<Rep. Jim Jordan's (R-OH) relentless complaints that the 34 felony counts levied against Donald Trump by a Manhattan grand jury are based on nothing more than "bookkeeping errors" were brutally slapped aside by a former U.S. attorney in a column for MSNBC.

According to MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, who never passed the bar after graduating from law school, has a basic lack of knowledge of what constitutes white-collar crime and how often it is prosecuted.

In her column, she explained that white-collar crime is a serious offense and historically has been treated as such.

"In reality, offenses committed by the business elite can be just as serious as those committed by street criminals," she wrote before adding. "In fact, I would argue that in some cases, white-collar crime is more egregious than crime committed by destitute people desperate for cash. These are crimes often motivated by greed, instead of need."

Turning to Trump's alleged crimes detailed in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's extensive indictment, McQuade asserted, "According to the indictment, Trump orchestrated a scheme with others to “purchase negative information” about Trump 'to benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects.' The alleged scheme involved shell corporations and a complex series of financial transactions to disguise the payments as legal fees. According to the charging documents, the false records violated election and tax laws."

She continued, "But even if the alleged scheme did not cause any voters to change their minds, the financial crimes are a serious matter," before elaborating, "In other words, if we allow everyone to lie in their business records, then business markets will collapse because no one will be able to rely on them. Bragg noted that this crime is one that the Manhattan DA’s office charges on a regular basis.">

<....No need to respond to all the trash out there.>

As the saying is, come to the blind squirrel....

It is you who should apologise--first for playing <fredthestalker> at every turn, then for your existence on this earth.

Y'all have trouble with rea-ding com-pre-hen-shun, lemme explain it like this:

<Y'all ain't welcome anywhere, especially here>

Ackshly, <fredthepissant>, intolerance for those not as oneself is a way of life for faux Christians like yourself.

Suh, suh, Ah'll tell yew what: <yew> had no problem creating a platoon of sockies, solely for the purpose of attacking me.

Having a bout of that there see-lective memory? Let me help:

<chester the crooner>

<chess.o.rama>

<Rip2632>

<2071 S Milwaukee>

<....The Z operator's favorite insult today is <a urine-drinker anti-vaxer>.....>

Someone else used that, <fredthecretin>.

<....The TRUTH shall set you free!>

<A former Republican congressman on Monday took aim at Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) over the House Judiciary chairman’s announced plans to hold a “field hearing” in Manhattan next week to investigate the prosecution of Donald Trump.

Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg last week indicted the former president on 34 felony counts in connection with election interference allegations that center around hush money payments to a former adult-film star. Trump pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing.

Joe Walsh, who represented Illinois’ 8 congressional district as a Republican from 2011 to 2013, has broken with the party over its autocratic tendencies in the age of Trump and now identifies as an Independent.

Jordan on Monday announced plans to hold a field hearing April 17 in Manhattan at the Jacob Javits Federal Building.

“Alvin Bragg’s radical pro-crime, anti-victim policies have led to an increase in violent crime in New York City,” Jordan tweeted.

“Next week, the Judiciary Committee will examine these policies during a field hearing in Manhattan.”

Walsh, who served Jordan in the House, called out the far-right congressman for getting involved in a local prosecution, which the former Illinois congressman said is it odds with Jordan’s previously stated views.

“Hey Jim, remember when we served in Congress together and you railed against the federal government sticking its nose into state & local affairs? Remember when you told me how important the concept of federalism is?” Walsh tweeted.

“That seems like a long time ago Jim.”>

Since when does this hypocritical, ignorant twat believe it is fair for the federal branch to stick their nose into state affairs?

<It’s probably fair to say Democratic members of Congress were already skeptical of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. It’s also fair to say those concerns reached a new level last week, after they saw ProPublica’s report on the far-right jurist spending the last couple of decades accepting gifts and luxury trips from a Republican megadonor, which Thomas failed to disclose.

Some Democrats called for the justice’s resignation, while a few raised the specter of impeachment. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, added in a written statement, “The Pro Publica report is a call to action, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will act.”

As for Republicans, who’ve long pointed to Thomas as a judicial hero, the justice’s latest ethics scandal hasn’t generated much in the way of discussion. GOP officials have largely overlooked Thomas’ other controversies, and it’s likely the party is content to wait for this story to fade from the headlines.

