many conservatives are not officially supporting his bid.
And now nearly eight years since Trump entered the political ring, it remains truer than ever that many Republicans loathe discussing Trump’s endless penchant for controversy. Even Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who took a massive political risk in voting to convict Trump in his impeachment trial in 2021, is uninterested in rehashing his opinion on Trump.
As Trump will likely face charges over his handling of hush money payments to an adult film star, Cassidy repeated the same phrase as Manchin nearly word-for-word: “No one should be above the law, but no one should be a target of the law.”
“The particular problem is that it’s going to lead to all kinds of political theater, theater that is going to distract from the issues,” Cassidy said on “Fox News Sunday.” After raising fears that Social Security benefits will be cut without action, he lamented of both President Joe Biden and Trump: “Neither of the two leading candidates will take the issue on. That’s frustrating.”
Trumpian conservatives don’t generally flock to TV news networks each weekend, and often take their pugnacious defensive style to right-leaning networks. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that some Republicans would consider retribution through the spending process over what he sees as the targeting of Trump by the federal government.
“We control the power of the purse, and we’re going to look at the appropriations process and limit funds going to some of these agencies, particularly the ones engaged in the most egregious behavior,” Jordan said. He called the Bragg case “ridiculous.”
That some of the most animated support of Trump on Sunday came from his own defense team highlights the fractional support the president still has in both chambers of Congress. And even his lawyers couldn’t fully defend Trump, who has attacked New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan as someone who “hates me.”
Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said on CNN that while Trump certainly had a right to take issue with any aspect of the case, he personally has “no issue with this judge whatsoever.”
If there was a memorable moment over the weekend within the GOP, it may be former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s announcement of a 2024 president campaign. He immediately called on Trump to drop out of the race amid the indictment, a call even Trump’s latest campaign rival admitted would be summarily ignored.
“The office is more important than any individual person. For the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that is too much of a side show,” Hutchinson said on ABC’s “This Week.” He added: “At the same time, we know he’s not” going to drop out.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has flirted with another presidential bid, questioned on ABC whether Trump’s prosecution is “really about increasing the public safety of the people of Manhattan” but also said an indictment can’t be good news for Trump: “All this bravado from the Trump camp is baloney.”
The comment illustrated Republicans’ quandary: Criticizing Trump too directly over the matter could lose conservative support, even if on its face an indictment clearly hurts the former president’s general election prospects.
Marc Short, a former chief of staff for former Vice President Mike Pence, did not take Hutchinson’s tack either and said on Fox “it’s right for Republicans to denounce” the indictment.
So even as they very much don’t defend Trump on the particulars of the case over a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign, some Republicans are doing their best to channel their inner Manchin — with a twist.
“People need to ask themselves a fundamental question. If this were anyone but Trump, would this DA even take up this case?” asked Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) on CNN’s “State of the Union. He added that former presidents “should definitely not be immune from criminal charges. It’s just that this one is as weak as it can get.”
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Christie, a Trump acolyte-turned-critic and potential 2024 presidential rival, said Sunday that while criticism of Trump’s attacks on the judicial system is fair, there are “legitimate questions,” about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s motives.
“You can be incredibly critical of the way Trump treats all of our institutions, the judiciary, being part of it. And he has called for the use of prosecutorial power against people that he’s opposed to without knowing at all what the facts are. He should be criticized for that. I’ve criticized him for it and others have,” Christie said.
“At the same time, there can be legitimate questions to be raised about Alvin Bragg’s conduct and his lack of use of prosecutorial discretion here,” said, Christie, who argued that Bragg may not be making the best use of his limited resources.
“What I hate about our conversations about this right now, George, is that you have to be in one camp or the other. It’s not true,” Christie told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
The charges, Christie noted, could contain some unexpected material. “I do think there may be surprises in there for us,” he said.
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“As bad as it was for Trump, it was worse for DeSantis and everyone else,” said Mike Madrid, the Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “It rallies the base—there’s this rally around the flag effect for Trump. Second, probably most importantly, it just completely sucks the oxygen out of the room.”
