Trump investigations: The hush money case

A Manhattan jury just found former President Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts. The former president is still facing other criminal charges across four jurisdictions — Georgia, Florida, New York, and the District of Columbia — all as he runs for the presidency again.

The cases, involving allegations of attempted election theft, mishandling classified documents, and hush money payments, have grown so sprawling that it’s tough for anyone but the most die-hard political obsessive to follow them in detail.

Even under the best of circumstances, a criminal trial of a former head of state is a fraught exercise. And, for a number of reasons, the four trials of Donald Trump are happening decidedly not under the best circumstances.

Consider the federal judiciary itself, which will oversee at least two of Trump’s trials (and which may also wind up hearing the new charges just filed against Trump in Georgia). Trump filled those courts with judges who range from conservative outliers within the legal profession to outright hacks. And that’s also true of the federal appeals courts that will review many decisions made by federal trial judges in the Trump prosecutions.

Former President Donald Trump was indicted for an unprecedented third time on August 1, adding another set of serious federal charges to the mounting legal issues he faces.

Trump was indicted as part of the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation, led by special counsel Jack Smith, into the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. The indictment marks the second time Trump has faced federal charges, and he remains the only president to have been federally indicted.

Donald Trump and his allies have claimed that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of him is a political, politicized mess.

They’re not entirely wrong.

Former President Donald Trump was arraigned in a New York court Tuesday on charges related to hush money payments made to the porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during his 2016 campaign.

It’s the first time in US history that a former president has faced criminal charges. And the indictment may only mark the beginning of Trump’s legal troubles given that he is the target of several additional ongoing civil and criminal probes.

There is something painfully anticlimactic about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump. It concerns not Trump’s efforts to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, but his alleged effort to cover up a possible extramarital affair with a porn star.

And there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax. It is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him.

After weeks of speculation, former President Donald Trump was indicted, arrested, and arraigned in connection with hush money payments to the porn actress Stormy Daniels, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, and a former Trump Tower doorman. Trump has spent weeks signaling that he thinks the indictment, the first levied against a former president, will benefit him politically, and has been using his latest legal troubles to fundraise.

But while his campaign claims it has raked in more than $8 million in recent days, it’s not clear the former president will benefit in the long run.

Donald Trump has become the first-ever former US president to face criminal charges.

On Tuesday, the former president appeared in court to plead not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, facing an indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The charges all stemmed from a five-year-old scandal: the $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was one of a handful Republican lawmakers to show up at a Tuesday protest in New York City ahead of former President Donald Trump’s arraignment later in the day. The rally, which Greene led alongside the New York Young Republicans, drew a crowd of a few dozen Trump supporters, counterprotesters, and curious New Yorkers — all of whom appeared to be outnumbered by media.

The rally in Collect Pond Park, across the street from the Manhattan Criminal Court House, was less a protest and more like a bizarro carnival. Trump’s Tuesday arraignment took place on an rare New York spring day, which added to the frenetic vibe, as though everyone was unleashed after a long winter.

Former President Donald Trump officially surrendered himself to authorities on Tuesday after being indicted last week by a grand jury on multiple counts. He was taken into custody around 1:24 pm local time, then was arraigned in a lower Manhattan courtroom and pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts tied to falsifying business records.

Trump was released and left law enforcement custody around 3:30 pm local time. He is expected to travel back to his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, where he’ll deliver remarks on Tuesday evening.

Former President Donald Trump is heading to New York on Monday from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, to face criminal charges.

A Manhattan grand jury voted Thursday to indict Trump in connection to hush money payments to the porn actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign, according to multiple news reports. He is the first former US president to be charged with a crime.

Since the news of Donald Trump’s indictment broke on Thursday night, I’ve been thinking a lot about Alexander Hamilton — specifically, his argument in Federalist No. 69 that the presidency of the new nation differs profoundly from the old British monarchy.

A key distinction, per Hamilton, is that presidents can be punished for crimes but kings cannot: “The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.”

Thursday night was the most cringe moment in American politics since the high times of the #resistance in the early Trump administration. After news broke that Donald Trump had become the first president in US history to be charged with a crime, there were labored, overwrought historical analogies (the number of times Fox News personalities mentioned that the Rubicon had been crossed would have allowed Caesar’s entire legion to go back and forth across the ancient Roman river a dozen times). There was ample partisan wish-casting, as right-wingers shared their fantasies of President Joe Biden condemning the prosecution of Trump in New York in order to bring our country together. And, of course, there were dark anxieties that this would spell the end of American democracy and represented what Donald Trump Jr. simply called “Communist level shit.”

These takes united the Republican Party — figures from Trump-cautious politicians like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) to ardent MAGA die-hards like Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) joined in condemning the indictment of Trump by a Manhattan grand jury, which is reportedly over allegations that he had illegally covered up hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election (although the indictment has still not been released). Among Republicans, there was a consensus that this prosecution was entirely political and a threat to the rule of law. Youngkin insisted on Twitter that “Arresting a presidential candidate on a manufactured basis should not happen in America,” while Gosar called the indictment “a clear and brazen political persecution.”

The indictment of Donald Trump Thursday night is an American first: No president, sitting or former, has ever been indicted on criminal charges. But in peer democracies, it’s far from unheard of. France, Portugal, South Korea, Croatia, and Israel have all indicted former presidents and prime ministers.

Of these countries, the closest parallels — and the most disturbing — come from contemporary Israel, a country that just this week was paralyzed by a general strike and some of the largest protests in the country’s history. Israel’s crisis, the gravest domestic upheaval in its history, was in large part caused by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reaction to his indictment on a series of corruption-related charges.

Following the announcement that former President Donald Trump has officially been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, Republican lawmakers are finding themselves in an all-too-familiar position: rallying to defend him.

On Thursday, the grand jury announced that it would indict Trump for charges related to hush money payments made to porn performer Stormy Daniels, making him the first former president to be the subject of a criminal case. Since the news broke of the charges against Trump, congressional Republicans have broadly come to his defense, framing the indictment as an instance of political persecution.

If there is any American politician who Donald Trump resembles the least, it’s Eugene Debs.

Debs ran for president five times for the Socialist Party in the early 20th century, and was a dedicated union leader who helped organize his fellow railway workers into the first major railroad union in the United States. (It was eventually crushed, and he was jailed in the aftermath of the Pullman Strike of 1894.) Debs also was a dedicated opponent of US entry into World War I, convicted of sedition in 1918 and jailed for speaking out against the war. And, from the Atlanta federal prison, he ran for president in 1920 and received over 3 percent of the national vote, with almost a million votes cast for him as Convict No. 9653.

The political world has been anxiously awaiting news on whether Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will charge Donald Trump with a crime related to hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.

But the feds may be closing in, too.

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday alleged via his Truth Media platform that he will be arrested on Tuesday, calling for his followers to “PROTEST” and “TAKE OUR NATION BACK” in an echo of the capitol riots of January 6, 2021.

Trump’s all-caps post at 7:26 Saturday morning puzzled some close to his campaign, according to the New York Times. Though prosecutors in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have indicated that an indictment is forthcoming, Trump allies aren’t clear where the Tuesday deadline came from. But the call to arms does come ahead of a Saturday, March 25 rally in Waco, Texas — the first in Trump’s 2024 campaign — and contrasts with his posting on mainstream social media sites YouTube and Facebook.

Editor’s note, April 4, 10 am ET: This story was last updated on February 16, 2023. Read Vox’s most recent coverage of the investigations into Trump here.

If all the criminal investigations into former President Donald Trump end in conviction, then Trump will be a true renaissance man of crime.