The Trump Indictment, And What It Means For US Politics

Pictured: Donald Trump Credit: VOA

On the 4th of April 2023, Donald Trump became the first President of the United States, incumbent or former, to be indicted on criminal charges. In Manhattan, New York City, the former President is facing charges that he paid ‘hush money’ to various people, including to women to stop them talking publicly about their former sexual relationships with him whilst he was still married to his former wife. This event, considered ground-breaking by some and part of the routine sleaze-cycle of American politics by others, has ramifications for the American political landscape and the justice system, the effects of which we are beginning to see but will stretch long into the future.

To summarise the charges against him, Trump is accused on 34 counts of “falsifying business records in the first degree”, which is in violation of New York State’s Penal Law §175.10. This is relating to payments made from the Trump Organization that are allegedly falsely labelled, including payments made to former sexual partners to buy their silence. This purportedly includes a payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, and $150,000 to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, so that they wouldn’t speak publicly about their respective relationships with Trump. This money was paid through Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to charges relating to these payments in 2018. The basis for these charges was that it was illegally large contribution Trump’s presidential campaign; is it now that we discover the truth behind the payments?

This is not the first time a politician has been indicted; there is a long list of American public officials who have been indicted for, and received, criminal charges. However, this is the first time that a Commander-in-Chief, past or present, has had to face a criminal courtroom. This has serious ramifications for America’s already highly polarised political system. Tensions are already running high, with protests against the arraignment (and counter-protests supporting it) taking place outside the courthouse. This reflects the wider divisions between the Democratic and Republican parties, and the increasingly important realisation that this isn’t an ordinary political feud; it has stakes for the American political system itself.

Many of the Republican Party’s core base seem to have their perception of the state’s organs – such as the judiciary – coloured by their political stripe. This isn’t isolated to the GOP, but it has more of an impact when it is, in their view, their martyr that is being unfairly persecuted. This correlates to a decline in trust in the legal system itself, with many Republicans questioning the trial’s motivations, and even its legitimacy and the legitimacy of the judicial system itself. Even moderate Republican Senator (who broke party lines and voted to convict Trump during his impeachment, becoming the first Senator ever to vote to convict a President of their own party) and former presidential challenger to Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, has said that the prosecutors are directing charges against Trump “in order to fit a political agenda” in an “overreach” of their powers.

These charges are not necessarily politically motivated; Trump has allegedly broken the law, and the court will decide if he has, and just because he is a political figure doesn’t mean that he is being prosecuted for political reasons. However, in many people’s minds this falls into the general pattern of an increasingly politicised judiciary, leading to disenfranchisement with and even scepticism of the judiciary and legal system in general. The origins of this concern are valid, and bipartisan – federal Supreme Court Justices are appointed by Presidents, thirteen states elect all judges, with an additional eight states electing certain judges, making America’s judiciary uniquely politicised. This creates an environment in which the judiciary is polarised between judges that are sympathetic to or are even overtly either Democrats or Republicans. Indeed, in Wisconsin there has just been an election for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court that essentially revolves around politics, with liberal candidate and eventual winner Janet Protasiewicz receiving donations from the state’s Democratic Party, and conservative candidate Dan Kelly being backed by Republicans. This creates an atmosphere in which the judiciary – in the UK overtly and necessarily apolitical – becomes directly and deliberately politicised along party lines. This atmosphere only feeds the tensions surrounding Trump’s indictment, meaning that a perfectly legitimate trial of a former President for alleged financial crimes becomes a political showground split along partisan lines.

Trump himself has branded this trial as “electoral interference”, tying it to the Republican Party’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged. This will fuel polarisation in the run up to the 2024 elections and further delegitimise the legal system in some people’s eyes, reducing trust in the law and the electoral system. 

This is not to say that the trial should not go ahead for the sake of politics – everyone is equally accountable to the law, and Trump should not be protected from it because of his identity – it is merely a reflection that Republican voters’ distrust of the system stems from the fact that it isn’t working in their interests at this time. However, their reaction has been magnified to more extreme levels by the wider polarisation of the political landscape, and subsequent politicisation of the judiciary, that is perhaps unique to the US.

Zooming out, this trial is a microcosm of American politics; it reveals an increasingly polarised political atmosphere and pulls at arguments of a politicised judiciary. This is the wider problem of which Americans should be wary – politicising the judiciary delegitimises it in the eyes of whoever politically opposes it, and means that perfectly legitimate, apolitical trials (like Trump’s) assume a political significance. Further, the polarisation of the system and the moral relativism that accompanies the Republican Party’s rightward shift endanger the very foundations of the system. If people lose trust in the state, as they did in 2020, they will look for radical alternatives.

To re-iterate, this trial shows that the law in America applies to everyone, even to “America's first reality-show president”, and it is thus vital that it proceeds. Although not everyone can afford to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars as hush money, this extraordinary episode reminds us that, at the end of the day, Donald Trump, and elected officials more widely, are, at the end of the day, ordinary people that are equally accountable to the law. Let’s see how it plays out.

By Callum Tilley