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Former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges related to “hush money” payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels began Monday in Manhattan. Judge Juan Melchan issued a series of procedural rulings, followed by questioning of the first potential jurors, but jury selection is expected to be a long and contentious process.
The New York lawsuit filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg departs from the critical political issues raised by President Trump’s four years in the White House and the subsequent three years of planning and preparing his return to power. There is.
It is central to Trump’s actual crimes, particularly the attempted coup on January 6, 2021, in which Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and blocked Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden. It has nothing to do with any role. And tried to keep Trump in office despite rejection by the American people.
President Trump’s sexual encounters with Daniels are of sole interest to his wife and family. The money Daniels paid to keep the media from promoting his story during the 2016 election campaign received similarly little interest. At best, the way the funds were routed from Trump to Daniels through his personal fixer, Michael Cohen, is a technical violation of federal election law that would normally be resolved with the payment of a fine.
As far as state law is concerned, filing false business reports that disguised funds paid to Mr. Cohen as payments for legal services is a mere misdemeanor, and the statute of limitations has long passed. But prosecutor Bragg argued that the false reports were part of a conspiracy to violate federal law, even though federal prosecutors had not chosen to bring such cases, and used a misdemeanor offense to become a felony. did. He charged each of the 34 counts of false reporting as a separate four-year felony, with a total penalty of up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The nature and timing of the lawsuit is clearly calculated to benefit Democrats in the 2024 election, at least in part, by forcing President Trump to step away from his presidential campaign and spend his days in a Manhattan courtroom throughout the trial. It is expected that it will be confined to It will take many weeks. That political calculation could be completely wrong. Indeed, over the past year, Trump has used the clearly fabricated and politically motivated nature of the Manhattan criminal case to overturn all other charges against him, most notably January 6th and the 2020 election results. It has argued that all charges related to other efforts to do so are illegal. It’s fake as well.
Only Democrats could pretend that President Trump is the victim of a political hoax and manage to provide them with the opportunity to do so with any modicum of credibility. This is consistent with the overall attitude of the Democratic Party since President Trump first entered the White House, and which Democrats have raised as the Republican Party, with President Trump’s support, transforms into an increasingly fascistic political system. It has avoided all the basic problems of democracy.
Differences between Democrats and President Trump primarily revolve around foreign policy, particularly the use of Ukraine as a political and military spearhead against Russia. This dates back to the 2014 Maidan coup under the Obama-Biden administration. The coup ousted the elected pro-Russian president and installed a fiercely anti-Russian right-wing government in Kiev, backed by fascist and neo-Nazi groups.
The Mueller investigation, based on false allegations of widespread Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, and President Trump’s first impeachment, based on a temporary withholding of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, are both examples of this conflict over foreign policy. was. A central issue for Washington officials now is how to push through an additional $60 billion in emergency military aid to Ukraine, despite opposition from some House Republicans.
Corporate media coverage of the Trump trial makes no acknowledgment of this political reality. In its place is a grim, muted commentary on the “historic” nature of the first-ever criminal trial against a former president.
The obvious question, which was never voiced on network news, of course, is why should Mr. Trump be first? Every former president in memory should have been criminally prosecuted for crimes such as sanctioning mass murder, waging illegal wars, supporting military coups, condoning torture, and spying on the entire world, including American citizens. However, these acts committed to protect the global interests of the US ruling elite are not considered crimes by the US “justice” system.
And now, as president, Trump has separated thousands of immigrant children from their parents, irrevocably separated many families, openly incited fascist violence against political opponents, and lost an election in a near-landslide. He became the first president to rebel against the , has been charged with something that is not a crime at all.
As I wrote last year:
It’s not illegal to pay someone to keep quiet about a sexual encounter or buy someone’s story from being published. It is also prohibited to lie about personal conduct while campaigning. If all politicians who lied on such issues were prosecuted, prisons would be overflowing with people.
The criminalization of private sex, like sex scandals in general, is fundamentally reactionary. They degrade public consciousness and drown political understanding in a geyser of sensationalism and obscenity. The use of such claims always involves an effort to hide from the public the real political differences that are being contested within the ruling elite.
On the issue of “hush money,” Democratic President Bill Clinton famously offered to pay Paula Jones $700,000 to settle a lawsuit over her alleged inappropriate behavior. In this case, right-wing Republican lawyers induced Mr. Jones to refuse to accept the funds and set a trap for perjury that led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment. In this case, a Democratic district attorney is using similarly despicable tactics. There is nothing progressive or democratic about this kind of political cynicism.
The WSWS and SEP staunchly oppose the politics of both President Trump and his Democratic opponents. Even as Biden and the Democrats continue to plead with their Republican “colleagues” to work together on a bipartisan agenda of militarism abroad and austerity at home, we continue to hear nothing consistent about the fascistic transformation of the Republican Party. and warned me.
We will not leave the defense of our democracy to “Genocide Joe” and the Democratic Party, the Wall Street Party, and military intelligence. The only effective way to combat the threat of fascism that Trump represents is to mobilize the working class through the development of class struggle and organize workers’ political organizations as an independent force against both parties of big business. That’s true.
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