I spent a fair amount of time in the hallways and courtrooms of various halls of justice as a reporter. That all came back to me during Tuesday’s scene in lower Manhattan when an indicted Donald Trump walked into the courtroom where he had to face the charges lodged against him.
Nothing about that scene was routine. The tension was palpable.
I’ve seen plenty of defendants at court — many were handcuffed, in prison jumpsuits and otherwise very guilty-looking.
In that context, Trump looked free and normal in his suit, red tie, hands free of cuffs, and only loosely under guard by court officials.
He did look grim, however, which is not surprising since he had just surrendered and learned of the 34 felony counts against him. Most people in similar circumstances would feel intimidated and frightened, and on some level, perhaps even he did for a few moments.
It’s a humbling experience like few other events in life, as almost every defendant I ever interviewed admitted to me. So even a personality like Trump’s would presumably go through at least a temporarily unpleasant emotional state.
But Trump’s strategy, as he’s made clear, is to fight this by labeling it a political witch-hunt. Meanwhile, the D.A.’s theory of the case apparently is that Trump and his associates committed these crimes to illegally try to win the 2016 election.
If that is true, the injured party in this case was not a person or a company or any other individual entity. It was our democracy as a whole. Our entire way of life.
Far from being a trivial matter, therefore, this was — allegedly — an extremely serious crime against our country.
What I’m afraid of is that the spectacle Trump the showman is creating will deflect and obscure that sobering fact from public view. In addition, he is already demonizing the D.A. and the judge and their family members, which raises the specter of more Jan. 6th-type violence.
Hopefully, the good sense of the majority of people will prevail, as will justice.
That’s why Tuesday was either another dark and forbidding day for our country — or the day that after eight long years of this storm, the light finally started to break through.
SEVERAL LINKS:
The Return of the Non-stop Trump News Cycle (New Yorker)
Analysis: A Surprise Accusation Bolsters a Risky Case Against Trump — The unsealed case against Donald J. Trump accuses him of falsifying records in part to lay the groundwork for planned lies to tax authorities. (NYT)
The charges against Donald Trump – full text of indictment (Guardian)
Trump pleads not guilty to 34 charges; admonished by judge (AP)
UN says its female staffers banned from working in Afghanistan (Al Jazeera)
Finland joins NATO in historic shift, Russia threatens 'counter-measures' (Reuters)
A Specific Innocuous Phrase Sends Google's AI Into an Existential Crisis (Futurism)
Developers Are Connecting Multiple AI Agents to Make More ‘Autonomous’ AI (Vice)
Apple joins Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in tech industry layoffs (Ars Technica)
Wild Elephants Appear to Have Been Domesticated, But Not by Humans (ScienceAlert)
Extinct bison emerges from melting permafrost up to 9,000 years later. Can it be cloned? (Miami Herald)
Area Man Always Thought He’d Squander His Life Differently (The Onion)
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