Donald Trump has fussed about many things during his criminal trial in Manhattan: the judge, prosecutors, their relatives, witnesses, jurors and of course the media, for reporting on the sparse crowds outside.
Yet Trump of all people knows that his fellow New Yorkers are proudly blasé about celebrity goings-on. It shouldn’t be surprising that not much of a crowd forms at the courthouse where the Don has been in the dock. After all, if you’ve seen one trial of a mob boss in Gotham, you’ve seen ‘em all.
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
And Trump’s trial — where he’s charged with fraudulently covering up pre-election hush money payments to Stormy Daniels in 2016, to keep voters in the dark about their alleged tryst — resembles nothing so much as a prosecution of yet another organized crime figure, even if it is, in fact, unprecedented: The first criminal case against a former U.S. president in history.
Lest anyone think the quick-to-complain Trump might grouse about being likened to gangsters, he draws the parallel himself, repeatedly.
“I’ve been indicted more than Alphonse Capone,” Trump boasted at a conservative conference in February. (Fact check: False, but he’s close.) He regularly, and admiringly, compares himself to ol’ “Scarface” at MAGA rallies. “He was seriously tough, right?” tough-guy Trump said to Iowa rally-goers in October. Last year on social media, he called Capone “the late great gangster.” Great?
The shtick might be funny if what underlies it weren’t so serious. As we head into the third week of the People of New York State vs. Donald J. Trump in that dingy courthouse so far removed from the Don’s usual gilt opulence, it’s downright disturbing to contemplate the similarities between his trial and that of a mob boss.
How can it be that this man is tied or ahead of President Biden in the polls? I remain confident Trump will pay a political price in time, as the sordidness of all this sinks in.
Perhaps the most distressing of the mob comparisons is this: The safety of jurors is a real concern. Their identities are secret to protect against intimidation or harm, and one juror was dismissed after confessing her fear. Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance posted on X that she’s seen such trepidation for jurors only “in a case involving violent organized crime.”
And it’s not the first time for Trump. The jurors who in January found that he defamed writer E. Jean Carroll after she successfully sued him for sexual assault, also had their identities withheld. After that civil trial, federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan warned them, “My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury.” Chilling.
Former prosecutor and FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann noted on MSNBC that he’d last heard a judge similarly caution some jurors decades ago,