In a less polarized political climate, an indictment from a grand jury targeting a primary frontrunner would create an opening for another candidate, let alone an indictment that remains under seal and its specifics unknown—never mind a general election.
So far that isn’t happening, even in a GOP increasingly obsessed with electability following the loss of the White House in 2020 and disappointing midterm elections in 2022.
Across the field on Friday, GOP strategists said their candidates were hunkering down, wish-casting the news away.
“This news cycle will last days, not months,” said a senior adviser to a prospective candidate granted anonymity to discuss their camp’s political calculus, conceding the development does thrust Trump to the center of the primary.
“Annoying,” carped another 2024 hopeful’s strategist, granted anonymity for the same reason.. “We’ve already been talking about this for two weeks because Trump cried wolf,” the strategist said.
A third strategist working on a different potential GOP competitor’s campaign, also granted anonymity to discuss the dynamics of the race, acknowledged there is no way to beat Trump in the primary by cheering on the Manhattan prosecution. This person likened the indictment Thursday to news last year of the Supreme Court reaching a decision in the Dobbs case: “There was a big surprise when this came down, but you’ve been lying in wait, expecting it for a little bit.”
The GOP’s circling of the wagons is the surest sign yet that the coming months of the primary will orbit solely around the party’s standard-bearer. Every court proceeding, every new twist in the case will represent a litmus test other candidates in the field will either pass or fail.
It also underscores the narrowness of the path Trump’s opponents have to navigate: While the Never Trump movement has always consisted of an ineffectual sliver of the broader GOP—a sideshow to Trump’s main event— the movement hit rock bottom Thursday.
From former Vice President Mike Pence to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, would-be Trump challengers castigated Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s decision to indict Trump. As Pence had it: “outrageous.” “Beyond belief,” Youngkin tweeted. Even Ohio State Sen. Matt Dolan, the U.S. Senate candidate who had not previously bowed to kiss Trump’s ring, called Bragg’s actions “politically motivated.”
And former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who vowed earlier this week to never back Trump again and who appeared to be carving a lane for himself in the GOP primary as Trump’s critic in chief, has been conspicuously silent since news of the indictment broke.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who’s called for the party to move on from Trump in 2024 but said he would still support him if he’s the nominee, wouldn’t distance himself too much from the former president in an interview with POLITICO last week. “You have to hold everyone to the rule of law,” Sununu said, “but clearly there’s been some hesitation on whether they could really find anybody guilty on this.”
Former New Hampshire GOP Chair Fergus Cullen said, “Never blame a politician for acting like a politician, whether you’re Chris Sununu or Nikki Haley or even Mike Pence, you’re not trying to alienate the 75 percent of primary voters” who still support Trump or remain open to him as the nominee. “Maybe someone would have the decency to not defend [Trump], or point out that this is a behavior that gives them concerns, but that’s asking a lot.”
Though the Republican field is siding with Trump in the early days of the primary, it doesn’t foreclose the possibility they will pivot when and if future criminal cases are brought against him.
In a previously booked interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Thursday evening, Pence left perhaps the most wiggle room of any possible challenger in his response about whether Trump, if convicted, should drop out of the race.
“It’s a long way to that decision,” Pence said, “I promise to answer that question if it approaches.”
Still, just one likely, longshot GOP candidate so far, Asa Hutchinson, has said Trump’s indictment should be disqualifying, evidence of a dearth of Republicans willing to endure the attendant slings and arrows of attacking Trump first. Especially not after the blowback DeSantis received by criticizing Trump on moral grounds, saying at a press conference last week he didn’t “know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star.”
The former Arkansas governor, who has yet to show signs of gaining any traction with the Republican electorate, said earlier this month Trump should drop out of the presidential race if indicted. Hutchinson seems undeterred that his stance on Trump is unpopular with the base: he has continued to prepare for an announcement next month. On Wednesday, he called a Trump donor to seek a meeting ahead of his planned campaign launch, according to a copy of the voicemail obtained by POLITICO.
