SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

In an his­toric event yes­ter­day, for­mer US pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ap­peared in a Man­hat­tan crim­i­nal court charged with 34 counts of fal­si­fy­ing busi­ness records.

Trump, 76, plead­ed not guilty to all charges.

He was the US’ 45th Pres­i­dent and is now the first-ever for­mer or sit­ting pres­i­dent to face crim­i­nal charges. He has al­so an­nounced his in­ten­tion to run for Pres­i­dent again in 2024. Af­ter his ar­raign­ment, Trump left New York on his pri­vate jet for Mar-a-La­go, Palm Beach, Flori­da, where he was ex­pect­ed to make a state­ment last night.

 The charges were brought by in­dict­ment by Man­hat­tan Dis­trict At­tor­ney, Alvin Bragg and Trump sur­ren­dered yes­ter­day for the ar­raign­ment.

CNN re­port­ed the for­mer pres­i­dent kept his voice “mea­sured” and walked slow­ly in­to the court­room. News cam­eras were not al­lowed in the court­room.

In a press con­fer­ence af­ter the hear­ing, Bragg told re­porters that his of­fice would not nor­malise “se­ri­ous crim­i­nal con­duct.”

 “We al­lege Don­ald Trump and his as­so­ciates re­peat­ed­ly and fraud­u­lent­ly fal­si­fied New York busi­ness records to con­ceal dam­ag­ing in­for­ma­tion and un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ty from Amer­i­can vot­ers. These are felony crimes in New York. No mat­ter who you are,” Bragg said.

Dr Indira Rampersad

‘This should serve as a sig­nal to T&T politi­cians’

Lo­cal­ly, polit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, weigh­ing in on Don­ald Trump be­ing charged, said the charges against the for­mer president should serve as a sig­nal to all politi­cians that their ac­tions can come back to haunt them.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Ram­per­sad said the move by Man­hat­tan DA Alvin Bragg does not au­gur well for politi­cians.

“There are ways and means of find­ing in­for­ma­tion, which can ul­ti­mate­ly serve as ev­i­dence. And the Caribbean in par­tic­u­lar has a high cor­rup­tion in­dex and in some re­spects, he’s now be­ing charged for cor­rup­tion,” Ram­per­sad said.

Asked if she be­lieves T&T is ready for such in-depth in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the busi­ness deal­ings of politi­cians, Ram­per­sad said the pub­lic has been call­ing for this for some time.

“I’m not sure the word is readi­ness, but it’s the ex­tent to which they (politi­cians) are will­ing to com­ply and to a large ex­tent, they are not. What they do, they of­ten shirk ques­tions from the me­dia, they of­ten shirk re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and they con­tin­ue as if noth­ing hap­pens.”

But she said there are lessons to be learnt from Trump’s in­dict­ment.

“You can get in­for­ma­tion if you dig deep enough and politi­cians should be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions,” Ram­per­sad said.

Prof Andy Knight

It ce­ments the norm ‘no one is above the law’

Mean­while, Pro­fes­sor of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions Andy Knight agreed. He said Trump’s ar­rest “ce­ments the norm” that no one is above the law.

“We tend to look at the US for these types of le­gal sig­nals. I think that politi­cians in T&T should be op­er­at­ing un­der this same le­gal prin­ci­ple that no one is above the law and that if they are in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, they will be held ac­count­able,” Knight said.

Dr Bishnu Ragoonath

This type of pros­e­cu­tion needs to be repli­cat­ed in T&T, the Caribbean

An­oth­er po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said he does not be­lieve T&T has the po­lit­i­cal willpow­er to go af­ter cor­rupt politi­cians as the US has done.

“The pol­i­tics in the US is very much dif­fer­ent from ours and there is al­ways that no­tion that be­cause of the way par­ties op­er­ate, that will al­ways be a chal­lenge for peo­ple sit­ting in the Gov­ern­ment to be brought be­fore the court, when peo­ple are in Op­po­si­tion even, there are chal­lenges bring­ing them be­fore the court,” Ra­goonath said.

How­ev­er, he said this type of pros­e­cu­tion needs to be repli­cat­ed in T&T and the wider Caribbean.

