When we published our June 6 post on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the primary purpose was to remember the extraordinary sacrifices of ordinary Americans -- now known as "The Greatest Generation" -- who came together to eject Hitler and his Nazi forces from France and Western Europe in what would become the decisive battle of World War II.
The US Department of Defense calls D-Day the “successful beginning of the end of Hitler's tyrannical regime. Without victory in that bloody battle -- which began in the early hours of June 6, 1944, and was recreated by Director Steven Spielberg in the opening scenes of his epic film, Saving Private Ryan -- we likely would have been living in an America, for the past 80 years, that hardly any of us today would recognize.
D-Day resonates deeply here in our Legal Schnauzer household for several reasons. My father, William J. Shuler, was part of a squadron that arrived on the Normandy beaches three days after the D-Day battle. Here is how I described it in our June 6 post:
How significant was D-Day? It's almost impossible to overstate it. The US Department of Defense calls D-Day the “successful beginning of the end of Hitler's tyrannical regime.”
How different would life in America be if Allied troops had not been
able to liberate France? That is a disturbing question to contemplate,
but my father, William J. Shuler, was there, and he played a role -- I'm quite sure it was a dangerous role -- in securing the freedoms we enjoy today.
William J. Shuler
As I was growing up, I knew about my dad's military service, but I did not know many details. He had a Luger,
the distinctive-looking pistol German troops used, and he showed it to
me one time. It looked scary to my eyes, and I've never been much of a
gun guy, so I did not ask to see it again and did not want to know where
he kept it. I think he might have had a Nazi arm band, but I'm not sure
about that. (The Luger and arm band, if it actually existed, were part
of my family's war-related artifacts mentioned earlier.) As for the
Luger, my brother, Paul, almost shot his foot
off with the thing, so I was glad we all survived that episode --
especially since the bullet went through our parents' bedroom floor and
landed in the basement, barely missing our fish aquarium, which was a heavily trafficked area, where quite a few folks (including me)
made a habit of gathering to watch the fish.
My dad died in 2008, and about 10
years later, as my mother was nearing the end of her life, she told me
that Dad was in a unit that landed on Normandy beach three days after
the D-Day invasion. I've looked online several times for information
about Dad's unit, but I haven't found anything so far. My best guess is
that they were on what might be called a "recovery mission," to recover
bodies, equipment, perhaps German intelligence. I can only imagine the
kind of danger my father was in on that mission.
I
imagine that unexploded land mines and other munitions dotted the
beach. One wrong step, and my father's life would have been over -- and
the lives of my siblings and I never would have started.
My story is not the only one
in our household that connects to World War II. My wife, Carol, had an
uncle (her mother's brother) who was captured and was held in a German
prison camp. The trauma of that experience as a POW led to struggles
with alcoholism for the rest of his life.
Carol's father, Mark Tovich, was in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II, serving in India, Burma, and nearby locales. To our knowledge, he was not wounded in action, but he did contract a near-fatal case of yellow fever or malaria.
As for the troubling current events noted above, they come with dark irony that should cause all Americans, of whatever political persuasion, to ponder the direction our nation is headed.
The D-Day anniversary is a time to honor those Americans who risked everything to secure the freedoms we enjoy today. How significant were the contributions of Americans to defeating Hitler, his Nazi troops, and the fascist ideology they represented? Perhaps we can answer that question by noting the 80th Anniversary commemoration was held at Normandy American Cemetery.
What about those of us living on U.S. soil today? Do we ever consider the sacrifices our forebears made to defend our Constitution and the rule of law that is found therein? Do we ever stop and think that the relative peace and stability the United States and Europe have enjoyed since the end of World War II came at an extremely high price?
If the answer to those questions is yes, how do you explain polls that show a significant chunk of Americans support Donald Trump in our 2024 presidential election?
This is what I meant in the earlier references to troubling current events, filled with dark irony. After all, the United States has been a beacon for democratic principles since many of us have been alive. So, how can any of us actually think a Donald Trump presidency would be a good idea? This is the guy who has repeatedly said he could prosecute his political enemies, which would be unlawful on numerous grounds.
The November election is going to be unlike any we have seen before. It will not be about Democrats vs. Republicans or progressives vs. conservatives. It will be an existential moment, with the incumbent (Joe Biden) favoring democracy and the challenger (Donald Trump), touting authoritarianism, featuring his own brand of scatter-brained, dysfunctional "leadership" -- and we have seen in his first term how that worked out, with Trump's botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic leading to more than 1 million American deaths and leaving our economy in dire condition, as outlined in this 2020 article.
Since this election, unlike any in our history, will be about democracy vs. authoritarianism, does that mean Trump supporters believe our country would be better off to usher out 250 years of democracy in favor of a glorified dictatorship, one built according to Donald Trump's whims. Since Trump is a liar of epic proportions, does anyone trust a single word he says? I find it hard to believe anyone would trust him with a corner lemonade stand, much less the presidency. I encourage readers to check out this post, which spells out the plusses and minuses of a Biden-Trump matchup.
So, how to explain the support Trump seems to enjoy? A simple answer might me to say all MAGA Republicans are stupid. But I know a number of Trump supporters, and I know they aren't stupid. What IS going on with them? I can only speculate, but my best guess is that they haven't thought through the repercussions of turning the wheel over to Donald Trump. Since Trump gained nationwide fame as a reality game-show host, it's possible his followers are start-struck and delusional about who he really is. Trump's "birther" attacks on former President Barack Obama might appeal to some dark impulses in his followers.
It's also possible Trump followers could benefit from examining their own family histories to learn about the sacrifices their forebears have made. I only know about my family's military service, some of it dating to the 1860s and the Civil War, because my mother and father preserved communications and artifacts that they instinctively seem to know had value for future generations. Many Trump supporters undoubtedly have similar family histories, and examining those might cause them to reconsider their support for Trump, who shows growing signs of being unfit (both mentally and physically) to serve in high office.
With the D-Day anniversary having just passed, now might be an appropriate time for all Americans to give serious thought to what is at stake in the 2024 election. The future of our country depends on it.
