Gilead
Donald Trump
Stormy Daniels
Fig. 1. Stormy Daniels at Ron Jeremy’s birthday party. Photograph by Luke Ford (Lukeisback.com), March 10, 2007, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5.
Minutes after former President Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in New York, his supporters flooded social media and extremist message boards with violent and racist threats against the officials prosecuting Trump, as well as bloody civil war.
“This cannot go unpunished,” one member of the rabidly pro-Trump message board The Donald wrote on Thursday night. “The DA needs to pay dearly.”
“None of this will stop unless there is blood in the streets,” another poster wrote.[1]
Within minutes of the news of the indictment leaking to media including The New York Times, [Donald] Trump, who is running for a second term in 2024, repeated his claim, now made daily in his campaign fundraising emails, that Jewish billionaire George Soros was behind the charge.[2]
For those who don’t know, invoking the name of George Soros is red meat for anti-Semites. I hardly even ever hear of him myself, except in paleoconservative rants.
That Donald Trump does this is further evidence of his embrace of the extreme paleoconservative and social conservative fringe of white Christian nationalism.[3] A few years ago, a majority of Republicans would have recoiled in horror. That they don’t supports my view of conservatism as increasingly monolithic[4] and is more likely to serve Republicans right than to serve them well in 2024.
Donald Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in an indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, according to two sources familiar with the case – the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.
Trump is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.
The indictment has been filed under seal and will be announced in the coming days. The charges are not publicly known at this time.[5]
So it’s a lot of charges, but
The New York Times has reported that the case may include a potential charge of falsifying business records under Article 175 of the New York Penal Law. A conviction for a felony version of bookkeeping fraud carries a sentence of up to four years.
To prove that Mr. [Donald] Trump committed that offense, prosecutors would seemingly need evidence showing that he had knowingly caused subordinates to make a false entry in his company’s records “with intent to defraud.” For the action to be a felony rather than a misdemeanor, prosecutors would also need to show that Mr. Trump falsified the business records with the intention of committing, aiding or concealing a second crime.[6]
For me, the pieces aren’t quite all put together: Will these be felony charges? It sure kinda looks like it, but because we don’t know the precise charges,[7] it’s hard to be sure.
Ron Kampeas, “In American first, Manhattan jury indicts Donald Trump, who promptly invokes Soros,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 30, 2023, https://www.jta.org/2023/03/30/politics/in-american-first-manhattan-jury-indicts-donald-trump-who-promptly-invokes-soros
Bess Levin, “Grand Jury Votes to Indict Trump: Ex-President’s Odds of Prison Time Just Shot Up,” Vanity Fair, March 30, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/03/donald-trump-grand-jury-votes-to-indict
Corinne Ramey and Joe Palazzolo, “Grand Jury Votes to Indict Donald Trump,” Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/grand-jury-votes-to-indict-donald-trump-a9512240
David Gilbert and Mack Lamoureux, “The Far Right Is Calling For Bloody ‘Civil War’ After Trump’s Indictment,” Vice, March 31, 2023, https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9p9q/trump-indictment-civil-war-the-donald
Kara Scannell et al., “Donald Trump indicted by Manhattan grand jury on more than 30 counts related to business fraud,” CNN, March 31, 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/30/politics/donald-trump-indictment/index.html
White Christian nationalism
Fig. 1. In terms of geographic area, Pennsylvania is very much a white Christian nationalist kind of place. Photograph by author, January 5, 2023.
David Gilbert and Mack Lamoureux, “The Far Right Is Calling For Bloody ‘Civil War’ After Trump’s Indictment,” Vice, March 31, 2023, https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9p9q/trump-indictment-civil-war-the-donald
San Francisco
Roland Li and Noah Arroyo, “Cities are struggling. San Francisco could be in for the biggest ‘doom loop’ of all,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, 2023, https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/city-economy-doom-loop-17846412.php
- [1]David Gilbert and Mack Lamoureux, “The Far Right Is Calling For Bloody ‘Civil War’ After Trump’s Indictment,” Vice, March 31, 2023, https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9p9q/trump-indictment-civil-war-the-donald↩
- [2]Ron Kampeas, “In American first, Manhattan jury indicts Donald Trump, who promptly invokes Soros,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 30, 2023, https://www.jta.org/2023/03/30/politics/in-american-first-manhattan-jury-indicts-donald-trump-who-promptly-invokes-soros↩
- [3]David Benfell, “It should be obvious by now: Donald Trump and Doug Mastriano are not the future of the Republican Party,” Not Housebroken, March 29, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2023/03/26/it-should-be-obvious-by-now-donald-trump-and-doug-mastriano-are-not-the-future-of-the-republican-party/↩
- [4]David Benfell, “My 2024 forecast,” Not Housebroken, March 24, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/10/my-2024-forecast/↩
- [5]Kara Scannell et al., “Donald Trump indicted by Manhattan grand jury on more than 30 counts related to business fraud,” CNN, March 31, 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/30/politics/donald-trump-indictment/index.html↩
- [6]Charlie Savage, “Dissecting Charges That Could Arise From the Trump Investigations,” New York Times, March 19, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/19/us/politics/trump-investigations.html↩
- [7]Kara Scannell et al., “Donald Trump indicted by Manhattan grand jury on more than 30 counts related to business fraud,” CNN, March 31, 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/30/politics/donald-trump-indictment/index.html↩