03/31/23
Good morning! It’s Friday, March 31st. Cesar Chavez Day.
Cesar Chavez Day is a federal holiday that was initiated by President Obama in 2014. It commemorates Cesar Chavez, a labor leader and community organizer who, along with Dolores Huerta, founded the National Farm Workers Association.
He spent his life participating in labor strikes, protests, and uprisings around the country, leading hundreds of sit-ins and labor protests. He also led hundreds of voter registration drives.
And now, the news.
Trump Crime Update Time
Oh. My. God. What a day to be on Twitter. Because we thought, in our sweet simple minds, that March 30th was simply pencil day. MLB opening day. A casual Thursday.
And yet, what it turned out to be was… history.
That’s right.
It’s Trump Crime Update Time
HISTORICAL Update Time.
March 30th, 2023… the first time any current or previous President of this country has been indicted.
Say what you want but… Donald Trump? That dude loves to make history in his find out season. Two impeachments? Historical! Indictment? Historical! Ties? Still too short!
Listen… it hasn’t been a great week. Actually, it’s actually been an awful week. But uh… this helps.
Okay, let’s back up. As a reminder, this is one of the money crimes case. This goes back to October 2016 when Stormy Daniels was tried to sell the story of her affair with Donald Trump to the National Enquirer. The publisher of the Enquirer was long Trump friend David Pecker.
Hey. Heeeeeey. No no, this is a historical story. We’re grown ups (jkjk – it’s silly)
Anyway, so Daniels’ team called The Enquirer, not knowing that Pecker had actually agreed to be on the lookout for potentially damaging stories about Trump during the campaign. Pecker didn’t buy the story and instead tried to work out a deal between Daniels’ and Michael Cohen. Cohen paid $130,000 to squash the story and Trump, during his time as president, paid him back.
Then, in 2018, Michael Cohen pled guilty for a bunch of money crimes, including this $130,000 check, which federal prosecutors said was actually an improper donation to Trump’s campaign. Because this money was specifically spent to help him win the presidency.
And during that 2018 case, Cohen said Trump was the one that told him to pay to squash the story.
Cohen went to jail for this exact crime. He spent a year in jail and lost his lawyer license… So now Trump has been indicted in that case.
Hear that again – Michael Cohen went to jail for this.
And that’s not me saying Trump will go to jail. That’s me reminding you that this is a real case and what we decided in America, on March 30th, 2023, is that we are going to honor this simple statement – no one is above the law.
Now, we don’t know what’ll happen next. Trump is expected to turn himself in early next week, but he also said he was being arrested last week so honestly, I’m not sure he knows what’s going on. On the ironically named Truth Social, he said he was “indicated” (surely he meant indicted and it was either autocorrect or him genuinely screwing up but still… that’s pretty hilarious given how historical this is… that typo is going down in history. That’s his first statement after being the first former president to ever be indicted). Anyway, the point is… as of this recording, he has not returned to New York to answer for this indictment.
But yesterday was a truly historical day. Yesterday was the day that a former president was indicted.
As of this recording, although DA Alvin Bragg has received death threats since Trump first said he’d be indicted last week and told people to protest… currently it appears that those protests have not come to fruition. Hopefully that will not change, and this does not become a dangerous situation. However, it is notable that many statements about Bragg from Trump or Trump supporters or Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis (who says he will not comply with the law and enforce any extradition requests because he’s decided he’ll get his headline too I guess.), all describe Bragg, who is Black, as “Soros-backed,” a statement that is both antisemitic and racist. They know exactly what they’re doing and it’s heinous. It’s also something we need to keep an eye on.
Of course, this is not the only active investigation into Trump – we expect an indictment in Georgia for election crimes kind of any time now (“aw come on Brad, just find me those votes please!” ….as always, I’ve nailed the impression); plus we’ve got Coach Beard and the Case of the Time Trump Called Dibs on Classified Materials and also, separately, tried to burn the very fabrics of democracy to the ground simply because he lost an election.
Expect the election crimes indictment sooner than the rest, though we don’t know when or even if that’ll for sure happen. Still though, as a reminder, those are active cases as well. As again, up until the afternoon of March 30th, all we could do was theorize about all of this. We can’t do that anymore.
Former President Donald Trump has become the first former president to have been indicted of a crime.
What can I say? Sucks to suck, my dude.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
What do you want me to include? The fact that Gwyneth Paltrow was found innocent in her ski trial case? I mean, yes that also happened yesterday but like… come on. Let’s have some perspective here.
Anyway, go get a newspaper tomorrow. History was made today.
I’m proud of… people who don’t do money crimes. Maybe it’s just because I don’t have any money, but honestly, I never do money crimes. It’s so easy!
But more than that, more than the bare minimum, because you’re SO great and probably, as far as I’m aware of, don’t do money crimes… I’m proud of you.