On Saturday, however, Sen. John Cornyn published a message to Twitter that caught by attention. The Texas Republican, paraphrasing a piece from The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, wrote:

At this point, we could spend some time challenging the idea that the left “lost control of the Supreme Court,” which is dubious in part because it’s been more than a half-century since a majority of the justices were appointed by Democratic presidents, and in part because the unprecedented abuses Cornyn and his GOP colleagues have engaged in.

We could also spend some time marveling at the idea that “the left” wants to seize control of the high court “by whatever means possible.” In this context, even if Thomas’ scandal were to force him from the bench — a fanciful notion, to be sure — and even if the Democratic White House and Democratic-led Senate were to confirm a successor, the right’s majority on the high court would remain secure.

But what stood out as especially notable was the use of the word “smear.”

As a rule, when those in the political or legal arena are being smeared, it means they’re facing false and ugly allegations that tarnish their reputations. This certainly happens, and it can be awful for the targets.

But in this instance, ProPublica appears to have published an accurate report on Thomas’ dubious behavior. The justice released a 146-word written statement in response to the controversy, but at no point did Thomas challenge or contest a single detail of the revelations.

In other words, the story appears to be true. Thomas, several years after joining the Supreme Court, forged close ties with real estate magnate Harlan Crow, who’s repeatedly been excessively generous toward the conservative jurist. Thomas, in turn, spent years declining to disclose the benefits of his friendship with the Republican megadonor.

If stating these uncontested facts constitutes a “smear,” that says more about Thomas than those concerned about his conduct.>

Waal, sumbitch: he now paints me as some sort of religious type--vastly amusing, if yet another falsehood from his seemingly bottomless store of lies and calumnies.

As few in this life could prove the above proposition, your existence is proof of it, same as other faux Christians who worship the one day per week, then rob their neighbours blind the other six, not to mention all the other sins committed in the name of their professed beliefs.

<A Texas judge’s order on Friday to suspend federal approval of the abortion pill, combined with a contradictory ruling in Washington state, has put the matter on course for a presumptive date with the Supreme Court.

At which point we might find out just how committed the justices — and specifically, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh — are to staying out of the abortion issue after overturning Roe v. Wade.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe in the summer, its conservative-leaning justices made a point of arguing repeatedly that their decision was merely putting the issue in the hands of elected officials. They cast past courts, which had established a constitutional right to an abortion, as overreaching, and they said these things were best left to the will of the voters.

Perhaps most significant was Kavanaugh’s concurrence. That’s both because it sought to blunt criticism of the decision and because he provided a crucial vote in the 5-4 split to overturn Roe. That appeared to set Kavanaugh up as a potential fulcrum of the court on abortion issues.

Kavanaugh suggested that the decision meant the court would effectively wash its hands of the issue moving forward. And that’s something critics of U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk spotlighted soon after Kacsmaryk moved to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of mifepristone.

But it’s worth digesting the precise language Kavanaugh used.

“After today’s decision, the nine Members of this Court will no longer decide the basic legality of pre-viability abortion for all 330 million Americans,” Kavanaugh wrote in Dobbs v. Jackson. “That issue will be resolved by the people and their representatives in the democratic process in the States or Congress.”

While acknowledging how politically heated the abortion issue is, Kavanaugh wrote, “Especially in those difficult and fraught circumstances, the Court must scrupulously adhere to the Constitution’s neutral position on the issue of abortion.”

He added: “The Court today properly heeds the constitutional principle of judicial neutrality and returns the issue of abortion to the people and their elected representatives in the democratic process.”

Some have cast this as Kavanaugh offering assurance that he wouldn’t be a part of the court’s partaking in other, far-reaching abortion decisions. Kavanaugh certainly emphasizes neutrality while trying to sell the decision in what is a transparently political concurrence.

Given that medication appears to account for more than half of abortions in the United States — in addition to the fact that the abortion pill could be used in states that ban abortion — it’s difficult to think of a more consequential abortion-related issue for the post-Dobbs court to weigh in on. And that merits a closer look at Kavanaugh’s language, which reveals that he wasn’t at all clear that he was promising a hands-off approach in such situations.

Perhaps the key phrase in the above excerpts from Kavanaugh’s opinion is “basic legality.” Elsewhere in his concurrence, he seems to draw a line between that and the periods during which abortion could remain legal and other fundamental issues of the legality of abortion. And while he does so, he seems to separate that from other “abortion-related legal questions.”

