TRUMP TO SURRENDER IN LOWER MANHATTAN COURT TODAY

By Leonard Leonhardt

New York Times Newsletter

Donald Trump is expected to turn himself in to Manhattan authorities today.

Once they arrive at the courthouse in Lower Manhattan, Trump will appear before a judge, who will read him the indictment, which will include a full accounting of all the charges he’s facing. (We currently don’t know the exact contents of the indictment).

Then he’s expected to fly back to Florida for his Tuesday evening speech.

Some legal experts view the Manhattan case skeptically.

The closest analogy to it may be the 2012 trial of John Edwards, the former Democratic presidential candidate, who was accused of violating campaign-finance law by hiding payments to cover up an extramarital affair.

Jurors acquitted Edwards of one charge and deadlocked on the others, a reminder that many people are uncomfortable criminalizing scandals that revolve around consensual sex.

The political impact of sex scandals is similarly questionable.

Trump has a long, public history of cheating on his wives, as any reader of New York’s tabloid newspapers knows. It did not keep him from being elected president any more than Bill Clinton’s reputation for infidelity kept him from winning in 1992.

Clinton also lied about an affair while he was president – under oath, no less – but many Americans nonetheless believed he should remain on the job.

The case against Trump could turn out differently, of course: He could be convicted. Even if he is, though, the charges do not seem likely to change many voters’ views of Trump.

Two of the other three investigations into Trump are somewhat different. They are about democracy, not sex, and there is already reason to believe that they are more politically threatening to him.

One of the two is a federal investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The second involves those same efforts, but only in Georgia, where local prosecutors are looking into his failed attempt to overturn the result. Prosecutors have not yet announced whether they will bring charges in either case.

Both stem from Trump’s rejection of basic democratic principles that other leaders of both parties have long accepted – that the loser of an election should concede; that politicians should not tell brazen and repeated lies; that violence is an unacceptable political tactic.

Over the past few years, a small – but crucial – slice of voters who are otherwise sympathetic to the Republican Party have indicated that they are uncomfortable with Trump’s attacks on democracy.

The third case – involving the handling of classified documents – is probably less threatening to Trump, at least from a political standpoint. Many politicians, apparently including Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence, have broken the rules for handling classified material. It’s partly a reflection of what many experts consider the over-classification of documents, including many that contain mundane information.

Trump’s case does seem more extreme, however. He not only took hundreds of classified documents from the White House but also repeatedly resisted giving many of them back. Charges could include obstruction of justice for defying a subpoena. Jack Smith, the special counsel is overseeing this inquiry, and the timing of a resolution remains unknown.