Court officials confirm arraignment while Manhattan district attorney rejects House Republicans’ demands
The indictment of Donald Trump has profound implications for the Republican race for the nomination for next year’s presidential election. As Jill Colvin writes for Associated Press, it is likely to force his potential rivals into the awkward position of having to defend him – or risk the wrath of Trump’s support base.
Polls show Trump remains the undisputed frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and his standing has not faltered, even amid widespread reporting on the expected charges.
The move was especially stunning given Trump’s long record of impunity, which has seen him constantly stretch the limits of the law and the conventions of accepted behaviour with his uproarious personal, business and political careers. Suddenly, Trump’s decades of evading accountability will end. The former president will have to start answering for his conduct.
The perception of this extraordinary case will turn on two questions fundamental to the credibility of American justice: Are all citizens – even the most powerful, like former presidents and White House candidates – considered equal under the law? Or is Trump being singled out because of who he is?
50 years after federal officials first accused Trump and his father of violating laws that barred racial discrimination in apartment rentals, the former president has been indicted. The indictment in the Daniels case comes amid an Atlanta-area investigation into Trump’s role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, and a special counsel’s federal investigations into Trump’s actions leading up to the 6 January riot at the Capitol, as well as his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Already, Trump’s statements about the Daniels case have followed a pattern he set in 1973, when federal prosecutors accused Trump and his father, Fred, a prominent New York City apartment developer, of turning away Black people who wanted to rent from them. In that case, Trump first denied the allegation, then said he didn’t know his actions were illegal, and then, through his lawyer, accused the government of conducting a bogus “Gestapo-like investigation.”
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