The state­ment

In the state­ment of facts pub­lished on the DA’s web­site, Bragg al­leges that Trump, along with oth­ers, in­clud­ing his for­mer at­tor­ney and fix­er Michael Co­hen, sought to un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty of the 2016 US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion by en­gag­ing in a “catch-and-kill scheme to sup­press neg­a­tive in­for­ma­tion.”

“From Au­gust 2015 to De­cem­ber 2017, the De­fen­dant or­ches­trat­ed a scheme with oth­ers to in­flu­ence the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion by iden­ti­fy­ing and pur­chas­ing neg­a­tive in­for­ma­tion about him to sup­press its pub­li­ca­tion and ben­e­fit the De­fen­dant’s elec­toral prospects. In or­der to ex­e­cute the un­law­ful scheme, the par­tic­i­pants vi­o­lat­ed elec­tion laws and made and caused false en­tries in the busi­ness records of var­i­ous en­ti­ties in New York. The par­tic­i­pants al­so took steps that mis­char­ac­terised, for tax pur­pos­es, the true na­ture of the pay­ments made in fur­ther­ance of the scheme,” the state­ment of facts reads.

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, Bragg said true and ac­cu­rate busi­ness records were im­por­tant, es­pe­cial­ly in Man­hat­tan, which he de­scribed as the fi­nan­cial cen­tre of the world.

“As this of­fice has done time and time again, we to­day up­hold our solemn re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that every­one stands equal be­fore the law. No amount of mon­ey and no amount of pow­er changes that en­dur­ing prin­ci­ple,” Bragg said.

The charges stem from a US $130,000 pay­out to adult film star, Stormy Daniel in 2015, ahead of the elec­tion.

Bragg’s case lays out how this pay­ment was car­ried out and en­tered in­to the busi­ness mag­nate’s books.

“Lawyer A made the $130,000 pay­ment through a shell cor­po­ra­tion he set up and fund­ed at a bank in Man­hat­tan. This pay­ment was il­le­gal, and Lawyer A has since plead­ed guilty to mak­ing an il­le­gal cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion and 2 served time in prison. Fur­ther, false en­tries were made in New York busi­ness records to ef­fec­tu­ate this pay­ment, sep­a­rate and apart from the New York busi­ness records used to con­ceal the pay­ment,” the in­dict­ment states.

The state­ment of fact al­so out­lines pay­ment to an­oth­er woman and a door­man from the Trump Cen­tre in New York.

The sec­ond woman al­so al­leged to have had a sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship with Trump while he was mar­ried. The door­man claimed to have in­for­ma­tion about a child fa­thered by Trump, born out of wed­lock. Both took their sto­ries to the Na­tion­al En­quir­er and were al­leged­ly paid by the pub­li­ca­tion for ex­clu­sive rights to their re­spec­tive sto­ries, which were both nev­er aired.

 In an in­ter­view with CNN yes­ter­day, one of Trump’s at­tor­neys, Jim Trusty said Bragg was not a rea­son­able pros­e­cu­tor.

“The is­sue is the cred­i­bil­i­ty in terms of de­ci­pher­ing some sort of in­tent, loop­ing some sort of fed­er­al felony in­to the case, and it’s just not go­ing to come to­geth­er, it was a po­lit­i­cal promise Alvin Bragg made and he’s run through,” Trusty said.

He said Bragg’s case was full of frail­ties and the de­fence team would be seek­ing to move up the De­cem­ber ad­journ­ment date to file their mo­tion to dis­miss the charges.

“I think most of us an­tic­i­pat­ed an in­dict­ment that would have the frail­ties this one has. The idea of try­ing to ex­pe­dite a mo­tion to dis­miss is not to­tal­ly for­eign, so we’ll see if we’re stuck with De­cem­ber… but I know that the at­tor­neys will get their heads to­geth­er and fig­ure out if there’s a way to try to push this ear­li­er. I think the De­cem­ber date is prob­a­bly a pret­ty typ­i­cal kind of au­to-gen­er­at­ed date when it comes to a new case com­ing in the door, but I like the idea of at least re­solv­ing some im­por­tant mo­tions to dis­miss ear­li­er rather than lat­er, but we’ll see,” Trusty said.