Trump’s Toxic Legacy on Display Outside Manhattan Criminal Courthouse
Donald Trump has been a one-man crime wave for decades. As a businessman, he has engaged in countless acts of fraud, wage theft and tax evasion. He is a serial sexual harasser and rapist. He presided over the most corrupt presidency of the modern era. When he lost the 2020 election, he incited thousands of supporters to ransack the U.S. Capitol and try to assassinate his Vice President in a desperate attempt to keep the Electoral College vote from being certified.
On Tuesday, Trump was arraigned at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse for paying $130,000 in hush money to a former mistress in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign and then falsifying related business documents. Supporters and detractors of Trump rallied outside the courthouse. The intense divisions of the Trump era were on full display. So was the toxic brew of grievances and conspiracy theories embraced by the former president’s most rabid followers, as captured in this disturbing video by The Indypendent’s Sue Brisk.
We also covered Arraignment Day on our weekly news show on WBAI-99.5 FM. Our reporters gathered comments from average New Yorkers and diehard MAGA protesters and then joined us on the show. We also heard from Indy criminal justice correspondent Ted Hamm, who interviewed then-candidate for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in 2020 and has continued to closely follow his career. Indy Editor-in-Chief John Tarleton looked at Trump’s political and media strategy and took calls from listeners including one who argued that Trump would be the “peace candidate” in 2024.
New Yorkers Comment on Trump’s Arraignment + Analysis by John Tarleton
Ted Hamm Talks About Alvin Bragg’s Career and His Case Against Trump
Ted Hamm’s 2020 Interview with Alvin Bragg
From the Archive
The first wave of opposition to Trump was led by women who turned out in the millions in hundreds of cities and towns for the Women’s March on Jan. 21, 2017 — the day after his inauguration. We published a special Women’s March issue that we distributed in both New York and Washington. It featured the radical demands and perspectives of the march’s organizers. The courts may or may not deliver some modicum of justice to Trump, but the struggle to defeat the MAGA movement he unleashed will always be a political one.
Beyond Trump
Donald Trump flew back to his Mar-a-Lago mansion following his arraignment. Meanwhile, thousands of incarcerated people on Rikers Island who have not had a trial cannot leave that hellhole of a jail for lack of money to make bail. On yesterday’s radio show, Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, a democratic socialist from Brooklyn, updated us on state budget negotiations in Albany between Gov. Kathy Hochul, who wants to roll back the 2019 bail-reform law and state legislators who do not.
Updates from NY Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest on State Budget Negotiations
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