Trump rages after sexual abuse verdict but legal woes have only just begun
Investigations are mounting, making it harder for the former president to spin his troubles as persecution by liberal elites
Chris McGreal in New York
Sun 14 May 2023 07.00 BST
Last modified on Sun 14 May 2023 20.00 BST
If the outcome of Donald Trump’s sexual assault trial wasn’t a foregone conclusion, his response to a jury finding he attacked the writer E Jean Carroll was all too predictable.
The former president lashed out at the judge as biased and the jurors as “from an anti-Trump area”, meaning liberal New York, after they believed Carroll’s account of the millionaire businessman attacking her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s. The jury ordered him to pay $5m in damages for “sexual abuse” and for defaming Carroll by accusing her of “a made-up SCAM” for political ends.
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Trump has taken a similar tack against the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, after pleading not guilty last month to 34 criminal charges over the payment of hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Trump called Bragg, who is Black, an “animal” and a psychopath, and characterised the prosecution as purely political.
All of this goes down well in sections of America.
An audience of Republican voters at a CNN town hall with Trump on Wednesday laughed when he described his assault of Carroll as “playing hanky-panky in a dressing room” and called her a “whack job”.
But in the coming months it’s going to get a lot harder for the former, and possibly future, American president to spin his legal problems as political persecution by Democratic elitists. Investigations against him are mounting, and even more troubled legal waters lie ahead for Trump – and some of his acolytes.
Indictments in conservative Georgia are coming down the line and many of the key witnesses against Trump will be his fellow Republicans, including some who helped him try to rig the 2020 election.
Similarly, investigations by a justice department special counsel into Trump’s actions leading up to the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol, and the stashing of classified documents at his Florida mansion, are being built on the accounts of aides and political associates who are potential witnesses against him.
Norman Eisen, a former White House special counsel for ethics and government reform, said that as a result Trump’s legal troubles have only just begun.
“He’s running into a buzzsaw and it’s called the rule of law. So he can go on and rant and rave up to a point but the legal authorities are in the process of holding him accountable,” he said.
Leading the way is a prosecutor in Atlanta who is stacking up witnesses against the former president, almost all of them Republicans, over his attempt to rig the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia. They include some who tried to help Trump steal the vote but who have been persuaded to give evidence against him to save their own necks.
He’s running into a buzzsaw and it’s called the rule of law
Norm Eisen
The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has spent more than two years investigating the “multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump campaign to influence the results”.
Willis convened a special grand jury that sat for eight months and heard evidence from 75 witnesses before it recommended charges against more than a dozen people. The grand jury forewoman, Emily Kohrs, strongly hinted to the New York Times in February that Trump was on the list.
Asked if the jurors recommended prosecuting the former president, Kohrs said: “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science.”
“It is not going to be some giant plot twist,” she added. “You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately.”
Willis had been expected to charge Trump and others this month, but indictments are not now likely before mid-July as prosecutors put together immunity deals to lure the former president’s Republican co-conspirators to testify against him and his top aides. Kohrs said prosecutors offered one witness immunity from prosecution in return for cooperation right in front of the grand jury.
Then there are the Republicans who do not have to be coerced to tell the truth in court.
E Jean Carroll leaves court after hearing Trump was liable for $5m in damages for sexual abuse.
E Jean Carroll leaves court after hearing Trump was liable for $5m in damages for sexual abuse. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters
Willis’s investigation initially focused on a tape recording of Trump pressuring Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” nearly 12,000 votes to cancel out Biden’s win in a state that, at the time, looked as if it might decide the outcome of the entire presidential election.
Trump has called the Georgia official an “enemy of the people” because he wouldn’t commit electoral fraud. But a jury might find Raffensperger all the more credible because not only is he a Republican, but he voted for Trump.
The Georgia secretary of state spoke to the special grand jury for several hours, including about a call he recorded from Trump at the beginning of January 2021 pressuring him to manipulate the vote. While he has not commented publicly on his testimony, Raffensperger wrote a book, Integrity Counts, in which he details Trump threatening him.
Other witnesses are more reluctant but may be all the more credible for that reason, including Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, who also came under pressure from Trump and his allies to overturn the election result. One of those on the phone to Kemp was Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, who was also summoned to answer the grand jury’s questions.
Willis expanded the investigation as more evidence emerged of Trump and his allies attempting to manipulate the results, including the appointment of a sham slate of 16 electors to replace the state’s legitimate members of the electoral college who do the formal business of selecting the president. The fake electors included the chair of the Georgia Republican party, David Shafer, and Republican members of the state legislature who have been warned that they are at risk of prosecution.
Earlier this month it was revealed that at least eight of the fake electors have done a deal to give evidence in return from immunity from prosecution, although Shafer is not included.
Eisen said the immunity deals are a sign that charges are in the offing.
“We know that multiple fake electors have received immunity. That is another indication of trouble for Donald Trump because those deals are extended by prosecutors typically when they are preparing to bring a case, and they believe they have a case to bring,” he said.
“So it’s a sign of prosecutorial seriousness. And it’s a sign that the district attorney can mount an effective case because these immunised fake electors can serve as tour guides for the jury into the plot, which we know ran all the way up to the Oval Office.”
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/14/trump-sexual-abuse-verdict-e-jean-carroll-legal-troubles