Attention to the Unseen

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump insisted on turning his Tuesday arraignment into a spectacle, and he’s going to get his wish. A law enforcement official tells Rolling Stone that the former president was offered a chance to surrender quietly and be arraigned over Zoom. Instead, Trump opted for a midday, high-profile booking at the Manhattan courthouse, the official says. “He wanted a perp walk, he wanted daylight hours,” says the law enforcement official, who’s involved in aspects of the security…

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David French writes: To fully understand the Trumpist threat to the rule of law, it’s necessary to discuss what the rule of law means. A nation truly governed by the rule of law isn’t going to have a perfect legal system — no human system can be perfect — but it will have a double check against injustice. The rule of law depends on both substance and process, just laws and just processes, and respect for the rule of law…

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The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump is quite familiar with New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, the judge who oversaw the grand jury that indicted Trump this week and will preside over the criminal proceedings that follow. Merchan, 60, who has sat on the New York bench since 2009, also presided over the jury trial last year of Trump’s namesake real estate company, which resulted in a conviction in December, and the prosecution of the company’s longtime…

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Rep. Dan Goldman writes: The rule of law that underlies our democratic values finds its roots in the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who stated: “Passion influences those who are in power … Law is reason without desire.” Our second president John Adams stressed the importance of this concept for our fledgling democracy, insisting that “it may be a government of laws and not of men.” In order to preserve fidelity to the rule of law, Adams and our other Founding Fathers…

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The Washington Post reports: The office of New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Friday urged House Republicans to withdraw a demand for information on its case against former president Donald Trump, again rebuffing what it characterized as “unlawful political interference” in an ongoing criminal case. In a letter to the three committee chairmen who are pressing for documents and testimony about Trump’s case, Leslie B. Dubeck, the general counsel for Bragg’s office, chastised them for choosing to “collaborate”…

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Vice News reports: Minutes after former President Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in New York, his supporters flooded social media and extremist message boards with violent and racist threats against the officials prosecuting Trump, as well as bloody civil war. “This cannot go unpunished,” one member of the rabidly pro-Trump message board The Donald wrote on Thursday night. “The DA needs to pay dearly.” “None of this will stop unless there is blood in the streets,” another…

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NPR reports: Nearly all of these cases are being heard by 21 judges in the federal district court in Washington, D.C. They were appointed by presidents from both parties from President Reagan to President Biden. It’s difficult to compare the rulings of judges because every case is different, but there are common themes in what the judges have been saying to the defendants before them. For one, the judges aren’t looking at these crimes in isolation. The significance of Jan….

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The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump warned early Friday of “potential death & destruction” if he is charged in Manhattan in a criminal case related to alleged hush-money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to conceal an affair. The post-midnight posting on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, was his latest — and most explicit — allusion to violence that could follow an indictment stemming from an investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), whom Trump…

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Politico reports: As an indictment looms for Donald Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is poised to become the first prosecutor ever to bring criminal charges against a former American president. It’s a distinction that puts him in a high-profile but perilous spot. Having occupied the district attorney’s office for only 15 months, Bragg has already endured a firestorm sparked by a progressive overhaul of criminal justice policies and a public rebuke from two prominent prosecutors who resigned during the…

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Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann write: Though it may be tempting to do so, it is a mistake to assess the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Donald Trump by comparing its relative severity with those of myriad other crimes possibly committed by him. That is not how state and federal prosecutors will — or should — be thinking about the issue of charging Mr. Trump, or for that matter, any other defendant. Prosecutors are trained to consider whether a case…

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The Associated Press reports: Former President Donald Trump’s calls for protests ahead of his anticipated indictment in New York have generated mostly muted reactions from supporters, with even some of his most ardent loyalists dismissing the idea as a waste of time or a law enforcement trap. The ambivalence raises questions about whether Trump, though a leading Republican contender in the 2024 presidential race who retains a devoted following, still has the power to mobilize far-right supporters the way he did more than two…

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Insider reports: The surprise final witness provides an updated clue to the timing of a possible indictment of Trump and of any co-defendants. The grand jury, which meets in secret in a lower Manhattan office building, only gathers to hear testimony during three-hour afternoon sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Its members — anywhere from 16 to 23 in number — could conceivably reach a vote by the end of Monday’s three-hour session. But that would be unlikely. Experts who…

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