Séamas O'Reilly: Explaining and clarifying the charges against Donald Trump

"...America’s former president is currently under investigation in at least three criminal cases so bafflingly ridiculous that it is hard to get this fact across without sounding hyperbolic."

Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, July 29, 2023, in Erie, Pa. Pic: AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki.

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve loved political scandals. 

In Northern Ireland, they were fairly thick on the ground. You couldn’t throw a rock, or a petrol bomb, without hitting some local councillor who’d done something they didn’t ought to, an MLA or MP who was taking a few quid from somewhere beneath their office.

I inherited this passion from my father, an inveterate newshound who has never had any interest in gossip of the personal, everyday kind, but whose heart gleams with joy at the intricacies of any governmental scuttlebutt that comes his way.

To this day, any time I scent a scandal in the wind, my first impulse is to call him, and inevitably discover he has the whole sad shambles imprinted on his brain as if he was in the room where it happened. 

It’s maddening. Most sought after, therefore, are those times when I scoop him; bringing him some scandal he’s never heard, to which he’ll listen with rapt attention. 

A greater level of attention, I sometimes think, than he does when I call to give him updates from my own life, or those of his grandchildren.

One of my proudest moments was the case of the former Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif. 

Following the release of the Panama Papers, Sharif’s family was accused of forging documents from 2006 to hide ownership of overseas properties, because said documents were written in Microsoft’s Calibri typeface, which had not been released until 2007.

Since my dad is as obsessed with home computing as he is unfamiliar with Pakistani politics, his ecstatic reaction when I brought this to his attention remains one of the highlights of my life.

All of which brings me to one of my true, blue bugbears; those scandals which blaze in full primary colours, at deafening volume, without their true dazzling insanity cutting through.

So, it’s worth addressing just how insane it is that America’s former president, and far-and-away frontrunner to the Republican nomination for the next election, is currently under investigation in at least three criminal cases so bafflingly ridiculous that it is hard to get this fact across without sounding hyperbolic.

Having spotted a distinct lack of clarity in describing the scope and nature of these cases, I thought I’d channel my lifelong attention to quagmire-watching, and attempt as brief a précis as I can.

The updated indictment against former President Donald Trump, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira is photographed Thursday, July 27, 2023. Pic: AP Photo/Jon Elswick

ALLEGED ATTEMPTS TO OVERTURN THE 2020 ELECTION RESULT:

Late on Tuesday, the US Department of Justice issued Trump with four charges related to his efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election. 

Crucially, they allege he did so knowingly, creating “sham” investigations, pressuring state representatives, and ignoring the expert advice he was given that the results were legitimate. 

At least one of his six “co-conspirators” appears to be former New York Mayor and current international laughing stock, Rudy Giuliani.

CLASSIFIED FILES ALLEGEDLY IN THE BATHROOMS OF MAR-A-LAGO:

That’s all separate from the 40 charges the Justice Department has levelled relating to Trump’s mishandling of highly sensitive classified documents since leaving office. 

Put simply, prosecutors say he not only failed to turn over said documents, but had lawyers lie that they had been returned, and stored them haphazardly in his Mar-a-Lago resort — where, memorably, he had boxes of Top Secret documents piled high in his bathroom and even within his actual shower. 

He is also charged with showing such documents to unauthorised individuals and — in a truly astounding flourish for any good scandal-watcher — a recording of one such presentation shows Trump declaring “as president I could have declassified it… now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret”, rather puncturing his earlier claim that such documents were no big deal. 

ALLEGED INTERFERENCE IN ELECTION 2020:

Those are likely to soon be joined by an indictment from Georgia relating to accusations of election interference, not least a taped phone call to Georgia’s Secretary of State — and most Americanly named man of all time — Brad Reffensperger, in which Trump said he needed to “find” 11,780 votes, and threatened the Secretary with criminal prosecution if he didn’t help him do so.

While charges have not yet come through, they are expected to be imminent, meaning that the first former President to ever be indicted, may soon be on the receiving end of four
simultaneously.

Fourth? Well, yes. All of the above is almost enough to make one forget that New York state is currently accusing Trump of falsifying business records to pay off a porn star. 

ALLEGED FALSIFICATION OF BUSINESS RECORDS:

Adult performer Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had a sexual relationship with the former president, was given $130,000 by Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, who was, in turn, paid back in a series of instalments from Trump’s organisation, made to look like legal expenses.

While most people have heard of the above, I find it truly shocking that anyone ever talks about anything else. 

Séamas O'Reilly. Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan

I can forgive a certain degree of amnesia around the vagaries of document handling, or even the intricacies of electoral interference but, to paraphrase Samuel Pepys, when one is tired of a political scandal in which the soon-to-be-President of the United States gave hush money to a literal porn star, one is tired of life.

If we miss the opportunity to engage with these stories as they’re happening, I lament the decreasing appetite for political scandal it suggests. Enjoying them for their insanity alone may, after all, be all we have. 

Whether any of these indictments will be successful is debatable and, in any case, none have yet made a dent in his polling. 

This week, the New York Times reported that Trump has 54% of the preference for the Republican nomination, more than three times that of second place Ron DeSantis. 

Most staggeringly of all, among “voters who believe he has committed serious federal crimes”, that number is 22%.

So, there may well be no telling some people, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tell everyone we know while the going is good. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go ring my dad.