“There is an opportunity for somebody who’s really good at this,” said Sarah Longwell, the Republican political strategist and publisher of the Never-Trump Bulwark. “We just don’t have that person.”
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The pre-indictment poll numbers are consistent with the political dynamic that’s existed since Trump took office six years ago: The Republican base — especially downscale voters and those who describe themselves as very conservative — rallies around Trump after scandals, even as those controversies take a toll on Trump’s overall image.
So what’s best for Trump’s chances of holding off Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the other candidates for the nomination — an indictment that rallies most of Trump’s competitors and rank-and-file Republican voters around him — likely makes it more difficult for the GOP to reclaim the presidency in 2024.
Over the past month, as the prospect of criminal charges hung over Trump, the former president was actually increasing his national advantage over DeSantis, who hasn’t officially entered the race yet, among GOP voters. The indictment does little to threaten that lead, at least in the short term — as evidenced by DeSantis and the other declared or likely candidates decrying the charges on Thursday.
But it’s not just that Republican voters think Trump is being targeted or treated unfairly. A sizable portion of them believe he’s fully innocent. In the Marist College poll, in addition to four-in-five Republicans calling the investigations into Trump a “witch hunt,” just 10 percent of GOP voters say Trump has done anything illegal. Nearly half, 45 percent, say Trump hasn’t done anything wrong, while a sizable 43 percent describe Trump’s behavior as “unethical, but not illegal.”
Similarly, in the pre-indictment Quinnipiac poll, only 20 percent of Republicans said the existence of criminal charges against Trump should disqualify him from running for president, and 52 percent said the Manhattan case was “not serious at all.”
Those numbers could change once the details of the indictment are made public. But for now, Republicans are out of step with the electorate as a whole. Fifty-seven percent of respondents in the Quinnipiac poll say criminal charges should disqualify Trump from the campaign, and only 26 percent say the allegations in the New York case aren’t serious at all.
While most Republicans say the various Trump probes amount to a “witch hunt” in the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, it’s only 41 percent of all Americans. And 46 percent of Americans say Trump has committed crimes (compared to only 10 percent of Republicans), while another 29 percent call Trump’s actions “unethical, but not illegal.”
In another pre-indictment survey released this week, the Democratic polling consortium Navigator Research found that 57 percent of voters supported indicting Trump for “illegally using campaign funds for personal expenses — a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels — and then lying about it,” including a quarter of Republicans, 25 percent.
And the online pollster Morning Consult offered the first data point following news of the indictment, though there has been little time for it to sink in yet. In a flash poll conducted early Friday, 51 percent of voters said they supported the indictment, but only 19 percent of GOP primary voters agreed. (Polls conducted entirely in one day, let alone a half-day, are subject to greater sources of potential error than other surveys.)
There is one message for Trump defenders that is resonating: Just because Americans don’t think Trump isn’t the victim of a “witch hunt” doesn’t mean they don’t think politics is a factor at all.
In the Quinnipiac poll, 62 percent of respondents said the district attorney’s case is mainly motivated by politics, including 93 percent of Republicans, 29 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of independents. Fewer than a third, 32 percent, said the case is mainly motivated by the law.
There are discreet limits to that argument, however. In Friday’s Morning Consult poll, voters were split between those who said the New York grand jury’s decision to indict Trump was mostly based on evidence that Trump violated the law (46 percent) and those who said the grand jury was motivated “to damage Trump’s political career” (43 percent).
The coming days and weeks will bring more data, including following Trump’s expected arraignment next week. And there’s a hint in the Quinnipiac poll about how that moment could move the needle of public opinion.
Quinnipiac’s pollsters cited Trump’s statement earlier this week that his indictment was imminent and asked his supporters to protest and “take our country back.” They asked respondents if Trump was “mainly acting out of concerns about democracy” as a candidate who could face criminal charges while campaigning for the nation’s highest office, “or mainly acting out of concerns for himself?”
