What just happened
- Russia detained a suspect after an explosion at a cafe in St Petersburg killed a pro-Kremlin blogger (more below).
- Israel’s government approved a far-right minister’s plan for a national guard, described by critics as a “private army”.
- Parisians voted to outlaw e-scooters in the city, with 89 per cent of voters supporting a ban.
Donald Trump was the first president in American history to be impeached twice. Tomorrow he is expected to become the first one to face criminal charges.
A grand jury in New York voted last Thursday to indict Trump in relation to a hush money payment made in 2016 to Stormy Daniels, a porn actor. The Manhattan district attorney’s office said it had contacted the former president’s team to organise his surrender; Trump is expected to fly by private jet from his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida to New York today before appearing briefly in court tomorrow. He denies wrongdoing.
So what? Not many politicians would be angling for their mugshot to be released. But Trump has been pulverising political norms for years. Trump’s team believe the indictment will raise money and reinforce his hold over the Republican party as he campaigns for the 2024 presidential nomination. They may be right.
The case. The exact charges (said to number around 30) remain under seal for now. But the case brought by Democrat district attorney Alvin Bragg may hinge on elevating the $130,000 payment to Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford) from the misdemeanour offence of falsifying business records – Trump allegedly recorded the payment as a legal expense – to a felony by proving the funds were intended to help Trump’s presidential campaign in violation of election law.
This would be an untested approach. The judge, Juan Merchan, who presided over the Trump Organization tax fraud trial last year, may throw the case out; if Trump is convicted of a felony he would face a maximum sentence of four years. He could still run for president.
It’s also not the most serious investigation into Trump. Others include:
- election interference in Georgia;
- mishandling classified materials; and
- inciting the January 6th insurrection.
The GOP. The first post-indictment poll shows Trump holding a 26-point lead among Republicans over Florida governor Ron DeSantis, seen as his closest challenger – up from eight points two weeks ago. The poll is less encouraging for Trump in a general election. But it shows his continuing hold over primary voters. Trump’s team said it received more than $4 million in donations within 24 hours of the indictment being reported, with 25 per cent of donations coming from first-time Trump donors.
Trump’s top rivals, mindful of the mood among the base, also leapt to his defence:
- DeSantis, who was recently taking quiet digs at Trump over the circumstances of the case, immediately attacked the indictment as “un-American” and said Florida wouldn’t help extradite Trump.
- Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who announced a bid earlier this year, said the prosecution was “more about revenge than it is about justice”.
- The only Republican challenger to criticise Trump was former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, who announced his candidacy yesterday and said Trump should drop out of the race.
“There has been a narrative for a while that we could have Trump policies with someone more electable, but the reaction to the indictment showed that power is unique to Trump,” Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator, told the NYT. “Trump was the leading contender for the nomination before the indictment, and now he’s the prohibitive favourite.”
The big picture. Trump’s sons criticised the indictment as “third-world prosecutorial misconduct”. It’s worth remembering that other leading democracies have prosecuted former leaders and survived – think of France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi has been in and out of court for three decades.
Trump has been fighting court cases and investigations since the 1970s. He is expected to roll out a tried-and-tested strategy of attack and delay, dragging proceedings well into a 2024 presidential campaign (with senior Republicans reportedly wondering what happens when a planned debate clashes with a court appearance).
What next? Today, New York is bracing for protests. Tomorrow, Trump will return to Mar-a-Lago to deliver a primetime evening address. He is back in the spotlight and the dominant force in the 2024 primaries. This is a serious moment. Trump will treat it as a spectacle.
Oil cartel
Crude oil prices surged by 8 per cent on Monday after Saudi Arabia and other countries from the oil cartel Opec+ announced cuts of more than one million barrels a day. The price is now hovering at around $80 for a barrel of Brent crude. The news puts the Kingdom on a full-speed collision course with Washington DC. Saudi Arabia described it as a “precautionary measure” to stabilise the oil market. But the cut will be widely interpreted as a show of support for Russia, which needs to shore up its war chest by selling energy at higher prices.
