With the addition of his indictment Tuesday for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election, Donald Trump has racked up a remarkable number of charges related to his presidency, with possibly more yet to come from a grand jury in Georgia later this summer.
Trump is already deep in his standard play of going on the offense, by throwing baseless assertions around and trying to put the investigators on trial instead. But in this case, that strategy will put more than Trump’s innocence or guilt on the line: prosecutors will be defending the rule of law that allows for the nation’s peaceful transfer of power.
It’s perhaps the most extraordinary test for the judicial system that Trump has sought to bend to his will during and after his tenure as president.
One of his former lawyers predicted Trump’s main legal strategy will be to do an end run around the court cases entirely, by trying to stall as much as possible in the hopes of winning the 2024 election and then using the presidency to eliminate his legal issues.
“He has no intention of proving his innocence because he has no defenses, and I’m sure his lawyers have explained that to him,” Ty Cobb, former White House attorney during Robert Mueller’s probe into Trump, said. “I think his plan is to get elected and then, yes, of course, the first thing he’ll do is cover himself in immunity and pardon anyone who goes down with him.”
Trump now faces a total of 78 counts: four handed up in the indictment Tuesday, 34 regarding allegations of lying about hush money payments based in New York, and a total of 40 counts in the case that alleges, among other things, that Trump intentionally hid classified documents from the federal government at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Just last week, Special Counsel Jack Smith added three of those counts, including that Trump told a subordinate he wanted video footage at the resort deleted, and charged an additional co-conspirator in the Florida case.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 counts in the documents case, as well as to the charges in the New York State case. He is scheduled to make an appearance on the election charges in US District Court in Washington on Thursday. Then, on Aug.10, he’s scheduled to be arraigned on the three additional felonies in the document case.
Meanwhile, within days Trump could face yet more charges over the 2020 election, these from a grand jury in Georgia investigating his efforts to overturn the results in that state.
Speaking before the details of the Jan. 6 probe were released, Cobb said the “easiest” case for prosecutors to prove is the Mar-a-Lago documents case, because the evidence seems so stark and so clear. “I think it’s going to be a very short powerful trial with a lot of serious punches, followed by, ‘I got nothing to say.’ ”
Trump, himself, has remained publicly focused on the court of public opinion, posting on Truth Social on Monday that he expected an indictment “pertaining to my “PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICALLY Speech, will be coming out any day now” and again at 4:41 p.m. on Tuesday warning the indictment would come at 5 p.m.
And, in a fund-raising email sent shortly after news of the indictment broke on Tuesday, Trump attacked Smith and Biden, saying, “Crooked Joe summoned a federal prosecutor to INDICT me despite having committed no crime once again.”
He dismissed the latest indictment, and the ones before it, as “an egregious act of Election Interference.”
“If these illegal persecutions succeed, if they’re allowed to set fire to the law, then it will not stop with me,” Trump wrote in the fund-raising appeal. “Their grip will close even tighter around YOU.”
The extent to which the government believes he illegally tried to cling to the presidency was detailed in the indictment, which alleges Trump launched “a criminal scheme” shortly after Election Day in 2020 “to remain in power,” spreading lies that there was enough fraud to change the outcome.
“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false,” the 45-page indictment said. “But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway — to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”
Ben Ginsberg, an election lawyer who represented Republican presidential candidates and the party before the Trump era, called the current moment for American democracy an “unprecedentedly precarious position and you could slide either way off the knife’s edge.”
“If the case is so thorough as to show that the person who claimed elections were rigged became the one who actually tried to rig the election, that could be a watershed moment in terms of dealing with doubt about our elections,” Ginsberg said in an interview before the indictment was released. “If the indictment alleges that Donald Trump knew he lost the election, then Trump’s defense could entail his having to prove his allegations that the election results were fraudulent.”
In a short on-camera statement delivered after the latest indictment was unsealed, Smith took time to praise the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, saying they did much more than put their lives on the line to protect the people sheltering inside.
“They defended the very institutions and the principles that define the United States,” he said. “Since the attack on our Capitol, the Department of Justice has remained committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened that day.”
Saying he would seek a “speedy trial,” Smith said, “I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.” He concluded his remarks without taking questions.
As Trump maintains his victimhood in the face of the indictments, among Republican primary voters, the demonization of the Justice Department seems to be working. A recent New York Times/Siena Poll shows Trump more than 37 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and that 71 percent of GOP primary voters — surveyed before the latest indictment — said they don’t believe Trump has committed any “serious federal crimes.”
Former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, who served under President George W. Bush, also worried Trump’s attacks on the DOJ could have a lasting impact, no matter how the cases are resolved.
“When Bush was president and a decision from the court came out that didn’t favor the administration, he would often say, ‘I respectfully disagree, but that’s what the courts are for,’ ” Gonzales said in an interview before the indictment was announced. “The notion that you attack the court, or you attack the justices, or you attack [Attorney General] Merrick Garland, to me, is wrong and dangerous.”
Gonzales said the unusual nature of the situation Trump is in only adds to the uncertainty of the outcome.
“The combination of investigations, both at the state and federal level, and possible trials and convictions are all events that have never been dealt with before in the history of our country with respect to a former president who is also seeking to become president,” he said. “You’re asking questions that, quite frankly, no one knows the answer to.”
Jackie Kucinich can be reached at jackie.kucinich@globe.com. Follow her @JFKucinich and on Instagram at @JackieKucinich. Jess Bidgood can be reached at Jess.Bidgood@globe.com. Follow her @jessbidgood. Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.