One final thought: Let's consider this account from the Washington Examiner of Ronald Reagan's speech from the 1984 D-Day anniversary:
In
commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy during
World War II, President Ronald Reagan spoke from Point-du-Hoc on the
Normandy shores, praising those who risked their lives to “fight for all
humanity.”
“The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right,
faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would
grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next,” he said. “It was the
deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a
profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and
the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to
conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you
were right not to doubt.”
“You
all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth
dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most
deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you
loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew
the people of your countries were behind you,” he added.
Is that what MAGA Republicans, Trump supporters, think of those who served in our military? Are they OK with Trump's words?
And what about Ronald Reagan, who spoke eloquently about the sacrifices that helped secure America's freedoms. Republicans used to lionize Reagan, wanted to name numerous federal buildings after him. Is Reagan just a relic of the past to postmodern Republicans? Does he stand for anything in their minds? Have the nonsensical rantings of Donald Trump replaced the beautifully written words and heartfelt delivery of Ronald Reagan? Maybe MAGAs should take a hard look at their priorities.
The event hits close to home for my wife, Carol, and me -- plus our extended families. It also raises unsettling questions about current events in our nation. We will address those issues later, but first, let's examine the personal journeys of my family members, which raise existential questions about my presence on this earth -- why I am even here.
I never served in the military, but in what you might call a celestial sense, my premortal life was marked by ties to two, bloody, world-changing wars, one dating to the 1860s. Without getting too "heavy," I owe my existence to the ability of my forebears -- on both sides of my family -- to survive two of the most dangerous conflicts in human history.
I know about my ties to war only because my family has possessed and preserved communications and artifacts from WW II and the Civil War for decades. In fact, my mother possessed the original copy of a letter from a relative on her side of the family who fought in the Civil War. She eventually donated the letter to the visitor's center and museum at the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield, where it is part of the historical record.
Millions of Americans, I'm sure, have similar stories, but this is my story, which seems appropriate to share as we commemorate D-Day and remember those who gave (or risked) their lives to defend our Constitution and beat back the scourge of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
William J. Shuler
How significant was D-Day? It's almost impossible to overstate it. The US Department of Defense calls D-Day the “successful beginning of the end of Hitler's tyrannical regime.” How different would life in America be if Allied troops had not been able to liberate France? That is a disturbing question to contemplate, but my father, William J. Shuler, was there, and he played a role -- I'm quite sure it was a dangerous role -- in securing the freedoms we enjoy today.
As I was growing up, I knew about my dad's military service, but I did not know many details. He had a Luger,
the distinctive-looking pistol German troops used, and he showed it to
me one time. It looked scary to my eyes, and I've never been much of a
gun guy, so I did not ask to see it again and did not want to know where
he kept it. I think he might have had a Nazi arm band, but I'm not sure
about that. (The Luger and arm band, if it actually existed, were part of my family's war-related artifacts mentioned earlier.) As for the Luger, my brother, Paul, almost shot his foot
off with the thing, so I was glad we all survived that episode --
especially since the bullet went through our parents' bedroom floor and
landed in the basement, barely missing our fish aquarium, which was a
fairly heavily trafficked area, where quite a few folks (including me)
made a habit of gathering to watch the fish.
My dad died in 2008, and about 10
years later as my mother was nearing the end of her life, she told me
that Dad was in a unit that landed on Normandy beach three days after
the D-Day invasion. I've looked online several times for information
about Dad's unit, but I haven't found anything so far. My best guess is
that they were on what might be called a "recovery mission," to recover
bodies, equipment, perhaps German intelligence. I can only imagine the
kind of danger my father was in on that mission.
I
imagine that unexploded land mines and other munitions dotted the
beach. One wrong step, and my father's life would have been over -- and
the lives of my siblings and I never would have started.
When
you know that a loved one has faced danger and taken great risk to
protect our country, our Constitution, our democracy, you have extra appreciation that we are a nation of laws, and you want to see
those laws faithfully upheld, not trampled by corrupt judges, lawyers, law-enforcement officials, and other rogues who seem to have no respect for the sacrifices so many have made to protect the country we enjoy today. In fact, exposing such corruption, which essentially spits on the graves of brave men like my father, is why I started this blog, Legal Schnauzer, in 2007 and have written it continuously for 17 years. Along the way, we were ranked in 2013 among the top 50 independent law blogs in North America. That suggests, to me, that the subject matter here resonates with many of my fellow Americans.
My story is not the only one in our household that connects to World War II. My wife, Carol, had an uncle (her mother's brother) who was captured and served in a German prison camp. The trauma of that experience as a POW led to struggles with alcoholism for the rest of his life.
Elijah Stamps, while on the battlefield, wrote a letter to his wife, Elvira. Based on my knowledge of our family history, which can be sketchy in places, Elijah Stamps survived the battle, and his letter somehow wound up with my mother, who treasured it for decades and ultimately made sure it became part of the battlefield's museum collection.
Writing this post has caused me to do the kind of high-minded thinking that I generally try to avoid -- especially when it involves an outcome that could have been not too positive for me, at least when it involves earthly life. Many of you probably have similar stories in your background, some you might not know about. I only know about mine because my mother and father seemed to understand certain items in our household had historical value and helped tell stories that were worth preserving. All of that rolls through my mind today as we remember the 80th anniversary of D-Day. I wonder about what horrors my Dad must have seen, remnants of man's inhumanity to man, a reminder of the wreckage tyrants can wreak. I marvel at his ability to process these images and become a valuable member of society -- a wonderful father and husband, providing lasting examples of a life well-lived.
As for my own efforts at high-minded thinking, these thoughts come to mind:
* What if my father had not survived at Normandy beach? My life, and the family I grew up in, never would have existed;
* As for the Civil War part of our story, that is a bit more complicated. I've never known Elijah Stamps' exact place in our family tree. But it appears he is on the same branch as my grandfather Chess Stamps. Had Elijah Stamps not survived at Wilson's Creek -- in a battle so violent the site now is known as Bloody Hill -- Chess Stamps would have never been born -- and that means my mother never would have been born. That, of course, means my siblings and I never would have taken our places on the stage of life.
