“Trump Prepares Defense as Criminal Charges Loom in Stormy Daniels Case”

WASHINGTON.- There is no better defense than a good offense. That maxim has guided a good part of the life of Donald Trump and now it seems to guide each of his movements since it was learned that he will be formally accused of having committed a crime for payment to the porn actress, Stormy Danielsto prevent him from disclosing in the middle of the 2016 presidential campaign an old affair Between both.

Trump traveled Monday from Palm Beach, Florida, to New York, where tomorrow he will appear before a court in Manhattanand will become the first president to be charged with a crime, a new milestone in his political career and in the history of the United States, to which Trump and his campaign are trying extract all possible political returns in search of money and votes.

Before traveling to New York to turn himself in to police and appear in court, Trump played golf and dined Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago resort, finalized details of his arrest with his lawyers and posted several furtive messages on Saturday. Sunday on his social network, Truth Social, including a video in which he says that the United States has become “a third world country.” To your delight, the takeoff of your now iconic Boeing 757 –Trump Force One, as he has baptized it – from Florida to New York was broadcast live by television networks. “Looking at the plane…, from the plane,” his son, Eric Trump, tweeted, along with a photo of the live Fox News broadcast on one of the aircraft’s televisions.

Trump will be less than 24 hours in Manhattan. He will sleep in Trump Tower, and on Tuesday, guarded by the Secret Service and the New York Police under a security operation never seen before, he will turn himself in to the authorities. The surroundings of Trump Tower, located on the emblematic Fifth Avenue, were fenced off, and preparations for Trump’s transfer to court were finalized. New York Mayor Eric Adams held a press conference to discuss the operation. “New York City is always ready. We know that it is a city where the police and other security agencies have to be prepared at any time for anything that can happen in the city,” Adams said, leaving a message to the protesters who were beginning to appear in the streets, for and against the tycoon: “Our message is simple: control yourselves. New York is our home, it is not a playground for your fury of place,” he noted.

Trump will get preferential treatment: you are not expected to be handcuffed, nor are you expected to remain locked in a cell before being taken before the judge, Juan Merchan, for the reading of the charges.

“It is hard to believe that I will be arrested tomorrow as a result of the most shameful witch hunt in our nation’s history”, is the first sentence of an email sent this Monday morning by the Trump campaign to its supporters. “Our country has fallen. But I’m not going to give up on America. We can and will save our nation in 2024,” the message continues, before asking a contribution between $24 and $250 for the campaign. The courier signs it Donald J. Trump.

Trump’s campaign said it raised $4 million in the first 24 hours since it was learned that a grand jury in Manhattan had voted in favor of charging him with a crime, and more than seven million in the first three days, a figure that shows the revenue that Trump has begun to reap from the judicial offensive against him. . The campaign said the “incredible surge of contributions” is clear evidence that the American people view the prosecution of Trump “as a shameful weaponization of our justice system by a US-funded prosecutor.” [George] Soros”. Fundraising messages, whether through emails or social media posts, arrive daily.

“I have never had as much support and love as I do now against the Radical Left Insurrectionists, Extortionists, Corrupt Politicians and Thugs who are destroying our Country. Thank you WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday afternoon.

The Manhattan Prosecutor’s Office, led by Alvin Bragg, will present this Tuesday the list of charges –more than two dozen, as reported in the press – in a city court, before which Trump will appear, who will be in New York for less than a day. Trump will sleep this Monday in his old apartment in Trump Tower, will be delivered Tuesday morning –they will take the classic mugshot and fingerprints– and then he will appear before Merchan; By afternoon, Trump plans to be back at his Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he is then scheduled to hold a news conference.

Since he learned that he would become the first president of the United States to appear before Justice accused of having committed a crime, Trump, true to form, redoubled his offensive on all fronts. He has relentlessly accused Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg of being corrupt, politically motivated and working for George Soros – a falsehood destined to feed conspiracy theories, of which Soros is a favorite target – and lead a “witch hunt” with the sole purpose of outlawing him and wanting to get him out of the fight for the White House. Even if convicted, Trump can still run for president. Behind this incessant offensive, money appears.

“We are now officially a third world country. No president in the history of our country has been subjected to these vicious and disgusting attacks.”Trump said in a video posted Sunday night on Truth Social, his social network. “But you only attack me because I fight for you. It’s very simple. They can’t buy me and they can’t control me and it scares them beyond belief. […] Our presidential campaign has always been financed by patriots like you, your contribution will show the left that nothing can destroy the greatest political movement in history,” Trump continues in his message, in which he again says that the 2020 election in which he lost to Joe Biden was “fixed and it was a robbery.”

Another of the cases against Trump that is advancing in Justice deals, precisely, with the accusation of having encouraged the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 with its false denunciations of massive fraud in the 2020 presidential electionwidely seen as the worst attack on democracy in modern American history.