The news that a Manhattan grand jury has filed an indictment against Donald Trump, the first criminal indictment against a former president in the nation’s history, is monumental in itself. We’d have to pause to appreciate the giant leap that Manhattan Dist. thoughtful Alvin Bragg has taken responsibility for a man who has shown nothing but contempt for the rule of law. But Thursday’s announcement also ushers in a new normal that will be one of the strangest and most stressful periods in America’s legal and political annals. The allegations in the New York case, along with others likely to follow from Georgia and the federal government, will be caught up in a presidential campaign with which Trump seeks justification. Trump’s instinct will be to push the prosecutor and his accusers as much as possible, each time claiming new evidence of a political vendetta against him and his supporters. In recent months he has urged his followers to view the allegations as an attack on them and see him as their salvation and retaliation. This quasi-religious affectation will only increase as trial dates approach.

Even in New York

new

developments point to this

Manhattan Dist. Atty Alvin

Bragg’s case goes beyond the plan to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels. The 11th-hour grand jury appearance of David Pecker, a former president of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, suggests Bragg’s office was also investigating hush money paid to model Karen

MacDougal McDougal

in a scheme that

extended until the Trump presidency. That could broaden the charge to a longer-running conspiracy to deceive and conceal,

countering partisans who have attacked the Daniels case as petty

.

In addition, in the midst of the

speculation

surrounding the Manhattan investigation in recent weeks, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal investigation has taken dramatic steps to hold Trump accountable for both classified documents discovered at his Mar-a-Lago estate

in Florida

and for the events around January 6

2021,

revolt. Meanwhile, in Fulton County, Ga., Dist. thoughtful fanatic

Willis is investigating Trump-related interference in the state’s 2020 election, which could potentially incur additional costs.

In the classified documents case, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell ordered Trump attorney Evan Corcoran to testify before a grand jury. illegal storage of secret documents. Corcoran’s testimony could well be the centerpiece of a federal indictment against Trump in what appears to be a fairly simple and well-researched case.

Research breakthroughs surrounding the January 6 uprising were no less important. Notably, Smith won important rulings in the

federal court

rejecting claims to privileges of former Vice President Mike Pence and those of Trump

C

canceled

S

tough Mark Meadows, both of whom have tried to avoid testing.

The full and truthful testimony of those two men could devastate the former president. Meadows was deeply involved in nearly all aspects of Trump’s post-election plans and was the closest eyewitness to Trump’s conduct on January 6.

Were not yet at the end of the road with both former Trump lieutenants. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has rejected arguments for executive privilege against such testimony on numerous occasions, and is expected to make swift work of Meadows’ claim here. But the former chief of staff may well choose to argue

Fifth 5th

Amendment protection against self-incrimination, leaving the Justice Department with a very difficult decision: whether to force his testimony against Trump by granting him immunity, which federal prosecutors are normally reluctant to do for such a guilty party.

Pence’s claim is newer, but ultimately no more convincing. Hi

has

argued that the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which protects members of Congress from retaliation for legislative conduct, immunizes him from testing because the vice president serves as president of the senate. Judge James Jeb Boasberg, the new chief justice of the U.S. District Court in Washington, ruled that the clause could protect Pence from testing his conduct while presiding over congressional certification of the 2020 election, but not conduct testing which he witnessed as Trump’s deputy director.

In other words

it wouldn’t protect a penny against

to be described in detail

Trump’s campaign to force him to commit a crime.

After years of waiting for a response to Trump’s transgressions, Thursday’s historic development feels sort of at last. But in important ways, it is only the first stage of a comprehensive test of the system’s ability to administer justice under particularly difficult circumstances. Harry Litman hosts the

Podcast “Talking Feds”.

.

@harrylitman