I'm grateful to be here, to be able to write this post -- even though writing through tears is not a joyous experience. But I hope readers might find insight in the words I share this day.
As for the unsettling current events mentioned earlier, we will examine them next.
Donald Trump had reason to believe he might never be held accountable in his political life, having received one break after another from the U.S. justice system. (See here and here.) But his conviction in the New York hush-money trial has erased Trump's aura of invincibility, and that makes him particularly dangerous at this moment -- and his rhetoric reflects that -- according to an op-ed piece at CNN by Dean Obeidallah.
Former PresidentDonald Trump is a convicted felon.
That new reality means Trump is even more desperate and dangerous. If
Trump had been acquitted or even if there had been a hung jury, Trump
could have believed he truly was the “Teflon Don” who would never be held accountable.
That is no longer the reality. Rather, Trump’s seeming
invincibility is waning like that of the person first called the “Teflon
Don,” mobster John Gotti,
who earned that moniker after avoiding criminal convictions in prior
cases. Gotti’s Teflon, though, ended in 1992 after a jury found him
guilty in a case where a former close associate testified against him. Gotti was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2002.
In a Fox News interview aired Sunday, the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee first responded to a question about the prospect of being incarcerated with a sense of bravado, saying, “I’m OK with it.”
It turns out, however, that Trump is not OK with it at all, Obeidallah writes:
After
a little more back-and-forth, Trump — who is still clearly processing
his new status as a convicted felon — alarmingly commented about the
potential of being sentenced to jail, saying,“I don’t know that the public would stand it, you know?” He continued, “I think it would be tough for the public to take.”
Trump then added, ominously, “At a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”
In response to Trump’s “breaking point” comment, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California stated
bluntly on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “this is clearly Donald
Trump once again inciting violence.” Schiff — who has been a vocal Trump
critic for years — is right.
This is a far more alarming comment than what Trump said after the verdict, when he slammed the case as a “a rigged, disgraceful trial.” Or the next day, when he held a press conference where he repeated the “rigged” line while again peddling a series of lies about the trial — including that President Joe Biden somehow orchestrated the New York County prosecution.
Trump is apparently beginning to understand that he could face prison time, given each of the 34 felonies he was convicted of carries up to a four-year prison sentence (with a maximum of 20 years possible on all counts). Even Trump’s own lawyer Todd Blanche told The Associated Press that while it would be “extraordinary” to send Trump to jail, it was not out of the question given
“this is a very highly publicized case,” along with other factors such
as Trump’s pending federal and Georgia charges.
Adding to the concerns about supporters inciting or committing
violence to avenge Trump are comments from Trump’s allies since the
verdict.
For example, after the verdict,Laura Loomer — a close Trump ally who flew with Trump on his plane to an Iowa rally earlier in the year — called
for Democrats to “get the death penalty.” Newsmax host Carl Higbie, on
his Friday show that airs on the very pro-Trump television network, slammed
the “tyrants” responsible for prosecuting Trump and then warned that
Democrats are “pushing the party that owns 90% of the guns.”
In addition, some Trump supporters online
have been posting threats and trying to find out the identities of the
jurors who convicted Trump in order to exact revenge. Some of the
comments from Proud Boys chapters included a declaration of “war” and
called for supporters to “fight” to “save your nation.”
Trump and his followers seem to derive a sense of power from the use of threats. With the former president likely feeling emasculated from his criminal conviction, the desire to restore power by injecting fear into others must be strong. In fact, Trump acolytes already have seen that fear can help produce their desired results. Obeidallah writes:
Keep in mind, Trump’s earlier attacks on the judge presiding over his New York criminal case resulted
in violent threats against Justice Juan Merchan. Will Trump’s smears of
the verdict and his “breaking point” language escalate those threats
and even potentially lead to violence from Trump’s supporters? We saw
that very scenario play out when Trump demonized the FBI for searching his home in August 2022. One of Trump’s supporters who vowed to “not tolerate” the Mar-a-Lago search attacked an FBI field office, resulting in his death.
Or will Trump follow his January 6 playbook in an effort to
prevent being sentenced to prison? For example, after Trump repeatedly
called the 2020 election “rigged,” he summoned
supporters to come to Washington, DC, for a “big protest” that “will be
wild” on Jan. 6, 2021, which led to the attack on the U.S Capitol designed
to stop the certification of Biden’s election win. Will Trump encourage
protests outside of the New York courthouse on July 11, when he’s scheduled to be sentenced?
It’s unclear what Trump will do — or how his supporters may
choose to react. But one thing is certain: Trump now understands he is
no longer Teflon and that he could end up in prison.
Witnesses in the
various criminal cases against Donald Trump have received pay
raises, new jobs and more, according to a report yesterday at ProPublica, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom that is funded primarily by reader donations. If any benefits were intended to influence
testimony, that could be a crime, likely witness tampering.
David Warrington, a lawyer for Trump, sent a cease-and-desist letter to newsroom officials, demanding they not run the story, according to a Tweet at X by veteran journalist Dan Rather.
The series on payoffs to witnesses connected to Donald Trump's court cases could earn similar awards for ProPublica in 2024-25. A number of news outlets already have hailed it as a "bombshell report."
In a message to readers, ProPublica President Robin Sparkman, provides background on the Trump story, which could have a profound impact on his already crowded docket of criminal cases -- not to mention the 2024 presidential election, where Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee against Democratic incumbent Joe Biden. Sparkman writes:
Just this morning (6/3/24), we published details
we uncovered about witnesses – people who have or are likely to testify
in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump – receiving
significant financial benefits at critical moments in the legal
proceedings against him. In all, we found nine witnesses in the criminal
cases against Trump who received significant financial benefits,
including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs,
and a grant of shares or cash from Trump’s media company. One aide who
was given a plum position on the board of Truth Social, for example, got
the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.