Twitter blues
Twitter’s update to their user verification system wasn’t meant to be an April Fools’ prank – but it looked like one. Last month, Twitter’s owner Elon Musk announced the platform would remove the “blue ticks” on legacy accounts on 1 April and make it an option for paid “Twitter Blue” users only ($8 a month for single users, $1,000 a month for business accounts). But on Saturday morning, non-paying users found their blue ticks survived. As of yesterday, only one account had theirs removed: the New York Times. That appeared to be a direct reaction from Musk to the publisher announcing publicly they would not pay for the service. It’s likely the delay is down to behind-the-scenes software issues, which a former employee described to the Washington Post as “all held together with duct tape”.
Moderna in Africa
The success of the Covid-19 vaccine global rollout hinged on mRNA vaccines (see China, which just approved its first mRNA jab, for how important the innovation has been). Moderna, which used mRNA tech for their Covid jabs, appears to be betting hard on future possibilities for mRNA. The US biotech company has committed to mRNA manufacturing facilities in Australia, Canada, the UK and further expansion in the US. Their latest deal is investing $500 million into a new facility in Kenya. Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO, said the deal was a “key pillar” of their global health strategy to bring mRNA to the areas of “high unmet need”. For Kenya that isn’t just vaccines for respiratory viruses like Covid – it’s HIV, Zika and Ebola too (if current clinical trials are successful). To note: although initially making a loss on mRNA development in 2020, Moderna reported $18.4 billion in vaccine sales for 2022 and expects to bring in another $5 billion for 2023.
Finland results
Finland’s prime minister Sanna Marin has conceded defeat after her centre-left Social Democratic party was beaten into third place in parliamentary elections. The centre-right National Coalition Party (NCP) led by Petteri Orpo came first with 48 seats, followed by the anti-immigration populist Finns party on 46. Marin’s party gained three seats on its last election, but her coalition parties suffered heavy losses. Marin, now 37, became Europe’s youngest leader when she took over in December 2019. Two things will not change: the country’s formal accession to Nato, expected in the coming days, and its military support for Ukraine.
St Petersburg statue
On Sunday night, an influential Russian military blogger known as Vladlen Tatarsky was giving a public talk at a cafe in the centre of St Petersburg. A bomb ripped through the cafe, killing Tatarsky and injuring 32 others; videos posted online showed Tatarsky receiving a statue in his likeness shortly before the explosion. A woman, Daria Trepova, has been detained in connection with the killing – the interior ministry said she is a 26 year-old St Petersburg native. It’s the most high-profile attack on a supporter of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine since Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Moscow nationalist, was killed in a car bomb last August.
UK
3/4 – PCS workers at the passport office go on strike until May; National Education Union begins conference and announces results of pay offer ballot; Easter holiday starts for state schools; BBC News channel merger launches, 4/4 – Local election nominations close; King Charles III Royal Mail stamps go on sale, 5/4 – PCS examiners and test centre staff at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency resume strike action, 6/4 – Start of new tax year; pension lifetime allowance changes comes into effect; Royal Maundy Service held at Buckingham Palace; 7/4 – Insomnia Gaming festival held in Birmingham, 8/4 – NASUWT teaching union holds annual conference
World
3/4 – Russian ambassador to the UN briefs on Security Council presidency in New York; Bill Clinton and Gerry Adams to speak in New York about the Good Friday Agreement, 4/4 – Donald Trump due to be arraigned in New York; Nato foreign ministers meet in Brussels, 5/4 – European Commission publishes new pharmaceutical regulation for the bloc; financial markets shut for three days in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for Ching Ming festival; Taiwan’s president meets Kevin McCarthy in LA; France’s Emmanuel Macron begins four-day visit to China; Passover begins, 6/4 – Strike action and protests expected in France; Macron, Xi Jinping and Ursula von der Leyen hold meeting in Beijing; US Masters golf tournament begins in Georgia, 7/4 – World Health Day; Good Friday, 9/4 – Easter Sunday
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Jess Winch
@jswinch
Additional reporting by Phoebe Davis and Will Brown.
Photographs Getty Images, Telegram
