On Thursday, March 30, former President of the United States, Donald Trump, was indicted by a New York grand jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. A “Statement of Facts” document released on Tuesday, April 4, by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who filed the charges, accuses Trump of “orchestrating a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit [Trump’s] electoral prospects.” In sum, a former Trump attorney, advisor, and “fixer” paid multiple bribes totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2016, during Trump’s first run for President, in order to “hush up” potential sexual affair and prostitution scandals. Trump then reimbursed this agent. The prosecution will argue in court that Trump’s scheme involved “falsification of business records” on a mass scale.
The upcoming criminal trial, The People of the State of New York versus Donald J. Trump, is the first in U.S. history against a former U.S. President.
In the week since the indictment was announced, the capitalist media’s sensationalizing headlines have promised the public a political-procedural melodrama of Shakespearian proportions: “A President Faces Prosecution, and a Democracy Is Tested” warns the New York Times, and almost jubilantly exclaims that a “taboo has been broken” and a “new precedent has been set.” “Trump indictment marks a first for U.S. democracy. It may not be the last,” the Washington Post foretells, pondering “whether the case will ultimately strengthen or weaken the rule of law.” The Wall Street Journal proclaims, “Donald Trump Indictment Sets Historical Marker,” and argues that the indictment “represents an extraordinary moment for America.” We could go on…
Even some in the “socialist” press have been swept up in the latest Trump sensation: For instance, People’s World, the not-quite-official online paper of the more-or-less-official Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), boldly asserts that “a group of ordinary citizens on a Manhattan grand jury [yes, that is how juries are selected in the U.S. — randomly] exercised democracy [??] by indicting former President Donald Trump,” and warns of “a new threat to democracy” — glossing over the obvious question: What democracy? — should Trump evade trial.
Sensationalism gets views and clicks, which translate into profits for corporate media shareholders. But sensationalism doesn’t lend itself to establishing a straightforward timeline.
In 2016, near the end of that year’s general elections, Stephanie Clifford (better known as Stormy Daniels), a celebrity pornographic and television actress and director, memoirist, and lapsed Republican Party politician, claimed that Trump, then running for President of the United States, had solicited sexual services from her in 2007. Clifford gave several interviews, and later detailed her allegations in her 2018 memoir, Full Disclosure.
Trump has maintained that the affair never happened. But the evidence against him is, if not “beyond a reasonable doubt,” still extremely damning. (And “beyond a reasonable doubt” is a standard, let us be clear, that means something much different to a billionaire than it does to millions of Black people prosecuted and incarcerated by this country’s inhuman state machinery.)
According to the New York Times, Clifford first attempted to sell her story as an exclusive to the National Enquirer, a right-wing tabloid, in October 2016. David Pecker, then CEO of the Enquirer’s parent company and publisher, American Media, Inc., and a long-time personal friend of Trump, intervened on the Republican candidate’s behalf.
Pecker shielded Trump from other sexual affair scandals with what’s called the “catch and kill” tactic — purchasing exclusive rights to a story specifically to not publish it, so that it gets buried and an individual’s reputation is protected — multiple times: The Wall Street Journal reported in 2016 that Pecker had paid $150,000 for the rights to a story from Karen McDougal, a celebrity model and actress, about a 2006 affair with Trump, but never published it. The New Yorker magazine similarly reported later in 2016 that Pecker had paid $30,000 for the rights to a story from a Trump Tower (Manhattan) doorman, alleging that Trump had fathered an illegitimate child during an affair with his housekeeper. Both stories eventually surfaced regardless, and Pecker was removed as American Media, Inc.’s CEO in 2020.
But when Clifford offered to sell her story to the Enquirer, Pecker instead arranged for Trump’s personal lawyer, advisor, and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, to meet with Clifford’s attorneys to offer her a large sum in “hush money” — $130,000. After taking office as President in 2017, Trump reimbursed Cohen.
Obviously this is all incredibly scummy — scummy in a way that only the extremely rich can afford to be. And it is only one of many instances of Trump’s personal depravity.
The Stormy Daniels scandal was followed by the so-called “golden shower” rumor, which Trump also denies. The rumor gained mainstream and social media attention especially after former FBI director Robert Mueller’s 2019 Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. The so-called “Mueller Report” alleged that Russian government agents had blackmailed Trump during and after the 2016 elections with an as-yet-unpublished video, supposedly recorded at the Ritz-Carlton, Moscow hotel, in which Trump admits his “golden shower” kink.
