From Coup Attempt to Courtroom Battle

Three-plus years ago, Donald Trump summoned a mob numbering in the tens of thousands to storm the Capitol, in a failed coup attempt. But now — though he’s raging more than ever — he can scarcely summon enough supporters to fill a minivan. Though his followers — spurred on by his posts that violate Judge Juan Merchan’s limited gag order — have made threats, scaring off at least one juror, there are no crowds outside as Trump stands trial in Manhattan for election interference in the 2016 election, and filling false business records to conceal it. On social media, he’s complained that his supporters were being prevented from gathering. But videos posted from the street show no obstruction, just normal Manhattan street traffic, while inside, even his wife and children have been noticeably absent.

But forget the missing mob in Manhattan. In Washington, D.C. ,he seems to have all the mob he needs. He’s close to having five votes in the Supreme Court to derail the trial he fears most: the federal coup trial originally scheduled for March 4. Trump’s lawyers there were arguing that Trump had absolute immunity for official acts as president and that such acts could include assassinating his political rivals. (Joe Biden got off easy, see?) And at least four justices seemed to be buying it.

Yet, at the very same time in Manhattan, poetic justice joined criminal justice as David Pecker — Trump friend and former National Enquirer publisher — became the first witness in the first criminal trial against him. Long pooh-poohed as the least significant case against Trump, the most far-fetched, relying on the most vulnerable witness, the first week of trial showed the exact opposite: it was Trump’s first attack on American democracy, the crime that made all the other crimes possible, a crime that he certainly committed, since his fixer-turned-nemesis Michael Cohen has already been convicted and served time for it. And it was Trump’s amiable long-time friend Pecker — not Cohen — who emerged as the most important witness, setting the stage for all that would follow, as laid out in detail in advance in the prosecution’s opening argument.

In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to the same basic crime — covering up hush money payments to subvert the 2016 election. That payment was “for the principal purpose of influencing the election,” and “was later repaid to me by the candidate,” Cohen said at the time. It was all done for Trump’s benefit. Cohen got nothing… but a prison sentence. Not only was Trump never charged, but the pretend federal investigation — eventually quietly dropped — significantly delayed New York prosecutors from their own investigation. This answers the question Trump asked on his Twitter knock-off just before the trial began, “Why didn’t they bring this totally discredited lawsuit 7 years ago???” It was not, as he claimed “Election Interference!” It was his very own, very “highly legal” obstruction of justice coming back to bite him at last.

As the damning facts were being spelled out by Pecker in Manhattan, Trump’s allies on the Supreme Court were tossing facts to the wind, in an oral argument that veered toward accepting his claim that he was immune from prosecution for his attempted coup. “I’m not concerned about the here and now, I’m more concerned about the future,” said Brett Kavanaugh, while Samuel Alito disavowed interest in the “particular facts” preferring to talk “in the abstract,” and Neil Gorsuch said, “We’re writing a decision for the ages.”

All of which was pure nonsense. “The Constitution limits the Court to dealing with ‘Cases’ and ‘Controversies,’” the Supreme Court’s own website says. “its function is limited only to deciding specific cases.”

“It was a farce befitting the absurdity of the situation,” Jamelle Bouie wrote in the New York Times. “Trump has asked the Supreme Court if he is, in effect, a king. And at least four members of the court, among them the so-called originalists, have said, in essence, that they’ll have to think about it.”

On Twitter, constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis found it, “Unbelievable that Supreme Court justices who see forgiving student loans, mandating vaccines, and regulating climate change as a slippery slope toward tyranny were not clear-eyed on questions of whether a president could execute citizens or stage a coup without being prosecuted.”

And Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: From Mussolini To The Present warned, “Whatever the Court does, having this case heard and the idea of having immunity for a military coup taken seriously by being debated is a big victory in the information war that MAGA and allies wage alongside legal battles. Authoritarians specialize in normalizing extreme ideas.”

At the very least, it now seems virtually impossible that Trump will be tried for his coup attempt before the election, making this first election subversion case overwhelmingly important.

“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a coverup,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo began. “The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election; then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

In short, the case was not about a porn star or hush-money payments — those are specific pieces of the story, as he would later explain. But on their own they were not what the case was about. It was about the scheme that began with a Trump Tower meeting between Trump and Pecker — with Cohen in attendance, where it was agreed that Pecker would help Trump in three ways, Colangelo explained. First, by being Trump’s “eyes and ears” gathering harmful information and reporting it to Cohen, “so Donald Trump would then prevent the information from becoming public.” Second, by publishing flattering stories about Trump, and third by attacking Trump’s opponents.

Peeling Back Trump’s Veil of Deception
The second two ways were not just publicly visible, they were inescapable: 35 cover stories plastered across newsstands and supermarket checkout counters all across the country, with headlines touting Trump while connecting Ted Cruz’s father to John Kennedy’s assassination and repeatedly placing Hillary Clinton at death’s door.

But the first way — the catch-and-kill scheme — was as secret as the second two were public. In the testimony that followed, Pecker described that initial meeting, how the scheme began, how it unfolded through various twists and turns, and how it ended, with a dinner in the White House thanking him for the invaluable role he had played in getting Trump elected.

