Tag: indictment
On Trump indictment day, Twitter is good again
Elon Musk’s Twitter may be a dying platform, a Jenga tower of baffling new features stacked atop the gaps where useful ones used to be, but there are still days when it is simply the best place to munch popcorn and enjoy jokes about the news in real time. Thursday March 30 was one of those days.
News broke in the early evening, New York time, that a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict former president Donald Trump on charges relating to alleged hush money paid to porn performer Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to cover up a brief sexual relationship. It’s one of four criminal investigations currently looking into the former president’s activities — alongside two from the DoJ regarding the Jan. 6 insurrection and mishandling of classified documents, and one relating to election interference in Fulton County, Georgia — but it’s the first to result in actual charges against Trump himself.
Watchers in both Trump’s camp and the media more broadly had been expecting the indictment as early as last Tuesday, so the political wits and meme dealers of Twitter had some time to prep their gags. But as always, the news was met by a cascade of classic memes, inside jokes, and well-seasoned schadenfreude.
Some were generous enough to reference Trump’s career highs.
Won’t somebody please think of the late night shows?
Speaking of rich people, the verdict in Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski-accident civil suit came down within the hour of the Trump announcement.
Early reports about the substance of Trump’s actual indictment hinted at a whopping 34 counts of falsifying documents.
And Trump’s own response to the news, of course, added fuel to the fire as only he can.
Pelting digital tomatoes at Trump on his perp walk is always fun, but it should always be in the context of the untold damage he’s done to real people in his decades of public life as a rich, vainglorious, racist shithead. The final word — literally — should go to one of those people.
Earnings Results: Right-wing social platforms rally after reports of Trump indictment, quarterly results
The Conversation: Trump indictment won’t keep him from presidential race, but will make his reelection bid much harder
Donald Trump is melting down on Truth Social over his indictment
The 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has officially been “INDICATED.”
Well, at least that’s what he said in a rant on his social media platform, Truth Social.
What Trump really means is that he’s been “indicted.”
On Thursday, March 30, 2023 a New York grand jury voted to indict the former president. The charges have not been unsealed at this time. Trump has been under investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office for his alleged involvement in a “hush money payment scheme” involving adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaigns.
Trump has been ranting about a potential indictment on Truth Social for weeks after rumors spread regarding an investigation into the alleged scheme and subsequent cover-up. So, when the news of the indictment came through, it was only a matter of time before the former president delivered with some more posts.
“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” Trump opened with his first Truth Social post of the evening, in an attached screenshot of his usual press release statements.
Trump goes on to mention the opening of his first presidential campaign when he “came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower.” He attacks Manhattan DA Bragg and predicts that the “Witch-Hunt” will backfire on Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
He then followed up the press release with a more classic Donald Trump-esque social media post where he misspells the word “indicted.”
Credit: Mashable Screenshot
“These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America…” Trump posted. “THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE.”
“SO SAD!” he continued.
The news of his indictment comes ones day after Trump predicted in a Truth Social post that he would not be indicted.
“I HAVE GAINED SUCH RESPECT FOR THIS GRAND JURY, & PERHAPS EVEN THE GRAND JURY SYSTEM AS A WHOLE,” he posted on March 29. “THE EVIDENCE IS SO OVERWHELMING IN MY FAVOR, & SO RIDICULOUSLY BAD FOR THE HIGHLY PARTISAN & HATEFUL DISTRICT ATTORNEY, THAT THE GRAND JURY IS SAYING, HOLD ON, WE ARE NOT A RUBBER STAMP, WHICH MOST GRAND JURIES ARE BRANDED AS BEING, WE ARE NOT GOING TO VOTE AGAINST A PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE OR AGAINST LARGE NUMBERS OF LEGAL SCHOLARS ALL SAYING THERE IS NO CASE HERE. DROP THIS SICK WITCH HUNT, NOW!”
With his indictment, Donald Trump makes history as the first former president to face criminal charges.
Read Donald Trump’s press release response in full
This is the statement Trump issued after his indictment was announced:
This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history. From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats the enemy of the hard-working men and women c this Country have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement. You remember it just like I do: Russia, Russia, Russia; the Mueller Hoax;
Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; Impeachment Hoax 1; Impeachment Hoax 2; the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid; and now this.“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ’Get Trump; but now they’ve done the unthinkable indicting a completely innocent person in an act blatant Election Interference. “Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done. The Democrats have cheated countless times over the decades, including spying on my campaign, but weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent, who just so happens to be a President of the United States and by far the leading Republican candidate for President, has never happened before. Ever.
“Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was hand-picked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace. Rather than stopping the unprecedented crime wave taking over New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work, ignoring the murders and burglaries and assaults he should be focused on. This is how Bragg spends his time!