We hardly need to state that Trump, like all billionaires and high-level capitalist politicians, is a pervert, a reprobate, and, in all likelihood, given his connections to the “late” Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, a serial rapist and pedophile. It can surprise no one when a man with almost unlimited wealth and power is corrupted, not only politically, but in every possible sense, and beyond any semblance of humanity.
But proving that Trump’s actions, and those of his agents — paying off past escorts — were illegal under U.S. (federal) or New York (state) law, within a legal system designed to protect the wealthy and powerful, while criminalizing the poor and dispossessed, is another matter.
As it happened, the U.S. Department of Justice was then investigating Cohen for a number of felonies relating to tax and bank fraud. Because the “hush money” Cohen paid to Clifford and another woman directly aided Trump’s presidential campaign, federal prosecutors treated it as an illegally outsized campaign donation, and thus further charged Cohen with breaking campaign finance laws, namely “causing an unlawful campaign contribution” and “making an excessive campaign contribution.” In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies, and, looking to secure a lighter sentence for himself, turned and ratted on his former boss — then-President Trump.
Almost immediately after Cohen’s guilty plea, on the basis of his assistance to federal prosecutors, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, in turn, opened an investigation into Trump himself. That investigation has lasted almost five years.
The first major push came in August 2019, when the Manhattan District Attorney subpoenaed the Trump Organization. The next month, Trump’s lawyers filed a countersuit to avoid handing over his tax returns. This suit made its way slowly through the U.S. court system, all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled in July 2020 that holding the office of President of the United States does not grant Trump the right to refuse to comply with a criminal investigation. Trump’s lawyers then filed a second countersuit, which was again defeated in the U.S. Supreme Court in February 2021. Trump’s lawyers were then immediately forced to submit eight years of documents to the Manhattan DA. By July 2021, the DA had charged the Trump Organization and its CFO, Allen Weisselberg, with running a massive, 15-year-long tax scheme. Weisselberg would plead guilty and agree to testify against the Trump Organization (but not Trump himself) in August 2022; the Trump Organization would be convicted in December 2022.
The investigation appeared to be barreling directly toward Trump. But then, last February, two high-profile prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, resigned from the Trump investigation in frustration when the new Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, brought the investigation to a halt and refused to indict the former president. Pomerantz stated in his letter of resignation that he believed the DA’s office had obtained ample evidence of multiple felonies committed by Trump, sufficient to secure convictions, and branded Bragg’s decision to halt “a grave failure of justice” that ran “contrary to the public interest.” Pomerantz later detailed his account of the investigation and his decision to resign in a book, published in February this year.
The capitalist media declared the criminal investigation dead. Democratic Party politicians and media talking-heads, as well as the party’s supporters, were livid.
However, in January 2023, the DA called a grand jury to consider charges against Trump. When it became clear that an indictment was likely, political attention, from both the Republican and Democratic parties, and media coverage returned to the case.
Speculation as to political motives aside, the timing is undeniably convenient.
Trump is no longer President, but has announced his plans to run for a second term in 2024. Given his popularity among the Republican voter base, would be very likely to win his party’s nomination, should he face a primary challenger. Meanwhile, as the cost of living across the U.S. continues to explode, and the next periodical capitalist economic crisis looms, Trump’s likely challenger, incumbent President Joe Biden, becomes less popular with every passing day. A prolonged trial is likely to damage public opinion of the Republican Party, at least for a few months — and that might be just the boost the Democrats need to keep hold of the Presidency and to avoid outright losing their one-seat majority in the Senate. (On the other hand, the renewed press might benefit Trump, who has proven his ability to turn any controversy into free advertising.)
Yet, of course, Democratic Party politicians and their corporate media talking-heads are insisting, with one voice, that the investigations into Trump and the recent indictment against him are not at all politically motivated, and certainly not the result of a political conspiracy to take down the former President.
But anyone with any sense knows, at the very least, that there’s something fishy — something too convenient — about the Democrat line.
We are not arguing that Trump didn’t break the law and commit several felonies — he certainly did. That, in fact, is just the point: Individual capitalists and entire capitalist firms break their own laws every single day, habitually, as a simple fact of doing business, and most never see the inside of a courtroom for it. Trump is, of course, a slimy, stinking monster, but he’s by no means an extraordinary monster, and his personal stench, however foul, is, putting aside all pretenses, indistinguishable from the common stench of Capital.