Significant changes to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay
raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come
outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering,
prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended
to influence testimony. But even if these financial benefits were not
intended to influence witnesses, they could prove troublesome for Trump
in any future trials. Prosecutors could point to the benefits to
undermine the credibility of those aides on the witness stand.
In response to questions from ProPublica, a Trump campaign official said
that any raises or other benefits provided to witnesses were the result
of their taking on more work. The official added that Trump himself
isn’t involved in determining how much campaign staffers are paid.
Trump’s attorney, David Warrington, sent ProPublica a cease-and-desist
letter demanding that our article not be published. The letter warned
that if we “continue [our] reckless campaign of defamation, President
Trump will evaluate all legal remedies.”
We have the time and the ability to look into the behavior of powerful people and institutions because we’re reader-supported.
Tens of thousands of readers donate to ProPublica each year to ensure
that we continue to have the freedom and resources we need to keep a
watchful eye on important matters that are in the public interest.
Nine witnesses in the
criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received
significant financial benefits, including large raises from his
campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash
from Trump’s media company.
The benefits have flowed
from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a
ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records, and securities
filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from
$26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2-million severance package
barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one
of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign
staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.
These pay increases and
other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings
against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of
Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was
subpoenaed but before he testified.
Significant changes to a
staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or
promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal
course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony. (Witness tampering generally is covered under a broadly written statute styled as 18 U.S. Code 1512; violations of campaign-finance laws also could be an issue, especially if it is shown that donations intended for Trump's campaign instead wete used to pay off witnesses in court cases.)
That is a high bar for would-be prosecutors to tackle. But even if the story falls short of producing a criminal investigation or verdict, it could present other problems for Trump, his business, and campaign, the reporters write:
White-collar defense lawyers say the situation Trump finds himself in —
in the dual role of defendant and boss of many of the people who are the
primary witnesses to his alleged crimes — is not uncommon. Their
standard advice is not to provide any unusual benefits or penalties to
such employees. Ideally, decisions about employees slated to give
evidence should be made by an independent body such as a board, not the
boss who is under investigation.
Even if the perks were not
intended to influence witnesses, they could prove troublesome for Trump
in any future trials. Prosecutors could point to the benefits to
undermine the credibility of those aides on the witness stand.
“It feels very shady,
especially as you detect a pattern. … I would worry about it having a
corrupt influence,” Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for the
Eastern District of Michigan, said after hearing from ProPublica about
benefits provided to potential Trump witnesses.
But McQuade said these
cases are difficult to prove, even if the intent were actually to
influence testimony, because savvy defendants don’t explicitly attach
strings to the benefits and would more likely be “all wink and a nod,
‘You’re a great, loyal employee, here’s a raise.’”
In response to questions
from ProPublica, a Trump campaign official said that any raises or other
benefits provided to witnesses were the result of their taking on more
work due to the campaign or his legal cases heating up, or because they
took on new duties.
The official added that
Trump himself isn’t involved in determining how much campaign staffers
are paid, and that compensation is entirely delegated to the campaign’s
top leaders. “The president is not involved in the decision-making
process,” the official said. “I would argue Trump doesn’t know what
we’re paid.”
Campaign spokesperson
Steven Cheung said in a statement that “the 2024 Trump campaign is the
most well-run and professional operation in political history. Any false
assertion that we’re engaging in any type of behavior that may be
regarded as tampering is absurd and completely fake.”
Cheung might have gone overboard with that statement, and he apparently provided no evidence to support his claims. But the story appears to have Team Trump unsettled, the reporters write:
Trump’s attorney, David Warrington, sent ProPublica a cease-and-desist
letter demanding this article not be published. The letter warned that
if the outlet and its reporters “continue their reckless campaign of
defamation, President Trump will evaluate all legal remedies.”
It’s possible the benefits were dispersed in a widespread fashion. Payments from Trump campaign committees are
disclosed publicly, but the finances of his businesses are mostly
private, so raises, bonuses, and other payments from those entities are
not typically disclosed.
ProPublica did not find
evidence that Trump personally approved the pay increases or other
benefits. But Trump famously keeps close watch over his operations and
prides himself on penny-pinching. One former aide compared working for
the Trump Organization, his large company, to “a small family business”
where every employee “in some sense reports to Mr. Trump.” Former aides
have said Trump demands unwavering loyalty from subordinates, even when
their duties require independence. After his Attorney General Jeff
Sessions decided to recuse himself against then-President Trump’s
wishes, paving the way for a special counsel to investigate his
campaign’s ties to Russia, Trump fumed about being crossed. “Where’s my
Roy Cohn?” Trump asked, referring to the notorious former aide to Sen.
Joseph McCarthy who later served as Trump’s faithful fixer long before
Trump became president.
In addition to the New York case in which Trump was convicted last week, stemming from hidden payments to a porn star, Trump is facing separate charges federally and in Georgia for election interference and in another federal case for mishandling classified documents.
Attempts to exert undue
influence on witnesses have been a repeated theme of Trump-related
investigations and criminal cases over the years.
Trump’s former campaign manager and former campaign adviser were convicted on federal witness tampering charges in 2018 and 2019. The campaign adviser had told a witness to “do a ‘Frank Pentangeli,’” referencing a character in The Godfather Part II who lies to a Senate committee
investigating organized crime. Trump later pardoned both men in the
waning days of his presidency. (He did not pardon a co-defendant of the
campaign manager who had cooperated with the government.)
During the congressional
investigation into the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a former
White House staffer testified that she got a call from a colleague the night before an interview with investigators.
The colleague told her Trump’s chief of staff “wants me to let you know
that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing
tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss.” (A
spokesperson for the chief of staff denied that he tried to influence
testimony.)
Last year, Trump himself publicly discouraged a witness from testifying in the Georgia case. Trump posted on social media that he had read about a Georgia politician who “will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury. He shouldn’t.”