Of the subgroups identified by Quinnipiac, only one thought Trump was defending democracy in urging protests against his indictment: Republicans (56 percent). Majorities of all Americans (69 percent), Democrats (98 percent) and independents (71 percent) thought Trump was mostly concerned about himself.
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The letter was sent a day after Bragg’s office acknowledged that they had issued the first-ever indictment of a former president. Officials have also indicated they are working with Trump’s lawyers to negotiate his surrender. Though the timing of both his surrender and arraignment hasn’t been finalized, they are tentatively planned for Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter.
It’s uncharted territory for the legal system, the government and the country, which has never seen the indictment and prosecution of a former president. Though the precise evidence against Trump remains unknown, the case appears centered on hush money payments to a porn actress, Stormy Daniels, in 2016 to silence her allegations of a sexual relationship during Trump’s first presidential bid.
The indictment, which remains under seal, prompted a torrent of attacks from Trump’s allies, many of whom denounced it as a political witch hunt. While Trump himself has called for protests in the streets — and on Friday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) echoed that call — most House Republicans have instead vowed to train a microscope on the Democratic district attorney, requesting information and documents about the probe.
Bragg’s office used the letter to the lawmakers, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, to respond to those allegations of political bias.
“Like any other defendant, Mr. Trump is entitled to challenge these charges in court and avail himself of all processes and protections that New York State’s robust criminal procedure affords. What neither Mr. Trump nor Congress may do is interfere with the ordinary course of proceedings in New York State,” the letter reads.
State judge Juan Merchan is expected to preside over the arraignment and may ultimately be called upon to preside over the criminal proceedings, according to a person familiar with the process.
Bragg’s office also used the letter to plead with Capitol Hill Republicans to encourage calm, accusing them of engaging in “unlawful political interference” in the same breath.
“We urge you to refrain from these inflammatory accusations, withdraw your demand for information, and let the criminal justice process proceed without unlawful political interference,” Dubeck wrote in the letter to Judiciary, Oversight and Administration Chairs Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), James Comer (R-Ky.) and Bryan Steil (R-Wis.).
“As Committee Chairmen, you could use the stature of your office to denounce these attacks and urge respect for the fairness of our justice system and for the work of the impartial grand jury,” she continued. “Instead, you and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges and made unfounded allegations that the Office’s investigation, conducted via an independent grand jury of average citizens serving New York State, is politically motivated.”
Trump dialed up his rhetoric Friday, taking aim this time at Merchan, the judge he anticipates would be presiding over his case.
“The Judge ‘assigned’ to my Witch Hunt Case … HATES ME,” Trump posted on social media, complaining about Merchan’s handling of the separate proceedings brought by the district attorney’s office against the Trump Organization, which Trump said Merchan treated “viciously.”
Bragg’s office suggested that the House GOP inquiries appeared to be functioning more as interference for Trump than as legitimate congressional oversight, a concern Dubeck said was “heightened” by some of the committee members’ own statements about their goals.
She cited Greene’s statement that “Republicans in Congress MUST subpoena these communists and END this!” as well as Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s (R-Fla.) call to scrutinize lawmakers who are “being silent on what is currently happening to Trump.”
From a legal standpoint, individual lawmakers’ comments and motives aren’t typically given weight when a congressional committee takes actions. Trump routinely pointed to the comments of individual committee members’ plans to make use of his tax returns in his failed efforts to block Congress’ effort to obtain them.
Greene called for Trump supporters to gather Tuesday in New York, indicating she would be there herself. “We MUST protest the unconstitutional WITCH HUNT!” she tweeted. Her tweet was a departure from her reaction a day after Trump first suggested that he could be arrested, when she told reporters on the sidelines of the House GOP retreat that she would not be going to New York.
As of Friday, though, there were no indications of significant street protests or organized activities centered on the courthouse. Bragg arrived at around 7:30 a.m., amid signs of significantly heightened security, with little other movement aside from a large media presence.
