The Stormy Daniels flub
You get one chance to make a first impression.
I hope the delay in the Manhattan hush-money case is so the Georgia case can be filed first.
The presumed "delay" in the hush-money case is because Trump announced that he would be arrested three days ago, on Tuesday, in that case. He wasn't.
There is a "tell" there. Trump announced his impending arrest. Trump took the lead. Trump wanted the hush-money case to be the frame for all future indictments. His presumed crime there was the mis-identification of business records, his having put "legal fees" on a check to Michael Cohen rather than "hush-money reimbursement." The impending arrest inspired outcries from Republican officeholders, and Photoshop fake images like this one.
Republicans imagined an ugly arrest like this as proof that Democrats are doing politics, not justice. Democrats--at least some of them--imagine this image as sweet justice. After all, Trump broke the law. It was hush money, and arguably a campaign donation, not legal fees, not exactly.
The Manhattan D.A. may well fall into the trap.
College classmate Jim Stodder wrote me with his vivid perspective on this. He teaches international economics and securities regulation at Boston University, with recent research on how carbon taxes and rebates can be both income equalizing and green. During and after college he knocked around as a roughneck in the oil fields. Then he returned to formal studies and received a Ph.D. from Yale in economics.
His website: www.jimstodder.com
Guest Post by Jim Stodder
In a famous scene in the HBO series, The Wire, the scary cool Omar says it after two hitmen fail in trying to kill him: "When you come at the King, you best not miss." That's the problem with the first case against Trump that's about to break.
Of the five cases now in the hopper, which one do you think Trump is the least worried about? The Georgia case for his pressure to miscount votes? The US Congress case for the January 6 attack on Capitol? The IRS case for years of tax fraud on his businesses? The FBI case for refusing to turn over secret government documents? Or the one about paying a pornstar so she wouldn't blab to the press?
Bingo, that last one. Not only is it by far the least serious, it's the one his supporters all know is true. They either don't care or actually think it's kinda cool. The cover up -- as was said about Nixon -- is worse than the crime. Except that the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels wasn't even a crime. And covering it up was probably only a misdemeanor. Not the thing to go after a king.
What about Al Capone? When the Feds got him for tax fraud, his underlying crimes of racketeering and murder were far worse than his accounting cover-ups. So Trump is no Big Al; he's not even a little Tricky Dick.
Even if he's convicted for the Stormy financial cover-up, I doubt it will hurt his political fortunes. It might even help him, as it will be seen by many -- not just his MAGA hats -- as a small-time political prosecution.
And there's one more thing. Everyone knows that if you have to explain a joke, the joke is dead. Now try explaining why the accounting Fun-and-Games around the Stormy payout were a crime. That's what a NY Times op-ed does, https://nyti.ms/40n1p6p, and it's a mess. Even those who hate Trump won't be able to keep it straight.
So this case is going nowhere fast. Nowhere except more mud on the faces of my poor deluded fellow-Dems, once again falling for their favorite fantasy, The Donald in a jumpsuit that matches his fake tan. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA, should forget about Stormy. Let one of those four other legal cases get there first.