One witness has said
publicly that, when he quit working for Trump in the midst of the
classified documents criminal investigation, he was offered golf
tournament tickets, a lawyer paid for by Trump, and a new job that would
have come with a raise. The witness, a valet and manager at Mar-a-Lago,
had direct knowledge of the handling of the government documents at the
club, the focus of one of the criminal cases against the former
president. “I’m sure the boss would love to see you,” the employee,
Brian Butler, recalled Trump’s property manager telling him. (The
episode was first reported by CNN.)
In an interview with
ProPublica, Butler, who declined the offers, said he looked at them
“innocently for a while.” But when he added up the benefits plus the
timing, he thought “it could be them trying to get me back in the
circle.”
A lawyer with connections to events leading to the Jan. 6 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol appears multiple times in ProPublica's reporting:
One Trump aide who plays a
key role in multiple cases is a lawyer named Boris Epshteyn, who became
an important figure in Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the
2020 election.
A college classmate of one
of Trump’s sons who worked on the 2016 campaign and briefly in the
White House, Epshteyn was involved in assembling sets of false electors
around the country after Trump lost the 2020 election, and Epshteyn’s
emails and texts have come up repeatedly in investigations.
In 2022, he testified
before the Georgia grand jury that later indicted Trump on charges
related to attempts to overturn the election. The FBI seized his phone,
and in April 2023 he was interviewed by the federal special counsel.
In early August 2023, the
special counsel charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United
States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding as part of an
effort to overturn the 2020 election. A couple weeks later, the Georgia
grand jury handed down an indictment accusing Trump of racketeering as
part of a plot to overturn the election results in the state. From
November 2022 to August 2023, the Trump campaign had paid Epshteyn’s
company an average of $26,000 per month. The month after the
indictments, his pay hit a new high, $50,000, and climbed in October to
$53,500 per month, where it has remained ever since.
Epshteyn is a contractor
with the campaign and the payments go to his company, Georgetown
Advisory, which is based at a residential home in New Jersey. The
company does not appear to have an office or other employees. Campaign
filings say the payments are for “communications & legal
consulting.”
Kenneth Notter, an
attorney at MoloLamken who specializes in white-collar defense, said
that a defendant should have a good explanation for a major increase in
pay like Epshteyn’s. “Any change in treatment of a witness is something
that gets my heart rate up as a lawyer.”
Already in early 2023, months before the pay bump, a Trump campaign spokesperson described Epshteyn
to The New York Times as “a deeply valued member of the team” who had
“done a terrific job shepherding the legal efforts fighting” the
investigations of Trump. The Times reported then that Epshteyn spoke to
Trump multiple times per day.
Timothy Parlatore, an attorney who left Trump’s defense team last year citing infighting,
found Epshteyn’s large raise baffling. He questioned Epshteyn’s fitness
to handle high-stakes criminal defense given his scant experience in
the area. “He tries to coordinate all the legal efforts, which is a role
he’s uniquely unqualified for,” Parlatore said.
The Trump campaign
official told ProPublica that Epshteyn got a pay raise because Trump’s
legal cases intensified and, as a result, Epshteyn had more legal work
to coordinate. The official declined to say if he started working more
hours: “All of us are working 24/7, ... every second of the day.”
Epshteyn declined to comment on the record.
Even after the major pay
increase, Epshteyn has not devoted all of his working time to the Trump
campaign. He has continued to consult for other campaigns in recent
months, disclosure filings show. And in November, he got a new role as managing director of a financial services firm in New York called Kenmar Securities, regulatory filings show.
Epshteyn’s circuitous path is not unusual in Trump World, ProPublica found:
Other employees in Trump’s political orbit have followed a similar pattern — including his top aide.
Trump campaign head Susie
Wiles, a Florida political consultant, was present when Trump allegedly
went beyond improperly holding onto classified documents and showed them
to people lacking proper security clearances.
When Trump was indicted on
June 8, 2023, over his handling of the documents, the indictment
described Wiles as a “PAC representative.” It described Trump allegedly
showing her a classified map related to a military operation,
acknowledging “that he should not be showing it” and warning her to “not
get too close.”
That June, Right Coast
Strategies, the political consulting firm Wiles founded, received its
highest-ever monthly payment from the Trump campaign: $75,000, an amount
the firm has equaled only once since.
Wiles had been a grand jury witness before the indictment. News reports indicated Wiles
had told others that she continued to be loyal to Trump and only
testified because she was forced to. (And, according to Wiles, Trump was
told she was a witness sometime before the indictment’s June release.)
The Trump campaign
official told ProPublica that the spike in payments was largely because
Wiles was billing for previous months.
She also got a 20% raise
that May, from $25,000 to $30,000 per month. “She went back and redid
her contract,” the official said, adding that her role as a witness was
not a factor in that raise.
A few months later, the
Wiles family got more good news. Wiles’ daughter Caroline, who had done
some work for Trump’s first campaign and in the White House, where she reportedly left one job
because she didn’t pass a background check, was hired by his campaign.
Her salary: $222,000, making her currently the fourth-highest-paid
staffer. (The Trump campaign official said her salary included a monthly
housing stipend.)
Susie Wiles said she and
another campaign official were responsible for hiring her daughter, who
she said has an expertise in logistics and was brought on to handle
arrangements for surrogates taking Trump’s place at events he couldn’t
attend. Wiles said Trump wasn’t involved in the hire.
Caroline Wiles told
ProPublica her mother’s position in the campaign played no role in her
getting a job, but she declined to describe the circumstances around the
job offer. “How did I get the job? Because I have earned it,” she said.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with Susie.”
The indictment suggests
Susie Wiles herself has been aware of efforts to keep potential
witnesses in the fold. Soon after the FBI found classified documents at
Mar-a-Lago, a Trump employee was asked in a group text chat that
included Wiles to confirm that the club’s property manager “was loyal.”
Wiles told ProPublica she couldn’t talk about the details of the case, but she called the text message exchange “a nothing.”