“Other abortion-related legal questions may emerge in the future,” he wrote. “But this Court will no longer decide the fundamental question of whether abortion must be allowed throughout the United States through 6 weeks, or 12 weeks, or 15 weeks, or 24 weeks, or some other line. The Court will no longer decide how to evaluate the interests of the pregnant woman and the interests in protecting fetal life throughout pregnancy.”

Certainly, the Texas decision involves a prominent abortion method and would have huge ramifications if the Supreme Court were to sign off on it or anything like it. It might be the most consequential abortion-related issue the court could decide in the coming years....>

<....But the flip side of that is that such a decision could be construed not as ruling on the “basic legality” of medication abortion, but as an administrative matter. While Kacsmaryk holds staunch antiabortion views and layered his opinion with such rhetoric — for example, writing “unborn human” and “unborn child” rather than “fetus,” and “abortionist” rather than “doctor” — his central holding is that the FDA erred in determining that mifepristone is safe and that it disregarded arguments to the contrary.

More than 100 studies have found the pills to be safe and effective, according to a New York Times review. And it’s not at all clear that the Supreme Court would sign off on something as severe as the Texas ruling. But it’s not as though Kavanaugh said the court would stay out of all abortion rights cases moving forward. And however well-constructed Kacsmaryk’s argument is, it’s not difficult to see Kavanaugh and others casting it as an “abortion-related legal question” rather than a question about the “basic legality” of abortion.

The situation is something of a callback to when Roe was overturned. At the time, critics of the decision pointed to comments Kavanaugh and other conservative justices made at their confirmation hearings, while suggesting they had gone back on promises to uphold Roe. In fact, each of the justices had offered responses on the subject that were obviously carefully worded and kept the door ajar, as we and others noted even during those hearings.

But perhaps the one overturning justice who went the furthest to allay concerns that he had such a goal in his sights? Brett M. Kavanaugh. He needed a vote from a Republican senator who supported abortion rights. He repeatedly described Roe as “precedent on precedent” and “settled as precedent,” and he said a majority of justices disagreeing with a precedent should not be sufficient to overturn it.

By 2021, he had altered his tone significantly. And by 2022, he voted with a bare majority of justices to overturn Roe.>

Make 'em choose between <coat hanger or safety>; yeah, dumbass 'pro-lifers'. That's the essence of preserving life and acting responsibly.

<Rick Wilson: The Spectacle.

It’s back.

Not just Donald Trump, but the roiling, the constant lurid spectacle of Donald Trump: the media, political, and social vortex of attention and travesty that no one can escape.

We saw this week from start to finish, the grinding media machine opening the same Pandora’s Box of behaviors that brought us here in the first place; “They’re fueling Trump’s jet…let’s go to our Trump’s jet experts to see how this will affect the trial.”

“Trump’s jet is taking off now, and we’ll follow it on FlightAware to determine if -- IF -- they might be delayed coming into LaGuardia.”

Minute by minute, move by move, he’s consuming everything again.

Trump is the media singularity, the deep, black well of condensed matter from which no light or information escapes.

He is the insatiable predator of attention and focus, and no one can look away, no matter how much harm we know it does to our country, society, and mental health.

It’s a familiar rhythm, despised and regretted in equal measure, and no one can look away. Every moment, every beat, every grim decline in our standards is chronicled in the telling of Trump’s sordid, crapulous tale.

A former President under indictment. The screeching of the right-wing media machine rending the skies with their rage.

Endless armies of legal experts parsing the indictments, wargaming a dozen trials and a hundred schools of thought springing up with each new development.

And honestly, I am here for it.

I want the entire elite GOP class to be forced to stare at the monster, a modern Ludovico Treatment of aversion and pain.

I want them to ache and writhe at the spectacle of cruelty and corruption. I want them to own every second of it as they spin a skein of excuses and rationalizations.

They wanted to look away and did. Now, they can’t.

For nearly eight years, the party that was the GOP has been a junkie for Trump. Not just a few of them but the vast majority.

The raw, unwashed rural, lower-education score cohort of base voters delighted in shoving that needle into their veins and signing contentedly as they mainline all the grubby, barely concealed racism, violence, and chaos.

They never stopped watching Trump’s every move.

But the rest of the GOP desperately wanted to move on.