Pecker described the first two damaging stories he killed with company payoffs — $30,000 to a doorman, Dino Sajudin, who alleged a story about an illegitimate child that turned out to be false, and $150,000 to a former Playboy playmate, Karen McDougal, who alleged a 10-month affair with Trump, which turned out to be true. Trump was originally supposed to repay these payoff costs. But after consulting with lawyers, Pecker decided his company would absorb the cost itself, to avoid criminal liability for violating campaign finance law. That’s why he refused to pay Stormy Daniels the $130,000 she was asking, why Michel Cohen ended up paying it instead, and why Trump repaid Cohen, falsely claiming it was for legal services.

Colangelo also explained how Cohen was repaid significantly more than $130,000 because he had spent another $50,000 for the campaign. After all, the combined total was doubled — since it would be falsely reported as income and Cohen would owe 50% in taxes — and finally, because a year-end bonus was added. This arrangement was worked out by Cohen and Trump’s money man Allen Weisselberg — and there were notes of it, which the prosecution had — all of which would refute Trump’s key claim that the payments really were just for legal services (which Trump had never previously paid for this way).

In addition to laying out the story of what happened, Colangelo prepared the jury for attacks on Cohen, who’s the key — but not only — witness to Trump’s intent. Pecker would testify to that as well. Trump’s team “will go to great lengths” to convince them Cohen isn’t credible, Colangelo warned the jurors. He acknowledged that Cohen had previously lied about the matter. “He lied about it to protect his boss,” he said. “You will also learn that Michael Cohen has a criminal record,” also because of Trump.

But, Cohen is believable, Colangelo explained, because it’s not just his word alone. “Cohen’s testimony will be backed up by testimony from other witnesses you will hear from, including David Pecker, Keith Davidson,” he said. “It will be backed up by an extensive paper trail. And it will be backed up by Donald Trump’s own words.”

While the prosecutor’s opening statement told a detailed, but fundamentally straightforward story about what happened and what the testimony and documentary evidence would prove, the defense’s opening statement mirrored Trump’s grandiose, scatter-shot, emotional style.

“President Trump is innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes,” his attorney Todd Blanche claimed in his opening argument. But the documentary evidence in the indictment already proves the business record fraud charges. That only proves misdemeanor crimes, however. Committing those frauds in furtherance of another crime is what bumps them up to felonies, and that is what this trial is all about not if Trump committed any crimes, but if he engaged in a covert criminal conspiracy that made the obvious crimes qualify as felonies.

Blanche went on to underscore Trump’s grandiosity, referring to his client as President Trump, but then tried to humanize him, saying, “He’s a husband. He’s a father. And he’s a person just like you and just like me.” But unlike almost all defendants facing serious crimes, not one family member was in court with him. And Trump is not “a person just like you and just like me.” He’s a pathological liar for one thing — with more than 30,000 lies told in office, according to the Washington Post — which is why it’s wildly unlikely he’ll testify since lying on the stand is perjury, another felony. But he’s also a grandiose narcissist, who thinks he knows better than anyone else, and thus might testify anyway, regardless of what his lawyers advise. One final way Trump is not ‘just like you and me’: Michael Cohen was Trump’s full-time fixer. What jury member makes such a mess of their lives they need a full-time fixer?

In contrast to Blanche’s dubious claims, Pecker’s testimony delivered a great deal of what Colangelo promised — both the big picture of the whole sordid affair and many significant details. He made it clear, for example, that his magazines never caught and killed any stories for Trump prior to the 2016 election, and that the arrangement wasn’t financially beneficial for him or his company. He also made clear that Trump had been “concerned about Melania Trump and Ivanka” when a negative story was coming out before the election campaign, but during the campaign, “I didn’t hear or discuss that it was what Melania [would] say or what Ivanka would say or what his family would say, but the impact it would have upon the election.”

But equally important, after cross-examination, Pecker effortlessly countered the attempts to poke holes in his account, sometimes with a one-word answer:

PROSECUTION: “Is that true, Mr. Pecker, that your purpose in locking up the Karen McDougal story, was to influence the election?”

PECKER: “Yes.”

After Pecker’s testimony, the prosecution called two witnesses primarily concerned with filling in details — Trump’s longtime assistant, Rhona Graff, who said that his contact list included information for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and Gary Farro, a bank executive who helped Cohen set up a bank account for the company used to pay Daniels. More such witnesses should be expected in the weeks to come, along with key figures like McDougal, Daniels and Cohen. But as important as all these witnesses will be, the basic framework for the trial has been set, and there seems to be little chance Trump’s defense team will poke any holes in it.

Human nature being what it is, getting just one juror to hold out, and creating a hung jury, is always a possibility. But Trump’s much more likely play will once again be in the court of public opinion, playing his well-worn role of eternal victim. He’s been able to constantly attack the process — even repeatedly violating the gag order protecting witnesses, jurors, court personnel, and their families — in a way that no other criminal defendant would be allowed to. He complains about a two-tiered justice system, but there are more tiers than that (see sidebar) and Trump is in a tier all his own — just as he was when he tried to stage his coup.

He may well try something similar again, and he has habitually expressed a desire for revenge. He repeatedly called for the Department of Justice to prosecute Hillary Clinton during his first term, when there were far too many professionals in place to let that happen. Out of office, he’s promised prosecution of Biden should he get a second term, and he’s planning to get rid of all the professionals who would stop him.

The only thing that can really stop him is ordinary Americans. The 12 jurors in the Manhattan courtroom throughout this trial, the voters at the polls in November, and the dedicated activists working tirelessly to ensure that our democracy survives. 

For more on those activists, and how you can become one of them, be sure to read our next issue for a story on grassroots activism this election cycle.