In her letter, Dubeck also provided some details about the federal funding Bragg’s office has used in connection with Trump-related matters — money that House Republicans have suggested could now be under threat because of the indictment. Additionally, House Republicans received a second document on Friday detailing federal grant money the office has obtained.
None of that federal grant funding, she noted, has been used in the current investigation. She said the office has spent approximately $5,000 of federal funds — funds that the district attorney’s office helped recover during forfeiture actions — on expenses related to the investigation of Trump or the Trump organization.
“These expenses were incurred between October 2019 and August 2021,” Dubeck noted, adding that most were used to support Bragg’s predecessor’s successful defense of its probe of the Trump organization before the Supreme Court.
A spokesperson for Jordan didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter from Bragg’s office. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y) said at an event on Friday that Republicans should “cease their intervention in an ongoing prosecution in a local prosecutor’s office.”
But House Republicans have already started laying some groundwork for a potential subpoena of the Manhattan district attorney, a move they haven’t publicly ruled out. They also appeared to make the case in their second letter to Bragg that they believe a subpoena would survive a legal challenge.
Comer, who noted that he hasn’t spoken with Trump recently, called the indictment a “political stunt” but said he needed more information before Republicans decided where to go next.
“I think before the next step we’ll have to see what, in fact, these charges were and then go from there,” Comer said in an interview on Friday.
Dubeck, in her letter, urged them to reach a “negotiated resolution … before taking the unprecedented and unconstitutional step of serving a subpoena on a district attorney for information related to an ongoing state criminal prosecution.”
Wesley Parnell contributed to this story.
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Well, I mean, in terms of the characters, yes, you’re right that this is all sort of a throwback to 2016-2018 period.
But, you know, one of the people who’s testified twice, I believe, in front of this grand jury and who is central to this whole episode and who I believe has never spoken publicly about it is David Pecker. And so if there’s any chance that he ends up testifying at a trial or ends up speaking about his side of the story, I would be very intrigued to hear that.
As you know, as someone who, you know, he was extremely close to Donald Trump and that’s how he got involved in this hush money payment to begin with. That’s someone I would really like to hear from at some point if there’s an opportunity to do that.
But in terms of the sort of the legal questions that are going to come up here, there’s quite a number. But I think the biggest one is, you know, I mentioned that the indictment is sealed. We don’t know what the counts are yet, but there’s a lot of questions about how the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, constructed these charges and whether they will survive in court, because if they are what we think they’re going to be, they’re a largely untested legal theory.
And Trump’s lawyers, of course, will try their hardest to fight them and given that they’re untested, there’s just a lot of questions about how they’ll survive. So that’s probably the biggest issue here. But then, of course, we will run into all sorts of questions about the sort of scheduling of legal proceedings and a potential trial for someone who is a presidential candidate. And that is likely to be very, very complicated. So.
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“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head. It is un-American,” DeSantis said on Twitter. “The Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney has consistently bent the law to downgrade felonies and to excuse criminal misconduct. Yet, now he is stretching the law to target a political opponent.”
“Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda,” he continued.
Under Florida law, the governor can intervene in an extradition matter if it is contested. But as of now, Trump’s lawyers have indicated that Trump is expected to surrender.
DeSantis’ stance on the indictment was being closely anticipated because, as a likely political rival, he has been hit hard by Trump and his allies in recent weeks, including over his previous comments on Trump’s legal troubles when he said: “I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.”
Trump is currently connected to several ongoing investigations, including one over his handling of classified documents at his Florida home at Mar-a-Lago and an ongoing probe in Atlanta.
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While the precise charges are secret for now, prosecutors have concluded they can prove a criminal case against Trump because of the apparent subterfuge surrounding a $130,000 payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from publicizing her claim about a sexual encounter with Trump. Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen funded that payment through a home equity line of credit.
Trump insisted in April 2018 he did not know about the hush money, but Cohen provided Congress a series of check images, signed by Trump, reflecting payments to Cohen that he said were reimbursements for the money he laid out, including at least two that came while Trump was in the White House. Cohen said that Trump and his company concealed the purpose of the payments by falsely labeling them as legal expenses.
