by WorldTribune Staff, April 14, 2024
Tom Wolfe’s first and greatest novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities “is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City.”
Some might say that the sequel is about to unfold in real time as Donald Trump’s trial in the Stormy Daniels hush money case begins on Monday. But Wolfe’s novel was based on a few real characters including the Rev. Al Sharpton. The former president charges he’s being taken to court over “bullshit.”
It is the first time in U.S. history a president has been put on trial.
On Friday, Judge Juan Merchan tossed one of former Trump’s final remaining pathways to avoid trial, rejecting his bid to delay the proceedings over “prejudicial” pretrial media coverage.
Merchan ruled that Trump’s trial will go forward Monday with jury selection, rejecting defense arguments that the barrage of media coverage around the trial has prejudiced potential jurors.
Trump said in a statement: “Judge Juan Merchan, perhaps the most highly conflicted Judge in New York State history, only gave us a short period of time to read and study hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that D.A. Alvin Bragg illegally hid, disguised, and held back from us. Of course, and as the Judge knows, we need far more time than that. They could have started this Fake Biden Trial many years ago, not right in the middle of my campaign for President, and time would not be a problem. This is a blatant and unprecedented attack on Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent (who is leading in every poll!), done in close coordination with the White House, that cannot be allowed to go forward!”
The case hinges claims that Trump sought to ward off bad press ahead of the 2016 election by paying $130,000 in hush money to Daniels to cover up an alleged sexual encounter from nearly two decades earlier. The prosecution also claims there were payments to a second woman who alleged an affair and a doorman who pushed an unproven story that Trump had a child out of wedlock.
Prosecutors allege Trump concealed the payments through reimbursements to his attorney-turned-accuser, Michael D. Cohen.
Trump denies the affair with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and says the charges are part of a broad Democrat plot to thwart his presidential bid.
Joe Biden “can’t put two sentences together, he can’t do anything, so they weaponize government and they take me to court on bullshit,” Trump said in a recent social media post.
Trump’s lawyers point out that an earlier New York prosecutor passed on the case, only to charge the ex-president on the cusp of the 2024 election, and are relying on a known liar in Cohen. They also say Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will have difficulty making his case to the jury.
Bragg is charging the former president with a first-degree felony charge that requires an “intent to defraud,” meaning the act “includes an intent to commit another crime or to conceal it,” said David Schultz, a professor at Hamline University who is tracking Trump’s cases.
Judge Merchan told attorneys that potential jurors will be asked about their media-consumption habits and whether they follow fringe political groups like the Proud Boys or Antifa, but not their political party affiliation.
Honor their memory: The ‘shot heard round the world’
Meanwhile, New York police confiscated an unregistered gun belonging to Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll after she admitted to owning an unlicensed firearm during her testimony in her defamation lawsuit against the former president.
Carroll said on the second day of the civil trial that she kept an unlicensed “high standard revolver, [with] nine chambers” in her home at her bedside.
According to NBC News, the chief of police in Warwick, New York visited Carroll’s home on Feb. 15 to “discuss some open issues,” including her admission about the unregistered handgun.
Following the visit by law enforcement, reporting officer John Rader offered to secure the weapon at the police station for safekeeping.
Carroll and a member of her security team subsequently handed over the firearm to law enforcement the following day, with the understanding that it would be held by the police until Carroll obtained a pistol license in the state of New York.
Possessing a firearm without registration in New York is considered a felony, punishable by a maximum sentence of four years.
The incident regarding Carroll’s unlicensed firearm arose during the cross-examination of her testimony in January when Trump’s attorney questioned her about the gun. However, presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan intervened, signaling his disapproval of the line of questioning.
“Don’t even start,” the judge said when Trump’s attorney started to question Carroll about the firearm.
‘Bonfire of the vanities’ sequel: 1st U.S. president faces trial in NYC based ‘on bullshit’? added by Editor Two on
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