People of New York v. Donald Trump will continue Thursday with further trial testimony from Keith Davidson, the Los Angeles lawyer who brokered the deal between Stormy Daniels and Trump fixer Michael Cohen to buy her silence on the eve of the 2016 election. The opening days of the trial this week have been relatively boring, to be perfectly honest, when it comes to the legal proceedings—but more intriguing when it comes to the scene at the courthouse itself.
In the audience for the first time during Tuesday’s testimony was a member of Trump’s immediate family. Obviously it was not his wife Melania, who is reportedly still steamed about Trump’s alleged sexual encounter with an adult film star while Melania was recovering from the birth of their son Barron. Instead, Trump’s third-born adult child, Eric, was there to support his dad, listening attentively to the details of a case centered on his father’s alleged encounter and the subsequent cover-up. As with much of the proceedings that have occurred over these first three weeks, this was all a bit surreal.
It’s not just Eric spicing things up either. On the way out of the courtroom that day, Trump nemesis George Conway—the estranged spouse of Trump adviser and possible witness Kellyanne Conway—kept repeating, “You can’t make this shit up.” Conway had been seated right in front of me, so I think I saw what he was referring to: At one point, as Trump was exiting court, Trump and Conway had https://twitter.com/SarahBurris/status/1785424432535597462.
Tuesday’s proceedings were the driest of the entire trial so far. The witnesses included a banker for Cohen, who described financial documents; a C-SPAN archivist, who went over the famously boring station’s process of archiving hours of political footage (seriously!); and an employee of a deposition recording company, who detailed the company’s procedures for recording depositions. The elder Trump, for his part, had his eyes closed for much of the morning and afternoon, including during the more interesting Davidson testimony—ironic, given that Eric had, the day before, bragged about his dad’s “stamina.” It was difficult to see Eric’s face from my vantage point, but he was apparently attentive throughout much of the day’s testimony.
Although TV news personalities and journalists like Conway—and sometimes bigger names like Rachel Maddow and Kaitlan Collins—make up much of the star wattage in court, Trump’s side of the aisle has also produced its share of big names.
Joining Eric on Tuesday was Susie Wiles, whom Politico just described as “the most feared and least known political operative in America.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was also there; this year alone, Paxton has been impeached and acquitted on corruption charges and settled with prosecutors a 10-year-old fraud indictment on the eve of his own trial. The previous week, the day after he was indicted for fraud and forgery in Arizona for his role in the 2020 fake electors scheme, Boris Epshteyn, one of the earliest proponents of Trump’s stolen election lies, showed up in court.
In witnessing the parade of horrible Trump allies and supporters over the past few weeks, and with plenty of time on my hands while the C-SPAN archivist spoke, I found myself wondering how the current set of Trumpworld lackeys maps onto Dick Tracy villains. Trump, of course, is Big Boy Caprice, with the ill-fitting suits and eccentric hair. Eric, I suppose, is Mumbles. Paxton would make a good Flattop. Perhaps Boris is Little Face.
The Dick Tracy comparisons are a habit I first picked up five years ago, when I covered the DC criminal trial of Roger Stone, who was charged with obstructing justice on Trump’s behalf during the Russia investigation. I witnessed a rogues’ gallery of Stone supporters that time around, including Pizzagate instigator Jack Posobiec; alt-right provocateur and pedophilia defender Milo Yiannopoulos (who, to my recollection, wore sunglasses in the courtroom); Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes; Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio; and various other hangers-on and right-wing grifters.
But midtrial, as the Proud Boys, operating as Stone’s personal “security” team, snickered at the back of the courtroom about a trip to a Virginia strip club, the analogy fell apart. The group was hard to view as a legitimate assortment of organized criminals and a threat to society. These weren’t Dick Tracy’s villains. They were more like the Island of Misfit Toys.
Stone’s supporters were not serious people, I thought—they would never have a sniff of power. This didn’t mean they wouldn’t eventually become threatening, though: The Proud Boys were at the violent vanguard of Trump’s alleged attempts to seize power on Jan. 6, 2021, and many of them are now in prison for their actions that day, including Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years. Stone, for his part, was convicted of lying to Congress, obstruction of Congress, and witness tampering on Trump’s behalf. His sentence was commuted, though, and he was ultimately pardoned by Trump in the closing days of his term.
Now things are coming full circle: Trump is promising to pardon those Proud Boys, including Tarrio, should he regain office in November, which is part of an impossible-to-ignore subtext to the present proceedings. Trump may be on trial, but he’s simultaneously pledging to do everything in his power to never face an ounce of accountability for his alleged crimes, and indeed to abuse the authority of the office to protect criminal confederates again should he be voted back into the White House. For their part, the conservatives on the Supreme Court seem determined to enable all of this by granting Trump everlasting presidential immunity from any and all criminal conduct done as president. (Back to Dick Tracy: Samuel Alito is Pruneface?)
This subtext has already been made text during the Stormy Daniels trial. Prosecutors tried to get into evidence a text National Enquirer editor and unindicted Trump co-conspirator Dylan Howard sent as Trump edged toward victory on Election Day 2016: “At least, if he wins, I’ll be pardoned for electoral fraud.” Jurors will never see this text because Howard is in Australia with a “medical issue” and Justice Juan Merchan ruled that because Trump’s defense team can’t confront Howard about the text, it would be unfair to show it to the jury. But that’s not the only way to make it clear that the purpose of all Trump’s conduct going forward is to shield himself and his allies from consequences for their alleged crimes.
In the meantime, with Trump leading in the polls, the Dick Tracy gallery seems to be feeling cocky. As he reentered the courtroom on Tuesday, Eric Trump noticed Conway and gave a dismissive smile and a snort. (I told Conway about this, and he responded that Eric “learned not to fuck with me five years ago.”)
Exiting the courtroom after proceedings ended, I found myself in an elevator with Conway, CNN’s Collins, retired New York Judge George Grasso, and a member of the public, an older gentleman who had waited in line since 5 am to get his seat in the courtroom. That man was excitedly chatting away, saying it was “worth the price of admission” to witness the exchange between Trump and Conway. As we were about to get off the elevator, the man noted that being there that day had reminded him of another historic event he had witnessed: “the final public hanging in Arkansas.” There was awkward silence at that comment as we all left the elevator—no one quite knew what to do with that.
I was reminded, though, of a conversation I had had with a Trump supporter at one of the first Trump rallies I ever attended in 2016. Like many other Trump supporters that day, Gary Wilson told me that Hillary Clinton needed to be prosecuted for what he called her “crimes.” When I asked him what the appropriate punishment would be, he replied, immediately and casually, “Public hanging, to be honest with you.”
Trump might not be promising that just yet. At the same time, though, it’s astonishing the degree to which he’s taken a situation in which he’s literally on trial, facing the potential of many, many years in prison, and flipped it so that he might soon be the one doling out punishments to his enemies. Even as he’s been in court, Trump has, notably, given further interviews vowing to fire any prosecutor who doesn’t target his political enemies, round up undocumented immigrants in mass detention camps, and pardon the Jan. 6 “political prisoners” who might then form the vanguard of any Trump paramilitary units during his second term.
If and when SCOTUS goes through with its apparent desire to shield Trump from any alleged criminality in perpetuity, all of its conservative members, up to and including Chief Justice John Roberts, will own everything that follows. Perhaps then Roberts can even get a Dick Tracy moniker of his own.
