Last week, Donald J. Trump teamed up with two rap artists who were accused of conspiring to commit murder. He promised to commute the sentence of a notorious Internet drug dealer. And he appeared backstage with another rap artist who has pleaded guilty to assault for hitting a female fan.
As Mr. Trump awaits the conclusion of his trial in Manhattan – closing arguments are scheduled for Tuesday and a verdict could come as early as this week – he took advantage of a week-long court recess to meet with defendants and convicted criminals charged in the same system. to ally with whom he wages war.
The appearances fit well into Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign, in which he said he would likely pardon those charged in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and his voice accompanied a recording of the national anthem a choir lent Jan. 6 inmates.
There was a time when so much confirmed and alleged crime would be too much for supporters of a presidential candidate, an office with the sworn duty of upholding the Constitution, to tolerate. This could be particularly true in the case of a candidate who has been indicted four times and is accused of violating the law.
But with less than six months until Election Day, Mr. Trump, who has long promoted “law and order” messages, tends to have an outlaw image and surrounds himself with accused criminals and convicts.
“I don’t think people appreciate the extent to which Trump has embraced the image of lawlessness in this campaign,” said Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist who worked for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign and was deeply critical of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Miller described Mr. Trump’s recent guest appearances as “a vetting decision that would have been unthinkable in previous campaigns.”
Aides to Mr. Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment about what message he wanted to send with these appearances.
Mr. Trump’s rally in the Bronx last week ended with performances by two rappers, Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, whose real names are Michael Williams and Tegan Chambers. Both were charged in a conspiracy that resulted in 12 shootings, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Mr. Williams also faces two counts of attempted murder. Both men pleaded not guilty and are free on bail.
Mr. Trump introduced the two men from the rally stage to the crowd for brief comments. Mr. Chambers kept his message short and succinct: “Make America great again.”
Two days later, speaking to an unfriendly crowd at the Libertarian Party’s national convention in Washington, Mr. Trump vowed to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the black-market website Silk Road, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2015. At the same event, Mr. Trump took a photo with rapper Afroman, whose real name is Joseph Edgar Foreman, who pleaded guilty in 2015 to beating a woman who attended one of his concerts.
In the courtroom, Mr. Trump has surrounded himself with allies who have become defendants. The week that his former go-between, Michael D. Cohen, was scheduled to testify that Mr. Trump had agreed to a plan to pay off and cover up a porn star, Mr. Trump marched into Epshteyn court accompanied by his indicted top legal adviser, Boris, who has since arrived was present every day of the trial for his own prosecution in an election interference case in Arizona.
Mr. Trump’s entourage during Mr. Cohen’s testimony also included Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York police commissioner who served time in prison on fraud charges and whom Mr. Trump pardoned, and Chuck Zito, a former actor who spent years there Federal prison and was the leader of a Hells Angels group in New York.
Mr. Trump has insisted that any investigation against him is political and the work of opponents conspiring against him. He has lumped together various figures in the legal system — political candidates who have campaigned aggressively against him and prosecutors who have been hired to investigate him — while supporting his most controversial supporters.
This reflex of Mr. Trump’s – to ignore allegations when the accused is useful to him – is not new. But the scale has changed.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump added Elliott B. Broidy, a financier who had pleaded guilty to bribing New York officials seven years earlier, to his fundraising committee. It was a little-noticed move that might have drawn even more attention if Mr. Trump hadn’t broken one norm after another as the presumptive Republican nominee.
Shortly after the election, Mr. Trump and his campaign became embroiled in an investigation into whether his political operation had ties to Russians. Several advisers were implicated in this investigation, including his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn; his campaign manager Paul Manafort; his senior advisor, Roger J. Stone Jr.; and Mr. Cohen, his fixer and personal lawyer.
Mr. Trump, who weaponized that investigation, repeatedly attacked Mr. Cohen after he pleaded guilty to a series of crimes, including a campaign finance violation that he said came at Mr. Trump’s behest. But the president ultimately pardoned Mr. Flynn, Mr. Manafort and Mr. Stone, part of a wave of pardons and commutations in his final weeks in office.
Mr. Trump also pardoned people like Jonathan Braun, a Staten Island man with a history of violent threats who was being pursued by federal officials at the time for his work as a predatory lender. Mr. Braun used a connection to the family of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in asking for clemency.
Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, he commuted the sentence of Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Democratic governor of Illinois. It was a move that some Republicans opposed, but Mr. Trump was proud to welcome Mr. Blagojevich at a recent Republican National Committee fundraiser in Florida.
Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in office and thwart the transfer of power have led to multiple investigations into him and his allies.
Those charged in these investigations include Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani; his White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows; his current top legal advisor, Mr. Epshteyn; his legal counsel, Jenna Ellis; and a former Justice Department official, Jeffrey B. Clark.
Two other Trump advisers and allies, Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro, were convicted of contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas to cooperate with the House investigation into the former president’s efforts to stay in office .
Mr. Trump’s latest behavior comes amid arguments from his lawyers before the Supreme Court that he is immune from prosecution in the federal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. On social media, Mr. Trump has insisted that presidents should enjoy “absolute immunity.”
Despite arguing that he acted within his rights, Mr. Trump has commodified his criminal charges. He sells campaign merchandise featuring his mugshot from his indictment in Georgia and aggressively raises money with claims that he is being persecuted.
One of the campaign’s most recent fundraising efforts focused on Mr. Trump’s false claims about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the members-only club that serves as his residence, in August 2022. The search came after he turned himself in had defied a grand jury subpoena demanding the return of all classified documents still in his home.
But the former president has baselessly argued that the FBI tried to assassinate him, using standard language from a search warrant that was recently unsealed as part of a defense motion.
Prosecutors recently asked the judge overseeing the documents case to change the conditions of Mr. Trump’s release and ban him from making further comments that could endanger federal agents working on the case. In response, the Trump team accused them of “unfounded theatrics” and called for sanctions against them.
“Either he doesn’t know the truth, which is reckless, or he knows the truth and lied about it, which is despicable,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former United States attorney and FBI official, said of the standard operating procedures Mr. Trump uses misrepresented.
“He cares deeply about the exercise of power, but not in the service of a greater good,” Mr. Rosenberg said. “Rather, he wants power – including over the Justice Department – to benefit himself and his friends and harm others. He only sees this power as appropriate in his hands. This is a pathetic distortion of what the rule of law means – and should mean – in this country, and it is deeply dangerous.”
Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.
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2024-05-28 09:04:40
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