More generally, she said
she was unaware of the need to ensure employees who are witnesses do not
appear to be receiving special treatment. “It’s the first time I’ve
heard that’s best practice,” she said. “I don’t mind telling you I
conduct myself in such a way that I don’t worry about any of that.”
Trump, she said, had never talked to her about her role as a witness.
What zbout other aides/witnesses whose names appear prominently in ProPublica's research? The reporters provide details:
Less powerful aides who are witnesses have also enjoyed career advances.
Margo Martin, a Trump aide
who, like Wiles, allegedly witnessed Trump showing off what he
described as a secret military document, got a significant raise not
long after the classified documents case heated up with the search at
Mar-a-Lago.
According to the
indictment, Trump told Martin and others the military plan was “secret”
and “highly confidential.” “As president I could have declassified it,”
he allegedly told the group. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a
secret.”
A few months before her
grand jury appearance, she moved from the payroll of a Trump political
committee to a job with the campaign as it was launching. Martin was
given a roughly 20% pay raise, from $155,000 to $185,000 per year,
according to the Trump campaign. Campaign finance filings show a much
larger pay increase for Martin, but the Trump campaign said the filings
are misleading because of a difference in how payroll taxes and
withholdings are reported by the two committees.
Because of that quirk,
it’s impossible to know who else got raises and how big they were. The
campaign official said that at least one other witness also got a pay
raise but did not provide details about how much and when.
Dan Scavino is a longtime
communications aide who Trump once called the “most powerful man in
politics” because he could post for Trump on the president’s social-media accounts. Scavino was among the small group of staff who had an
up-close view of Trump during the final weeks of his presidency — a
focus of the congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 insurrection and the
criminal probe into election interference.
In August 2021, a month
after the congressional investigation began, securities filings show
that the parent company behind Truth Social, Trump’s social-media
company, gave Scavino a consulting deal that ultimately paid out
$240,000 a year.
The next month, lawmakers
issued a subpoena to Scavino to ask him what the White House knew about
the potential for violence before the attacks and what actions Trump
took to try to overturn the election results. The panel gave Scavino a
half-dozen extensions while negotiating with him, but he ultimately
refused to testify or turn over documents and was held in contempt.
In September 2022, Scavino
received a subpoena to testify before the criminal grand jury in the
federal election-interference probe. This time, he wasn’t able to get
out of it and was seen leaving the Washington, D.C., courthouse in May
2023.
Bits of Scavino’s
testimony were reported by ABC News, citing unnamed sources. Though his
recollections of Trump from Jan. 6 painted the former president
unfavorably, his reported testimony didn’t include significant new
information. He testified Trump was “very angry” that day, and, despite
pleas from aides to calm the Capitol rioters, Trump for hours “was just
not interested” in taking action to stop it. When the testimony was
reported, Trump’s spokesperson said Scavino is one of the former
president’s “most loyal allies, and his actual testimony shows just how
strong President Trump is positioned in this case.”
Between getting the subpoena and testifying, Scavino was given a seat on the board of the Trump social-media company.
Scavino was also granted a
$600,000 retention bonus and a $4 million “executive promissory note”
paid in shares, according to SEC filings. The company’s public filings
do not make clear when these deals were put in place.
As one of the few aides
who Trump was with on Jan. 6, Scavino is likely to be called if Trump’s
election-interference cases go to trial.
Reached by ProPublica,
Scavino declined to answer questions about how he got the board seat and
other benefits from the Trump media company. “It has nothing to do,” he
said, “with any investigation.”
A Trump Media spokesperson
declined to answer questions about who made the decision to give
Scavino the benefits and why, but said, “It appears this article will
comprise utterly false insinuations.”
Some Trump allies found that trying to help the former president could get them caught in legal quagmires. The reporters write:
When Atlanta attorney
Jennifer Little was hired to represent Trump in his Georgia election-interference case, it marked the high point of her career.
A former local prosecutor
who started her own practice, she had previously taken on far more
modest cases. Highlights on her website include a biker who fell because
of a pothole, a child investigated for insensitive social-media
comments and drunk drivers with “DUI’s as high as .19.” Little had made
headlines for some higher-profile cases, like a candidate for lieutenant
governor accused of sexual harassment, but everything on her resume
paled in comparison to representing a former president accused of
plotting to reverse the outcome of an election.
Then in May 2022, her job
got even more complicated when Trump pulled her into his brewing
showdown with the Justice Department over classified documents at
Mar-a-Lago. Despite multiple requests, Trump had not returned all of the
documents he had brought with him from the White House to his Florida
club. The Justice Department had just elevated the matter by subpoenaing
Trump for the records, and Trump wanted her advice.
Little told him, according
to news reports, that unlike the government’s prior requests, a
subpoena meant he could face criminal charges if he didn’t comply.
When Trump ultimately did
not turn over the records and the criminal investigation intensified,
Little’s involvement in that pivotal meeting got her called before a
grand jury by federal prosecutors.
Some of her testimony
before that grand jury, which determines whether someone will be
indicted, may have been favorable for Trump. In one reported instance,
Little’s recollections undermined contemporaneous documentary evidence
that was damaging to Trump. Investigators had obtained notes from
another lawyer at the May 2022 meeting indicating Trump suggested they
not “play ball” with federal authorities: “Wouldn’t it be better if we
just told them we don’t have anything here?”
Little told the grand jury she remembered the question more benignly, according to an ABC News story that cited anonymous sources, and said she couldn’t recall Trump recommending they not “play ball.”
Trump has since been
indicted over his handling of the classified documents. If the case goes
to trial, Little’s testimony could prove crucial as the two sides try
to make their case about Trump's consciousness of guilt and whether he
purposely withheld documents. (Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case
and has said he did nothing wrong.)
Just after Little was
forced to testify before the grand jury in March 2023, a Trump political
action committee paid her $218,000, by far the largest payment she’d
received while working for Trump. In the year after she became a
witness, she has made at least $1.3 million from the Trump political
committee, more than twice as much as she had during the year prior.
Little told ProPublica the
large payment she received soon after she was compelled to testify was
due to a lengthy motion she filed around then to block the release of
the Georgia grand jury’s findings and prevent Trump from being indicted.
