NEW YORK – As important as what happened inside a lower Manhattan courtroom last month marked the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president, perhaps even more important was what happened on the streets outside.
There are no riots. There is no violence. There is not even a hint of civil war.
Despite dire warnings from Donald Trump and some in his inner circle that prosecutors in New York and elsewhere would unleash mayhem if they dared charge him with a crime, his trial, at least so far, has proceeded virtually without protest.
There were no pro-Trump protesters in the park across from the courthouse Monday morning. One anti-Trump protester walked back and forth holding a sign that read “TRUMP 2 TERRIFIED 2 TESTIFY.”
“People now know that it costs money to show up on his behalf,” said Boston University historian Heather Cox Richardson, who has warned of a Trump-centric authoritarian movement in recent years. “They don’t want to risk their lives for him.”
In the blocks surrounding the courthouse, local business owners seemed unaware that Trump had called for a protest on their behalf. “I didn’t know anything about it,” said one jewelry store owner, who asked that his name not be used.
Salim Chowdhury, owner of Kabob Town, two blocks down the street, said he has seen numerous large protests taking place on Canal Street, from Black Lives Matter to the recent protests in Gaza. He’s never seen anything about Trump. “We are not worried,” he said.
In his daily rambling speeches to reporters in the hallway outside the 15th-floor courtroom, Trump made it clear that he was lacking large-scale protests on his behalf despite repeated calls for protests, including on social media the day before the trial began. It was revealed. When he wrote: “MAGA 2024! see you tomorrow.”
“Outside it is like an armed camp. “You can’t take a person within three blocks of this courthouse,” he said on May 13, falsely claiming police were denying people access to the courthouse area.
He repeated and embellished his lies as he entered court Monday. “Outside appears to be Fort Knox. There are more police than I’ve ever seen because they don’t want anyone coming down. “There are no civilians within three blocks of the courthouse.”
Trump has already proven that he can incite violence. For weeks after losing the 2020 election, he lied about the money being “stolen” from him, perhaps most consequentially at a rally near the White House on the morning of Congress voting to certify the election results. He urged the tens of thousands of followers he had summoned to Washington that day to march on the Capitol to pressure lawmakers and the vice president to overturn the results and grant him a second term.
“If you catch someone fraudulent, you have to follow very different rules,” Trump said.
Over the next few hours, 140 police officers were injured in the attack, some seriously. One person died a few hours later, and four others died by suicide in the coming weeks and months.
Over a 40-month period starting January 6, 2021, 1,424 of his followers who participated in the assault were tracked down and arrested by the Justice Department on charges including trespassing, assaulting a police officer and seditious conspiracy. There have already been 1,019 convictions through guilty pleas and jury verdicts, and new arrests continue to occur.
In fact, the Justice Department’s aggressive pursuit of everyone who entered the Capitol building, which was closed to the public at the time due to COVID-19 restrictions, may be the biggest reason Trump was unable to at least wreak havoc again. date.
“yarn. Thankfully, Proposition 6 failed, with serious consequences for those involved.” A former congressional aide who served on the Jan. 6 investigative committee spoke on condition of anonymity. “Despite Trump’s pleas, it is reasonable to assume that these key points will prevent anyone from engaging in such tactics again.”
Those pleas began more than two years ago, when it became clear he was under criminal investigation in at least three jurisdictions.
“If these radical, evil, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope this country will see the biggest protests we have seen in Washington, D.C., New York, Atlanta and elsewhere. Our elections are corrupt,” he told a rally audience in Conroe, Texas, on January 29, 2022.
Seven months later, Trump warned of prosecution after secret documents he took with him when he left the White House were searched at his Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach, Florida. It’s probably like nothing we’ve ever seen before in this country. “I don’t think the American people will support this,” he said.
As the months passed and prosecutors closed, Trump’s language and tone escalated.
“Protest, take our country back!” Trump made the demand in a social media post on March 24, 2023, just days before Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed the first of four total felony indictments.
There have also been individual instances of violence by Trump supporters. A man died after attempting to open fire into an Ohio FBI office following the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid. A Texas woman is accused of threatening Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge overseeing the prosecution of Trump over the January 6 coup attempt.
President Trump was able to secure a small crowd of protesters for his arraignments in New York and Miami last year, and successfully persuaded about 50 supporters to come to the courthouse on April 15, when the trial opened.
But at least so far there have been no large-scale attacks by Trump followers like on January 6th.
Some Trump allies argue that no one is protesting for him because his New York City trial on charges that he falsified business records to hide $130,000 in hush money and his other charges are actually helping him.
“Look at the New York Times poll,” said Mike Davis, a former Senate staff attorney who has become the Trump administration’s favorite legal voice, when asked what happened to the mass protests Trump called for. “It happened.”
Joe Walsh, a former Illinois congressman who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination, said Trump’s ardent supporters don’t care enough to be outraged by the events in New York. “They are not taking this trial seriously at all. They are not interested in this. “They actually think he’s going to do this,” he said.
Amanda Carpenter, a former Texas Republican senator from Ted Cruz’s office who now works for the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, said Trump’s calls for unrest may not have resulted in actual violence so far, but there is an undercurrent of violence. He said it is important to keep in mind that appears. Trying to slow down the court schedule in his favor.
In Atlanta, President Trump’s trial to overturn his loss in the 2020 Georgia presidential election, originally scheduled for this spring, has been postponed. In South Florida, a federal judge overseeing classified prosecutions has repeatedly delayed proceedings and recently canceled a summer trial date.
And in the biggest case, the Supreme Court will consider Trump’s claim that federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., based on Trump’s actions leading up to January 6, have immunity for everything he did because he was president at the time. It is on hold until Unless the high court rules quickly, it seems unlikely that a trial will be held on the charges before the November election.
“I think we need to consider whether these threats have been successful in delaying a significant portion of the trial action,” Carpenter said.
And Walsh, who supported Trump in 2016 but quickly became a vocal critic after observing Trump’s behavior while he was in office, warns that just because violence hasn’t occurred yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future.
“It will be different when Trump goes on trial on January 6,” he said.
“Wait until they try to put Trump in jail,” agreed Davis, who called all four indictments illegal.
