OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Judge Juan Merchan ruled late on Monday night that he will allow five pool photographers to snap for several minutes before the arraignment formally starts on Tuesday around 2:15 p.m. Eastern Time. However, the judge declared that no cameras will be allowed in the courtroom.
“That this indictment involves a matter of monumental significance cannot possibly be disputed. Never in the history of the United States has a sitting or past President been indicted on criminal charges,” Merchan said.
The judge said he “needed to balance other interests” and that no electronic devices will be allowed in either the main or overflow courtrooms.
Trump was indicted late last week by a Manhattan grand jury in a case involving his purported role in hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, allegedly to keep Daniels quiet about an affair the two of them had in 2006.
Over the weekend, the president of conservative legal watchdog organization Judicial Watch is predicting legal hot water for President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, following Trump’s indictment.
“All bets are off. You can expect grand jury indictments of leftist politicians like [President] Biden, [former House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer as surely as night follows day,” Tom Fitton told the New York Post on Friday.
“You can be sure that there are prosecutors across Florida and Texas right now who are looking for a state law hook into the Biden family,” he noted further. “And if they’re not, they’re not doing their jobs.”
The First TV’s Jesse Kelly took a similar position on Twitter Friday.
“Alvin Bragg is not the end. Alvin Bragg is just the beginning of where we’re going. If you understood that, you’d stop saying things like ‘This can’t happen in America.’ You’d be demanding a GOP AG respond in kind. And respond right now. Nothing else stops this,” he wrote.
Alvin Bragg is not the end. Alvin Bragg is just the beginning of where we’re going. If you understood that, you’d stop saying things like “This can’t happen in America.”
You’d be demanding a GOP AG respond in kind. And respond right now. Nothing else stops this.
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) March 31, 2023
Others have made similar predictions and statements.
“The Republicans will be furiously seeking revenge and may try to pin Biden with something,” left-wing social commentator Noam Chomsky, 94, a professor emeritus at MIT, predicted, though he said some charges like war crimes would not become partisan.
Joe Arpaio, a supporter of Trump and the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., who the former president pardoned in a criminal contempt case in 2017, said that he believes there is a double standard in the legal system against Republicans.
“The criminal justice system is not always fair, believe me, and this is an example,” Arpaio he told The Post.
“This sets a little precedent,” he added. “Now the word is out that you can go and indict an ex-president and a current president, and they opened another door. But now everybody’s going to flex their muscles and use this case. So now we’re gonna threaten all presidents or ex-presidents.”
“Republicans need to learn how to take off the gloves and put on the brass knuckles and break glass jaws — politically and legally, not physically,” Mike Davis, a former chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee and president of the Article III Project, said in remarks to The Post.
“If New York can turn a routine settlement of a business dispute seven years ago into a felony, I think our Republican AGs and DAs should get creative,” Davis, who briefly worked as a federal prosecutor before he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, added. “Two wrongs don’t make it right, but it makes it even.”
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former first daughter Ivanka Trump’s husband and an adviser during 45’s first term, has broken his silence regarding the indictment.
Kushner was speaking at a Future Investment Initiative Institute summit where he said, “as an American, it’s very troubling to me to see the leader of the opposition party be indicted … and I think that shows, obviously, the fear that the Democrats have of Trump, and the political strength that he has,” The Epoch Times reported.
“It’s been hard to watch the opponents of him politically continue to break every norm over the last years to try to get him,” he said. “I’ve been by him in a lot of these instances and it’s only made him stronger and his resolve to take on big challenges to fight for change, to fight for the American people has only gotten stronger.”