Desperately.>

<It's clear that Chessgames allows the cyberbully <perfidious> and his pal Z free / stone free / Zanzibar etc. etc. to VIOLATE ANY and ALL GUIDELINES repeatedly. It just goes ON and ON and ON. Truth tellers are deleted and suspended while the evil-doers run rampant harassing others.

The <RESTRICTED KIBITZING> is a dirty dealing front, a full-fledged Chessgames scam. The Z imposter and MissScarlett used dozens of sock puppet accounts to put members who complained on ignore so the members would be automatically placed on RESTRICTED KIBIITZING! Two underhanded users ganged up with their multiple accounts to freeze out anybody they disagree with. Add the cyberbully perfidious calling on Kenny's Kids to join them and no decent poster has a fair chance against this Goon Squad.

Then look at the complete filth, absolute filth that is ALLOWED on the Rogoff page. The stench from that page contributes mightily to global warming. Chessgames could [sic] care less about that, far worse than anything the truth tellers post.

It's a clear and obvious dirty-dealing double standard on full display.>

Like the odour, <fredthechancre>? You contribute more'n your fair share.

<United States Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) quoted a non-existent alternative "version" of the Declaration of Independence during an appearance on Tuesday's edition of The Charlie Kirk Show.

"So Lauren, we're seeing the gun grabbers going into full gear. Let's just play a couple pieces of tape here. Um, let's go to, I haven't even heard this one yet, Joe Scarborough. Uh, let's go to Cut 52 and you could respond to Morning Joe. Mika and Joe. Play Cut 52," Kirk instructed his producers, who rolled footage of the March 29th episode of Morning Joe.

"They talk about a freedom that they've made up in their own twisted heads because they've been, they've been whipped into a paranoid frenzy by the NRA for 25 years. You know, now they're claiming the Second Amendment protects things it just doesn't protect," MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough said.

Guest journalist Anand Giridharadas responded, "And their position – let's be clear – the Republican party today is waging a war on cops, right? Those cops that you saw in that incredible body cam footage, those cops would probably love to be running in on a knife, a knife incident."

Kirk and Boebert disagreed.

"Lauren, did we just invent this out of thin air because of a quote, 'paranoid frenzy?' Your response," Kirk continued.

"Right. This made-up freedom. Uh, I don't think that defending, uh, one's life is a made-up freedom. Um, it, it's right there, um, in the preamble, we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, um, or personal property, whichever rendition or whatever version you want to, uh, go by," Boebert declared. "Um, but also this is an assault on cops are, are you kidding me?"

The preamble to the Declaration of Independence never mentions "personal property" as among its "certain inalienable rights":

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Twitter users subsequently noted that English philosopher John Locke mentioned "life, liberty, and property" in his 1689 Second Treatise on Government, which Thomas Jefferson used as a model for the Declaration of Independence. But they were hesitant to give Boebert the benefit of the doubt.

Shrouded Sciuridae: "Though I'm sure she's never heard of him, 'life, liberty, and property' was John Locke. Jefferson echoed Locke in a lot of the Declaration, but he made a conscious change towards 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"

PW: "She might be referring to the John Locke treatise on natural rights that says men are endowed with the right to life, liberty and property. I know it's hard to believe, but maybe?"

Others simply roasted the right-wing lawmaker's glaring gaffe.

Bizarro Trump: "Free legal tip of the day. The preamble of any document has NO legal significance. It is an aspirational statement of intention for what follows. (the legal part) Hence the term 'preamble.'"

Teasing Armitage: "My 4th-grade teacher made us memorize the Preamble to the Constitution, and to this day, 50 years later, I still have it memorized. There is nothing in there about personal property."

Heironymous McGillicuddy: "Add the Constitution to the list of things not covered in Bobo's GED studies."

i publius: "This is right out of the Kellyann Conway 'alternative facts' playbook."

Francesco Virzì: "Version? Is it like a remix or something?"

Toby: "'The whatever version you want to go by' is so incredibly Republican when it comes to the Bible and Constitution."

Flat Circle: "That's not how it works, Republicans.">

The greatest victim of 'em all whinges to <mommy cg>.

As the cliche goes - you can dish it out, but you can't take it.>

<The recent and not altogether surprising revelation that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has for years accepted luxury travel accommodations paid for by a prominent Republican donor — Thomas and his wife, Ginni, a right-wing activist and pro-Trump zealot, apparently do not spend their entire vacation in an RV — has once again prompted calls for reform of America's highest court. Thomas's evident disdain for ethical standards, which includes his blithe attitude toward his wife's activism, has contributed to the Supreme Court's steadily declining approval ratings. To critics, this is simply another example of the court's commitment to a partisan agenda rather than the dispassionate interpretation of the law.