I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden. The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party united and strong will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump’s Indictment Marks a Historic Reckoning
Donald Trump takes to Truth Social for all-caps rant ahead of potential indictment
Before we get too far down the rabbit-hole, here’s the TL;DR: Former President Donald Trump believes he’s soon going to be arrested, and he’s freaking out about it online.
Now, not too long ago, there was a time when former President Donald Trump’s latest Twitter freakout was pretty much the news of the day. Of course, the Big Man of the Republican Party has since ditched Twitter — even after Elon Musk unbanned him and practically begged him to come back — so the latest diatribe was published on Truth Social, Trump’s own site.
Just for clarity’s sake: It’s not totally clear if, or when, Trump will be indicted and, in turn, arrested. The former president has claimed, time and again, that he’s going to be arrested on Tuesday, without providing evidence as to why he believes that. After first making the claim on Saturday, the former president basically called for mass protest in a manner shockingly similar to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
“IT’S TIME!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. THEY’RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA!PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”
Since then, it’s basically been one extended rant.
Now, you’d be excused if you lost track of why, exactly, Trump might be arrested. After all, there have been countless investigations, cases, and scandals. The issue at hand is a New York grand jury’s investigation into alleged hush money payments from Trump to cover up sexual encounters. This is the whole Stormy Daniels scandal coming home to roost.
So, believing he’s going to be indicted and arrested, Trump is returning to his usual playbook. You can see the whole thing over at his Truth Social page, but the beats are relatively predictable. The country lived it for, oh, I don’t know, five or six years?
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He’s attacking his perceived enemies. He’s claiming Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is being paid by “Radical Left Enemy of ‘TRUMP,’ George Soros.”
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Trump is both claiming he did nothing wrong and, anyway, even if he did, they can’t do anything about it. “They are MANY years beyond the Statute of Limitations which, in this instance, is TWO YEARS. More importantly, THERE WAS NO CRIME!!!” he wrote on Monday.
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He’s ditching his previous pal and lawyer Michael Cohen, calling him a “A CONVICTED LIAR, FELON AND JAILBIRD.” Cohen went to prison for paying off Daniels and model Karen McDougal.
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He’s pleading with NYPD to not arrest him, saying (in all caps, of course), “CAN YOU IMAGINE THE GREAT NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT … HAVING TO DEFEND & PROTECT THE “DEFUNDERS” & “COP HATERS” OF THE RADICAL LEFT THAT WANT TO PUT THEIR GREATEST CHAMPION & FRIEND IN PRISON FOR A CRIME THAT DOESN’T EXIST[?]”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But you catch the drift. The past few days Trump has been treating Truth Social like he treated Twitter for years. He’s throwing attacks and ideas and justifications at the wall like so many strands of spaghetti, hoping one or two stick. Of course, Truth Social is nothing more than an echo chamber of sycophants so his diehard supporters eat it all up. Slightly different than Twitter, when people built their whole online personas around indignantly responding to Trump’s posts.
It’s nearly impossible to summarize all of Trump’s complaining and ranting over the past few days. But it all pretty much touches on those beats listed above. He’s repeatedly attacking Bragg; he’s bringing up Soros; and he’s saying he did nothing wrong. Hilariously, he’s posting screenshots of tweets on his own competing site.
While seeing Trump actually get indicted over this is would be strange — the man has wriggled out of worse — the rest feels very familiar. Trump is trouble and he’s posting relentlessly. Only this time he’s screaming into a void of his own creation.
‘We applaud Rod Stewart’s kindness, but it’s a damning indictment of NHS state’
Judge dismisses indictment against Huawei exec Meng Wanzhou
More than four years after her arrest, the drawn-out legal saga of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou came to a formal end this week. On Friday, US District Judge Ann Donnelly dismissed an indictment against Meng, according to Reuters. On behalf of the US, Canadian authorities arrested Meng in 2018 for allegedly violating American sanctions against Iran. Meng, who is also the daughter of Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei, spent the next three years fighting attempts to extradite her to the US, where she faced up to 30 years in prison for bank and wire fraud charges. Donnelly dismissed the indictment “with prejudice,” meaning the Justice Department can’t bring the same charges against Meng again.
Before entering into an agreement with US prosecutors last year, Meng spent three years under house arrest. The detainment strained relationships between the United States and China and led to an international incident. China apprehended two Canadians, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, within days of Meng’s arrest. They were later released after Meng entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department. As part of the agreement, she acknowledged having made false statements about Huawei’s business in Iran. Meng flew home to China the day Donnelly approved the pact.
Huawei and its subsidiaries are still facing charges in the US. Most notably, the Justice Department recently announced charges against two Chinese spies who had allegedly tried to interfere in a criminal investigation into the company. Earlier this week, the FCC also banned telecom and video surveillance equipment from Huawei, among a handful of other Chinese companies. Meng currently serves as the company’s rotating chairperson and deputy chairwoman, as well as CFO.