Under New York law, disguising such payments in corporate records is a crime, but typically only a misdemeanor. It becomes a felony if the false business records were intended to obscure a second crime. In this case, that second crime appears to be the use of the funds to advance Trump’s presidential campaign allegedly in violation of campaign finance laws.
The strongest evidence of such a link to politics may be the timing: After months of demands, the money was wired to Daniels’ lawyer on Oct. 27, 2016, just days before the 2016 presidential election.
What are the possible holes in the prosecution’s case?
It is difficult to assess the case against Trump without knowing the exact charges or all of the evidence that prosecutors have marshaled during an investigation that has lasted more than four years. But based on publicly available information, legal experts have identified several features of the case that may present stumbling blocks as prosecutors seek a guilty verdict.
For starters, Cohen is not the strongest possible witness for prosecutors. He’s provided a lot of the evidence and testimony needed to bring the case, which investigators have gone to great lengths to authenticate. But his credibility is open to challenge since he pleaded guilty in 2018 to nine felonies and was sentenced to three years in federal prison. He’s also repeatedly expressed extreme bitterness towards Trump, even running a podcast he titled “Mea Culpa,” an allusion to his regrets over his time as Trump’s ally.
The case also dates to 2016 and 2017, so it is more than five years old. Some of the delay can be readily explained — pressing a criminal case against Trump while he was in office would have been difficult and perhaps impossible. But it’s been more than two years now since Trump left the White House.
Trump could argue that prosecutors waited too long. New York’s statute of limitations for most felonies is five years, but there are some exceptions to that deadline, including if the person being charged was living out of state.
Another potential difficulty: Prosecutors may have to prove that Trump knew the arrangement was illegal. Trump could argue that he fairly assumed that Cohen, as an attorney, was executing the payments and related paperwork in a manner that was lawful.
Will Trump remain free? Can he campaign while under indictment?
That will be up to the state-court judge assigned to Trump’s case, but it seems unlikely that prosecutors would seek to detain the former president or restrict his travel in the U.S. while the case is pending. There is no legal impediment to him continuing his presidential campaign while facing criminal charges — or even if he were jailed.
If Trump won the presidency while facing charges or a conviction, the legalities become considerably more murky. There are serious constitutional questions about whether a state court could keep someone elected to federal office from serving.
How will the indictment affect the other ongoing Trump-focused investigations?
The short answer is: Not much. There’s no reason to think the indictment in Manhattan will influence the trajectory of several other probes that present an acute risk of more criminal charges for Trump. A grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., is examining his bid to overturn the election results in that state, and at the federal level, special counsel Jack Smith is leading twin probes into Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and his retention of government documents after his presidency.
Formally, a federal criminal case against Trump — if it were filed — would allow federal prosecutors to take precedence over any local case or cases.
Concurrent criminal proceedings against Trump would inevitably cause some logistical problems, but typically the feds and local prosecutors try to work out any conflicts.
How long will it take Trump to be brought to trial?
It will, by necessity, take many months to commence a trial of a former president of the United States. Even if both sides were eager to proceed to trial quickly, ironing out legal and constitutional questions would likely stretch out over the next year and into the 2024 primary season.
Add to that Trump’s penchant — in nearly every legal matter he’s embroiled in — to seek to delay and prolong proceedings whenever possible.
Trump’s lawyers could try to move the case to federal court, arguing that at least some of the payments to Cohen took place while Trump was president and therefore a state court should have no authority to resolve the matter. Trump also could seek to move the trial to a different courthouse elsewhere in New York state. And he could try to have the indictment dismissed or reduced. All of these pre-trial motions will take time to resolve.
A criminal tax case the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed against the Trump Organization in the same court in 2021 took about 15 months to get to trial. A jury convicted two Trump companies on all 17 felony charges last December. The issues in the new case are narrower, but the focus on Trump personally seems certain to drag things out.
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