Given that Justice Thomas can act with impunity — impeachment, the only constitutional method for removing a Supreme Court justice, has become an empty threat — his behavior is likely to renew the notion of imposing term limits for the justices. The benefits are obvious. Not only would term limits ensure a periodic shift in the Court's makeup and likely its philosophical orientation, they would also remove the incentive to nominate only men or women young enough to serve for almost half a century. Thomas was 43 when he joined the court in 1991. Amy Coney Barrett was 48 when nominated by Trump in 2020. John Roberts became chief justice in 2005 at age 50.

The problem with enacting term limits, however, is the widespread belief that a constitutional amendment would be required. Article III of the Constitution mandates that judges "serve during good behaviour." That ambiguous phrase, according to most scholars and just about every judge, is the equivalent of "for life," because the delegates to the Constitutional Convention supposedly understood those terms to be interchangeable.

How to fix the Supreme Court: Congress has the power, and simply isn't using it

Robert Peck, for example, the founder and president of the Center for Constitutional Litigation, has said, "Everyone agrees that [term limits] would be unconstitutional. That limits the tenure of a Supreme Court judge that is set by the Constitution for good behavior, which has always been interpreted as lifetime tenure." Charles Cooke, writing in the National Review, insists that "the term 'good behavior' says what it means and means what it says. The judge may serve so long as he or she does nothing impeachable." For evidence, Cooke cites Alexander Hamilton, who wrote in Federalist 78, "The standard of good behavior for the continuance in office of the judicial magistracy, is certainly one of the most valuable of the modern improvements in the practice of government."

In fact, not every scholar believes term limits would be unconstitutional. Nowhere is this more evident than in the report of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, in which "Members of the Commission [were] divided about whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to create the equivalent of term limits by statute." The commission's three tentative proposals, however, as well as others that propose a legislative solution, provide no hard evidence for their point of view, but rather rely on semantic interpretations of Article III that attempt to find holes in the wording.

Those who postulate equivalency — that is, a lifetime appointment, absent impeachment — are unmoved. They insist that there is nothing in the Constitutional Convention's debates about the judiciary to indicate otherwise.

In this, they are correct.

But they are looking in the wrong place.

There is indeed evidence that the men who drafted the Constitution saw a distinct difference in the two phrases, which makes congressional imposition of term limits not only constitutional, but likely advisable. For example, during a debate on the term of the executive, George Mason, one of the most influential delegates, warned that he "considered an Executive during good behavior as a softer name only for an Executive for life. And that the next would be an easy step to hereditary Monarchy." In another debate about the term of the executive, delegate Rufus King wrote that James Madison "proposed good behaviour, or Seven years with exclusion forever afterward." Madison could in no way have meant "life" as the alternative to a hard limit of seven years.....>

<....Then there is Alexander Hamilton. In his six-hour speech to the convention on June 18, 1787, he reportedly said, "Let one branch of the Legislature hold their places for life or at least during good-behaviour. Let the Executive also be for life" — a clear indication that he saw those terms differently.

What position Hamilton later took in Federalist 78 is neither clear nor relevant. The Federalist essays are not even-handed discussions of constitutional issues, but advocacy pieces with a very definite slant and a distinctly weighted point of view, one that in literary studies could be termed an "unreliable narrator."

When Hamilton solicited Madison and John Jay to help him draft the essays, it was because the opponents of the new Constitution in New York were among the most powerful figures in the state and were determined to prevent its ratification. One of them, likely Robert Yates, writing as "Brutus" — meaning not the assassin of Julius Caesar but the 6th century B.C. Roman consul who became one of the founders of the Roman republic — had begun a series of insightful, highly persuasive essays that Hamilton recognized as a threat that must be blunted.

As the National Constitution Center observes, "Brutus's essays were so incisive that they helped spur Alexander Hamilton to organize (and co-author) The Federalist Papers in response." Their aim, therefore, was not truth, but persuasion, and Hamilton's dissertation in Federalist 78 was firmly in the second category.

It stretches credibility to believe that delegates to the Constitutional Convention would have been willing to create one branch of government — the one they distrusted the most — that consisted of unelected, lifetime members with no checks on their authority or power.

