On March 30, former President Donald Trump was indicted by a New York grand jury. He thus became the first current or former president to face criminal charges.     

On April 1, CNN reported/editorialized:  “Former President Donald Trump’s indictment….has thrust the nation into uncharted political, legal and historical waters, and raised a slew of questions about how the criminal case will unfold. 

“The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been investigating Trump in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election.”

Trump has aggressively attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as pursuing a leftist agenda to prevent him from running for President in 2024.

“If they can do this to me,” he has thundered in countless fund-raising appeals to his Right-wing followers, “they can do this to you.” 

Really? How many others have tried to illegally pay hush-money to a porn “actress” to silence her during a Presidential campaign?

Nor is that the end of Trump’s prosecutorial troubles.

On June 13, he became the first ex-President to be formally booked by the Justice Department on federal charges.

Seal of the Department of Justice

He’s now facing 37 felony charges based on his retaining and hiding classified government documents from authorities.

 These charges include: 

• Willfully retaining national defense information: Storing 31 classified documents at his estate at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.
• Conspiring to obstruct justice: Conspiring to keep those documents from the grand jury.
• Withholding a document or a record: Misleading one of his attorneys by moving boxes of classified documents so the attorney could not find or introduce them to the grand jury.
• Concealing a document in a federal investigation: Hiding Trump’s possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago from the FBI and causing a false certificate to be submitted to the FBI.
• Scheme to conceal: Hiding his continued possession of documents from the FBI and the grand jury.
• False statements and representations: Causing another of his attorneys to make false statements to the FBI and grand jury about the search at Mar-a-Lago.

Donald Trump

Each charge carries a maximum fine of $250,000, with maximum prison sentences between five and 20 years.

According to Trump, facing 37 felony charges is “an honor because I’m doing it for you, I’m doing it for our country, to show how evil and sinister a place it has become. Make America great again! We’re not going to let them get away with it.”  

In short: To save America, Trump has volunteered for this indictment. He isn’t the one who illegally removed and tried to retain almost 300 highly classified documents. 

You did.

And he, like Jesus, is taking your sins upon himself.

Trump has repeatedly tried to make himself appear the victim of “a Democratic-led witch hunt.” But if politics has tainted the dispensing of justice in Trump’s case, it’s been on his behalf. 

As President, he had immunity from criminal and civil lawsuits. He couldn’t be tried at local, state and federal levels.

And he had good reason to avoid facing trial at any level. He was facing at least five cases while he held office:

• The Manhattan District Attorney’s criminal case against the Trump Organization: For  falsifying New York business records to conceal his hush money payoff to porn “star” Stormy Daniels for his extramarital tryst with her. 
• The New York Attorney General’s civil investigation into the Trump Organization: For engaging in years of financial fraud to obtain a host of economic benefits.
• The E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit:  For calling her a liar after she claimed he raped her in the 1990s. 
• The Mary Trump lawsuit:  For defrauding his niece out of millions of dollars.
• The Trump Tower lawsuit: Five people claim that Keith Schiller, the Trump Organization’s then chief of security, hit one of them on the head when they were protesting outside of the company’s Manhattan headquarters in 2015. 

Since leaving the White House, Trump has seen additional cases pile up against him.  Among these:

• The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election.
• The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Trump’s inciting an attack on Congress on January 6, 2021.
• The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Trump’s illegally taking classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate and refusing to return them to the government.
• The House of Representatives’ January 6 lawsuit for trying to prevent Congress from certifying the Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021.
• The Eric Swalwell lawsuit by the California Representative for trying to block the Electoral College vote count.
• The Capitol Police January 6 lawsuits for emotional and physical injuries sustained by officers during the January 6, 2021 attack by Trump’s followers. 
• The Michael Cohen lawsuit by Trump’s former attorney and fixer. He claims Trump retaliated against him after he said he was writing a tell-all about his years working for Trump.
• The Class Action lawsuit against the Trumps [Donald, Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric] and their business. This alleges that “the defendants used their brand name to defraud thousands of working-class individuals by promoting numerous businesses in exchange for ’secret payments.’” 

Now his Presidential immunity is gone and he faces unprecedented challenges from a legal system that had long ignored his rampant criminality.