When Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel in 2017, many saw it as a healthy sign of adherence to the rule of law in this country — a sign that Donald Trump was not above the law. Fast-forward seven long years, and we now await a Supreme Court decision on the question of whether Trump, as president of the United States, could order the murder of a political adversary and get away with it. That and so much more suggest that that day in 2017 is long gone. We appear increasingly untethered from our first principles as a nation, and one can rightly wonder what has happened to the rule of law.
But this week, I have hope. The first Trump criminal case is taking place. Thanks to District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his crackerjack team of experienced attorneys, we have witnessed a criminal case unfold like clockwork, building a case based on Trump-world insiders, corroborated by hundreds of tapes, emails, texts, phone records, documents, tweets and financial records.
And this past week, we had Hope Hicks, a Trump loyalist who owes her career to Trump, take her obligation to the law seriously and testify to the damning admissions she said Trump made to her about the Stormy Daniels hush money payments. Hicks recounted for the jury how, after the Daniels story became public, Trump told her he was indeed aware of the payments by Michael Cohen to the porn star to keep her quiet. Trump told Hicks that Cohen had made the payments out of loyalty but without his knowledge — a story Hicks did not credit, given what she viewed as Cohen’s desire for credit and his general lack of charitableness (I had analogized him earlier in the week to a “dog with a pheasant in his mouth,” who would want to display his offering proudly to his master, with no incentive to keep his good deed to himself).
Here was Hicks, taking her oath with solemnity, filling an apparent hole in the DA’s case: that Trump knew about this payoff.
Hicks’ testimony thus confirmed that