There Will Be Blood

// The Manhattan District Attorney may indict Donald Trump some time this week.

The indictment will be sealed, so the public won’t know its contents until either Trump is arraigned or someone leaks information.

Then, all hell will break loose.

Trump’s started chiseling around the corners of hell already, asking on social media that his supporters “protest” on his behalf. If Trump were asking for peaceful protests, that would be fine. But January 6 should make any sentient person question if that’s what he’s doing. Now Trump’s expected to hold a rally in Waco, Texas, on March 25, a time that marks the 30th anniversary of the siege at the Branch Davidian compound.

That’s just the start. What will Trump say in Waco? What will he say at the rallies after that? What will his social media posts advocate after it sinks in that he’s facing jail time?

Folks who used to work in the Manhattan DA’s office claim to be calm: The Manhattan DA has handled high-profile cases before. All of the people involved are professionals. The security personnel know how to handle these things. We routinely handle gang-murder cases. Don’t worry.

Nonsense.

This case is different.

You heard it here a year and a half ago, and I’m saying it again today: There will be blood.

Maybe the Manhattan DA’s office has handled gang-murder cases before. I wouldn’t know. I never heard the names of the gang members, or the murderers, or the victims, or the witnesses, or the judges in those cases.

Isn’t the Trump situation a little different?

I know the name Trump. And Michael Cohen. And Stormy Daniels. And Allen Weisselberg (the Trump Organization’s CFO). And I could learn in a heartbeat all the other players and witnesses. The Manhattan DA himself, Alvin Bragg, has been speaking about this publicly, and Trump has been dragging Bragg’s name through the mud.

We’ll soon know the names of the prosecutors, and the name of the judge. We’ll know the names of the investigators. We’ll know the dates and times of hearings.

Who are the police and FBI going to protect? The judge, around the clock, for months? The prosecutors, around the clock, for months? Michael Cohen, and the other key witnesses, around the clock, for months? The grand jurors, if their names leak? The petit jurors, when the time comes, and if their names leak?

Moreover, when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, someone attacked an FBI office in Cincinnati, which had nothing to do with the raid but simply housed part of the FBI. Who knows what attacks in unexpected places will be triggered by calls for “protests”?

And this is a case that will last for months, at a minimum, in the pretrial stages, as Trump raises statute of limitation issues, and challenges to legal theories, and the rest. The filing of every brief, and the ruling on every motion, will be covered by MSNBC and Fox. Trump will either rage or appeal, or both, depending on the available options.

Trump will repeatedly be telling his supporters that the prosecutors are coming after him first and his supporters next. We know that some fraction of those supporters can be motivated to violence, as January 6 demonstrated.

There will be blood.

This raises two related questions:

First, should America be intimidated?

You may or may not think that this indictment is a good idea. Maybe a former president shouldn’t be prosecuted for allegedly cooking his company’s books and committing campaign finance violations. Maybe it’s a dangerous precedent to let one of hundreds of elected state prosecutors decide whether to pursue a prominent person in an opposing political party. Maybe there are other, more important crimes to prosecute in New York.

But once a prosecutor announces a case, should the former president’s likely attempts to incite violence cause the country to lose its nerve? Or should we stand firm once the indictment is announced and Trump intensifies his campaign of intimidation?

Second, what the heck is about to happen to the Republican Party? All the pundits seem to think that the indictment will help Trump politically, even if it hurts him personally. Maybe so. But what about people other than Trump? I assume those who have been standing by Trump to date will hold the line, saying that the indictment is a politically motivated witch hunt. But Trump’s case may reach trial before the election; Trump may well be convicted; it’s hard to see a convicted felon winning a race for the presidency.

What will Republicans do then?

Will enough of the Republican Party abandon Trump to permit the emergence of a new conservative party, dedicated to principles instead of a person?

Maybe some good will ultimately come from this.

But first, there will be blood.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].

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