by Nomad
Donald Trump's comeuppance has definitely been a long time coming. As Jeff Wise, writing for New York Magazine points out:
His entire life, after all, is one long testament to the power of getting away with things, a master class in criminality without consequences, even before he added presidentiality and all its privileges to his arsenal of defenses.According to legal experts, today's indictment could be just the beginning of a series of court battles for Trump in the coming months. This case in particular deals with the payment of "hush money" to a porn star and his attempt to hide those expenses, but it may not be the strongest case against him. It's also important to note that an arrest doesn't necessarily mean a conviction.
As he himself once said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it.” But for all his advantages and all his enablers, including loyalists in the Justice Department and the federal judiciary, Trump now faces a level of legal risk unlike anything in his notoriously checkered past — and well beyond anything faced by any previous president leaving office.
Still, the Manhattan DA's office and grand jury have carefully examined the evidence and heard witness testimony. Whatever the investigation found must be pretty darned compelling. It has led state prosecutors and the current district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to believe that the case against Trump is credible.
The focus of the case, Bragg said on MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation" was “on the evidence and the law.”
“We follow the facts. It doesn’t matter what party you are, it doesn’t matter your background. What did you do? And what does the law say?”
For a man like Trump, who has- until today- led a life free of any accountability whatsoever, those are unfamiliar and frightening concepts.