Her hourly rate did not change, she said, the workload increased. The
elevated payments in the year after she became a witness did coincide
with the Georgia case heating up and Trump getting indicted.
The Trump campaign
official said the spike in payments to Little after she became a witness
was the result of her billing for multiple time periods at once.
A similar pattern played out for the other Trump lawyer present at the Mar-a-Lago meeting about the subpoena.
Evan Corcoran, a former
federal prosecutor who specializes in white-collar criminal defense, was
new to the team at the time. And it was his notes, obtained by
investigators, that memorialized Trump suggesting they not “play ball.”
His notes also included a description of Trump seeming to instruct him
to withhold some sensitive documents from authorities when the former
president made a “plucking motion.”
“He made a funny motion as
though — well okay why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room
and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it
out,” Corcoran’s notes read, according to the indictment.
Like Little, Corcoran
tried to fight being forced to testify before a grand jury, asserting
that as Trump’s lawyer, their communications were protected. But
prosecutors were able to convince a judge that the protection didn’t
apply because their legal advice was used to commit crimes.
Corcoran’s notes from his
conversations with Trump formed the backbone of the eventual indictment,
and his descriptions of those meetings are expected to be a critical
component at trial. The lawyer made an initial appearance before the
grand jury in January 2023 and appeared again in another session in
March.
Around the time he was
forced to be a witness, Corcoran recused himself from the classified
documents case, but he continued to represent Trump on other matters.
Nevertheless his firm’s compensation shot up for a few months.
Just days after his March
grand-jury testimony, the Trump campaign sent two payments to his firm
totaling $786,000, the largest amount paid in a single day in his almost
two years working for Trump. The firm brought in a total of $1.4
million in that four-week span, more than double its payments from any
other comparable period during Corcoran’s time working for Trump.
Corcoran did not respond
to questions from ProPublica. The Trump campaign official said the spike
in payments came because the firm was billing for more hours of work as
Trump’s cases ramped up. The official added that the number of lawyers
from the firm working on the case may have increased but could not
provide specifics.
The matters that ProPublica is examining already have come up in two Trump trials:
The issue of witnesses who
have received financial rewards from Trump has already come up at both
of the former president’s New York trials.
In the civil fraud case
last year, prosecutors questioned the Trump Organization’s former
controller about the $500,000 in severance he had been promised after
retiring earlier in the year. During his testimony, the former
controller broke down in tears as he complained about allegations
against an employer he loved and defended the valuations at the center
of the case as “justified.” At the time of the testimony, he was still
receiving his severance in installments.
Former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg got a $2 million severance agreement
in January 2023, four months after the New York attorney general sued
Trump for financial fraud in his real estate business. The agreement
contains a nondisparagement clause and language barring Weisselberg from
voluntarily cooperating with investigators.
It came up in Trump’s hush
money trial last month when prosecutors told the judge that the
severance agreement was one of the reasons they would not call Weisselberg . He was still due several payments.
“The agreement seems to
preclude us from talking to him or him talking to us at the risk of
losing $750,000 of outstanding severance pay,” one prosecutor said.
In last year’s fraud
trial, the judge wrote of the severance agreement, “The Trump
Organization keeps Weisselberg on a short leash, and it shows.”
A Trump Organization
spokesperson said in a statement that after Weisselberg and the
controller announced their retirement plans, “the company agreed to pay
them severance based on the number of years they worked at the company.
President Trump played no role in that decision.” Weisselberg’s
severance agreement was signed by Trump’s son, Eric.
Another witness from the
civil trial last year, longtime Trump friend and real estate executive
Steve Witkoff, was called as an expert witness by Trump’s defense team,
and he defended the Trump Organization real-estate valuations at the
heart of the case.
Two months after
Witkoff’s testimony, Trump’s campaign for the first time started paying
his company, the Witkoff Group, for air travel. The payments continued
over several weeks, ultimately totalling more than $370,000.
The Trump campaign
official confirmed the campaign used Witkoff’s private jet for multiple
trips, including Trump’s visit to a stretch of the Texas border in
February, saying it “appropriately reimbursed” him for the flights. The
official said it sometimes used commercial charter jet services but
opted for Witkoff’s plane because of “availability, space, and
convenience.”
Witkoff and The Witkoff Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Donald Trump stands convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. That’s a class E felony. New York State sentencing guidelines say the
punishment for committing a class E felony “shall be fixed by the
court, and shall not exceed four years.” If the convicted felon is not
(as Trump is not) “a second or persistent felony offender,” then the
judge “may impose a definite sentence of imprisonment and fix a term of
one year or less.”
The
guidelines make no exception for former presidents. At Trump’s July 11
sentencing, Justice Juan M. Merchan should send Donald Trump to jail. I
say “jail” because in New York State, sentences less than one year are
served in jail, not prison. Trump can pursue the appeals process from
his jail cell, as would anyone else. (A number of news reports indicate that if Trump is jailed, his likely destination is Rikers Island, perhaps the most notorious correctional facility in New York.)
Noah's words cut against the grain of most legal experts who have commented on the subject. But Noah shows his reasoning has solid grounding in the facts and the law:
My
recommendation goes against what appears to be the rough consensus in
the legal community. “Typically this is not the kind of case where you
would expect a first-time white-collar offender to receive a sentence of
incarceration,” Andrew Weinstein, a New York defense attorney, told Reuters’
Luc Cohen. Six legal experts advised Reuters that felony falsification
of business records did not typically get first offenders jail time.
When Weinstein represented such a client 15 years ago, the man got three
years’ probation.
Statistical
evidence supports this conclusion. During the decade preceding Trump’s
April 2023 indictment, the Manhattan district attorney brought 437 cases
that included a felony charge for falsifying business records,
according to a court filing. Manhattan criminal court records cited by Reuters’ Cohen show that four
defendants who pleaded guilty in that period were sentenced to a year
or less in prison. That’s less than 1 percent. Three of these four,
unlike Trump, were also charged with other crimes, including fraud and
grand larceny. The fourth was sentenced to one year of “intermittent
imprisonment,” which meant he entered prison every Monday evening and
left every Wednesday morning.