In addition to Hamilton, Mason and Madison's pronouncements, there is also indirect evidence. For four long, hot months in Philadelphia, where, for secrecy, the windows were bolted shut, guards were posted at the door, and the temperature reached 90 degrees, sweltering delegates who did not know and often did not like one another wrangled to find a means of government that would provide some centralized authority without granting any branch sufficient power to wield despotic power over either the other branches or the states. It stretches credibility to believe that in the midst of this turmoil, the delegates would have been willing to create one branch of government — the one they distrusted the most, on the evidence — that consisted of unelected, lifetime members with no checks on their authority or power, short of impeachment, which was made intentionally impracticable.

What seems far more likely is that, to the delegates, "good behavior" actually meant "as long as the justices are not corrupt or get mixed up in politics." There were long discussions on whether judges could be removed from office by means other than impeachment, such as through an ordinary court proceeding or action by either the executive or the legislature. In the end, the delegates decided that the judiciary would lose its independence if good behavior were so weak a standard that Congress could ignore it. A motion made by Delaware's John Dickinson that "after the words 'good behavior' the words 'provided that they may be removed by the Executive on the application (by) the Senate and House of Representatives,'" received only one "aye" vote.

So while delegates clearly wished to grant federal judges protection from political vendettas, it is also clear they in no way meant that Congress and the president should give up all checks on the judicial branch. Term limits could and should be one of those checks.>

We must be rid of that troublesome justice and his worthless consort.

<....Please note the passive aggressive tone, another hallmark of the <Fred>. Why is he even interjecting himself into that conversation?!>

<While there was speculation that getting arrested and indicted would help Donald Trump politically, new polling says that his approval has dropped considerably recently.

Donald Trump: More Drama? Yes

In recent weeks, especially as it was made clear that former President Donald Trump would probably be indicted in New York in a case related to the Stormy Daniels hush money payments, new conventional wisdom has emerged that getting indicted would help Trump politically. This has been argued by both supporters and opponents of the former president.

More than a week after Trump’s arrest, it appears that particular narrative is crashing into reality.

According to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released this week, more than half of Americans (53 percent) “believe that Trump intentionally did something illegal in this case,” about the New York case specifically. The number of those who believe Trump “did nothing wrong” is just 20 percent.

Furthermore, the report found that “independents and people who were undecided on this issue last week look to be moving away from the former president by small margins.”

Half of Americans, meanwhile, say that the ex-president “should have been charged with a crime in this case,” an increase of five percentage points from prior to the announcement of the charges.

And of a case widely described as the weakest of the many criminal probes faced by Trump, half of Americans surveyed “view the charges as serious.”

When asked if the charges are “serious,” 87 percent of Democrats say yes, compared to 29 percent of Republicans. With Donald Trump about to enter a competitive presidential primary, 29 percent of Republicans feel that way could be significant.

Looking at the Case

A week ago, Trump was charged in a 34-count indictment by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, alleging that he falsified corporate records in furtherance of paying hush money to adult film performer Stormy Daniels. Donald Trump, who became the first former president of the United States to be indicted for a crime, pled not guilty to all of the charges and is not due back in court until December.

"From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant's electoral prospects,” the indictment said. “In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York.”

Trump Heads Back to NYC

However, Trump is due back in New York this week for a deposition related to the New York Attorney General’s civil lawsuit against him. And Trump is also scheduled to soon be part of another legal proceeding in New York: A trial resulting from the civil lawsuit from E. Jean Carroll, the writer who came forward a few years ago with a claim that Trump had raped her in 1996. Trump has denied this claim.

This week, a judge asked for clarity on whether Trump plans to attend that trial in person. On Wednesday, Trump’s attorneys asked to delay the start of the Carroll trial for one month to allow for a “cooling off” period after the Manhattan DA’s indictment.

“To be sure, President Trump is a persistent subject of media coverage. But the present situation is unique because, as stated above, the recent coverage pertains to alleged sexual misconduct, the same issue at the heart of this litigation,” Trump attorney Joe Tacopina wrote in a letter to the judge in the Carroll case, as obtained by CNN.

A lot of things about Trump’s political career are unprecedented. Still, we can certainly add “candidate’s attorney moves to delay candidate’s rape trial, on account of the same candidate’s 34-count criminal indictment, while candidate also faces three other high-level criminal probes at the same time” to that list.>