Donald Trump has been charged. The swamp is finally being drained

I wrote this for The Guardian on Trump’s arraignment, which marks the day when he began to be held criminally accountable. And that must be a good thing for the rule of law.

Tuesday marks the day that Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, finally begins to fulfill one of his major campaign promises of 2016. By surrendering himself to authorities in New York City, Trump is finally draining the swamp.

Of course, Trump isn’t the one opening the drain. That would be Alvin Bragg, New York county’s district attorney. And since “draining the swamp” is understood as rooting out political corruption, then, according to the criminal charges in the indictment, Trump is the alleged swamp monster potentially being drained. Still, job well done, Donald. Thank you. It’s about time.

With the unsealing of the indictment, we now see the outline of how Trump’s alleged hush money payments to two different women have been viewed by prosecutors and how they rise to the level of felony charges. To be charged as felonies, the hush money payments must show that Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an attempt to commit or conceal a second crime and the case against Trump alleges the former president falsified New York business records “to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters both before and after the 2016 election”, as Bragg wrote in a separate statement.

The indictment lists a $30,000 payment by American Media, Inc to a former Trump Tower doorman regarding a story about a child Trump had out of wedlock, a $150,000 payment made to a woman who alleges a sexual relationship with Trump, presumably Karen McDougal, and another $130,000 payment to a different woman, presumably Stormy Daniels, also about suppressing a story about a sexual relationship. “Participants in the scheme took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the reimbursements,” Bragg further explained. All the charges Trump is facing are falsifying business records in the first degree and are felonies.

Due process must now take its course, even if pundits in Trump’s corner repeatedly crow that the former president is being persecuted for his politics and not prosecuted for his actions. Such voices seem to skip conveniently over the fact that, since district attorney Bragg assumed his elected position in 2022, Bragg’s office has filed 117 felony counts of falsifying business records against 29 individuals and companies. The real Trump exception, let’s be clear, would be not filing charges.

Still, this is no ordinary arraignment. Everything about Trump is oversized (except, allegedly, his hands), and his arraignment is no different, from the media covering every inch of his journey from Florida to New York to Trump’s lackluster election campaign for the 2024 presidency claiming to have raised $7m since the indictment was announced. Keeping Trump’s penchant for embellishment in mind, we would be wise to wait for proof from official campaign filings before accepting the accuracy of that number.

Predictably, media coverage has run non-stop Trump coverage for the last few days, and Trump supporters have been hyperbolic to the point of delusion in defense of dear leader. Far-right, Q-Anon-supporting representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from Georgia, said, “Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today. Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus! Jesus was arrested and murdered.” Greene, who is reported to be angling for the vice-president position on a Trump ticket, stated that she “will always support” Trump.

But surely the real story here is not Trump’s infamously bad behavior but how Trump has been unable to rally much other overt support to his defense…

Read the rest here.