For another survey, Norm Eisen, who was counsel for the first Trump impeachment trial, cast a wider net,
reviewing nearly 10,000 cases since 2015 all over New York state. As
with the smaller Manhattan sample, Eisen’s 10,000 cases statewide
typically involved additional charges. So Eisen confined his review to
those cases where falsifying business records was the most serious charge.
The proportion of convictions in such cases that yielded prison time,
he found, was not 1 percent but 10 percent. But that still meant that in
90 percent of cases similar to Trump’s, the conviction did not send the
guilty party to prison.
Why, then, do I argue that Justice Merchan should send Trump to
jail? Because Merchan won’t base his sentence solely on the similarity
of Trump’s case to previous cases. He’ll also consider the many
differences, and these are substantial.
Trump did not help himself with his belligerent, disrespectful, deny-everything behavior throughout the hush-money trial in Manhattan. In short, Trump made himself a candidate for jail time, Noah writes:
The most obvious difference (in Trump's case) is that Trump did not plead guilty.
That puts him in a different category from the four Manhattan
defendants out of 437 who did jail time. Judges typically sentence
defendants who plead not guilty more harshly than defendants who plead
guilty.
Another
significant difference is that Trump disrupted the trial proceedings at
every opportunity. The judge had to impose a gag order barring Trump
from discussing witnesses, jurors, prosecutors, court staff, family
members of District Attorney Alvin Bragg, or members of Merchan’s own
family. It’s pretty unlikely that defendants in those earlier cases
incurred comparable prohibitions from the judge. It’s even more unlikely
that these earlier defendants were found by the court to have violated gag orders 10 times,
as Trump was. The $10,000 in fines that Trump paid did little to
silence him, and at one point Merchan threatened to jail him for
contempt of court. In the end, Merchan did not. Now that Trump’s a
convicted felon, this misbehavior is reason enough to impose a jail
sentence.
Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia and onetime federal
prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, told me he doesn’t
expect Trump to serve jail time. But “in an ordinary case,” he conceded,
“judges don’t take kindly to defendants who show contempt for the
process.” Doing so, Richman said, would “argue strongly for coming down
hard on someone.”
Another consideration is that
Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen spent more than a year at the
Otisville Federal Correctional Institution as inmate 86067-054, then
another year and a half under house arrest, for his own role in Trump’s
hush-money transaction. Granted, Cohen was sent to jail not only for
violating campaign law but also for tax evasion and making false
statements to a bank. But it was Cohen’s covert payment to Stormy
Daniels that brought prosecutors to his door.
Compared to Trump, Cohen was “a less culpable person in terms of this crime,” Andrew
Weissmann, a law professor at New York University (and former lead
prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation), told me.
Trump was “the leader of the charged crime. This was all done for him.”
Also unlike Trump, Weissmann pointed out, Cohen pleaded guilty (as
Trump did not) and cooperated with the Mueller investigation (which
Trump did only kinda-sorta). In addition, Cohen expressed remorse for his role in this crime. Trump, needless to say, has not, and indeed has done quite the opposite,
insisting on his innocence, calling Merchan “corrupt” and “conflicted,”
and much more.
Multiple
news accounts have cited Trump’s age (he’ll be 78 at sentencing) as a
reason not to send him to jail. It’s unusual, apparently, for
78-year-olds who falsify documents in the first degree to get jail time.
This thinking requires updating. We also used to think it inadvisable
for people older than 75 to run for president. The primary voters have
spoken otherwise. If Trump is spry enough to serve a second term, he’s
spry enough to do hard time.
News accounts have also noted
that first offenders who falsify documents in the first degree seldom
get jail time. Let us pause for a moment to appreciate how remarkable it
is that a sociopath like Trump reached the advanced age of 77 before he
received his first felony conviction. Bravo, Mr. President! That said,
Trump has been pronounced a lawbreaker in too many previous civil
proceedings to count. Just this year, Trump was found guilty of sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll in one such proceeding and defrauding banks in
another. This second ruling is especially relevant to the hush-money
case, given the common theme of deception. Fraud is a persistent refrain
in anti-Trump litigation; seven years ago, you’ll recall, Trump paid $25 million to
settle fraud claims against his bogus Trump University. Do you
seriously expect Justice Merchan not to connect these dots? Past history
and character, Eisen wrote, are legitimate matters for a sentencing judge to take into consideration, and in Trump’s case these cry out for jail time.
A
final difference is the stakes. In those previous instances where New
York state defendants falsified business records, the motive was theft,
which is bad. Trump’s falsifications played out on a much larger stage.
This crime, Eisen has observed,
“could be seen not just as unfortunate personal judgment but also, as
Merchan has described it, an attempt ‘to unlawfully influence the 2016
presidential election.’” Trump’s defenders say the New York criminal
case was brought for political reasons. Of course it was! Trump’s falsifications may have put him in the White House! That makes Bragg’s decision to proceed with the case more defensible, not less.
Trump
should go to jail not because of the ways his conduct resembled
previous offenses but because of the gaudy and appallingly singular ways it did not. In this as in so many other areas, Trump ventures where
others dare not, then complains when the boom comes down that he’s being
treated differently. He’s treated differently because he is different.
He behaves worse than others do, and that misbehavior affects many more
people. That’s why some voters love him, and others hate him. And it’s
why he needs to spend time in jail.
I think Merchan
should give Trump six months. That way, should he win the 2024 election,
Trump can be out by Inauguration Day. As I noted previously, in New
York state a sentence of less than one year is served in jail, not
prison. In New York City, the jail felons get sent to—white collar as
well as violent criminals—is Rikers Island. I’m fine with that. If it’s
good enough for Trump’s former chief financial adviser Alan Weisselberg,
age 76, who’s got three months left to go there on his five-month
Riker’s sentence, it’s good enough for the boss. Let’s give them some
quality time together.