What makes Trump’s case special? What makes this moment special? Why was Trump only indicted now, when, according to the very prosecutors investigating him, he could have been indicted well over a year ago?
Lenin once wrote, “When it is not immediately apparent which political or social groups, forces or alignments advocate certain proposals, measures, etc., one should always ask: Who stands to gain? In politics it is not so important who directly advocates particular views. What is important is who stands to gain from these views, proposals, and measures.”
Who stands to gain from Trump’s recent indictment? That remains to be seen. But we certainly know which forces hope to gain, and which stand to lose.
Clearly, the Democrats hope to preclude the threat of another Trump campaign, in which the one-term President would face an increasingly unpopular Biden. Clinging to their narrow hold on the Federal Government, which already slipped significantly in the 2022 midterm elections, the Democrats hope to bring widespread disrepute to the Republican Party generally, retain the Presidency for another term, and win back some of their lost ground in Congress in the 2024 general elections.
Meanwhile, Trump is attempting — successfully, it would seem — to turn his indictment to his advantage. His main base of support, the most reactionary elements among the majority-white middle classes, widely and unquestioningly believe that a government captured by various boogeymen (the the “deep state,” George Soros and a cabal of “woke” Jewish financiers, funding “critical race theory,” “antifa,” and “gender ideology” in schools, and so on) is out to get Trump, in order to destroy America, and that the forces of patriotism, under the MAGA banner, must unite to restore the country. Trump has proven capable at tapping into this mass delusion and converting it into real mobilization: such conspiracy theories are what inspired Trump’s failed Capitol Hill putsch of January 6, 2021, in which some 2,000 fascist rioters (assisted by police), believing that the election had been “stolen” from Trump, stormed the U.S. Capitol Building. Trump is now, as always, presenting himself as a fighter for white America, and rallying his voter base behind him, raking in donations and creating a groundswell of energy for near-future fascist mobilizations. In mid-March, Trump predicted that he would be arrested “within three days” (needless to say, he wasn’t, and hasn’t been), and called for his supporters to prepare to riot.
Other high-profile Republican politicians are looking to seize their moment in the spotlight. Most notably, the fascist Governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, who’s risen to federal prominence in recent years by riding the wave of post-Trump reaction, announced that he would not allow Trump to be forcibly extradited to New York, even though Trump himself announced plans to fly to Manhattan and turn himself in. Desantis is widely believed to be planning a run for President in 2024, which means that he is likely to challenge Trump in the Republican primaries.
In sum, the two major factions of the ruling monopoly capitalists — the “moderate” fascist Democrats and the extreme-right fascist Republicans — are transparently vying with each other to come out on top in the coming legal and political battle.
But what about the working classes and the poor? What about the masses? What do we have to gain? Where should we stand?
The truth of the matter is, either way, that the working classes and the poor of this country have nothing to gain or lose from this fight. “Our” “democracy” is not, in fact, “on the line,” because the U.S., from its origins and at its foundations a settler-colonial empire, a white supremacist dictatorship of the capitalists, was never a “democracy” to begin with. Just as the ancient Greek city-states, the Roman Republic, and the Carthaginian empire were “democracies” only for the small class of slave-owners, wealthy merchants, and military leaders, but never for the mass of slaves, propertyless free laborers, poor craftsmen, and the other lower and middle classes, or any woman, so is modern capitalist society a “democracy” only for the capitalists and some other propertied classes.
Let our rulers take their battles to the courts, and let the courts decide who will be the victor and who will be “vanquished.” That is, after all, the U.S. court system’s real purpose: to mediate disputes that emerge within the ruling class, between one group of billionaires and another, one monopolist firm and another, one of our two major capitalist political parties and the other.
Our battle is in our workplaces, our communities, our homes, and our streets. Our enemies are the bosses who exploit us, the cops who police and terrorize us, the landlords who squeeze us of the greater part of our incomes, while we take refuge in hovels, and the politicians, on “both sides of the aisle,” who serve Capital. Our enemy is the whole rotten political system of the illegitimate U.S. Empire, and our true political war is the class war: the war to abolish the existing, unjust order and to establish a new, just order — a truly democratic republic, a socialist republic — in its place.
