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Over the previous week, Donald J. Trump rallied alongside two rap artists accused of conspiracy to commit homicide. He promised to commute the sentence of a infamous web drug seller. And he appeared backstage with one other rap artist who has pleaded responsible to assault for punching a feminine fan.
As Mr. Trump awaits the conclusion of his Manhattan trial — closing arguments are set for Tuesday and a verdict may arrive as quickly as this week — he used a weeklong break from courtroom to align himself with defendants and convicted criminals charged by the identical system with which he’s at conflict.
The appearances match neatly into Mr. Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign, throughout which he has mentioned he’s prone to pardon these prosecuted for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and lent his voice to a recording of the nationwide anthem by a choir of Jan. 6 inmates.
There was a time when a lot confirmed and alleged criminality could be an excessive amount of to tolerate for supporters of a candidate for president, an workplace with a sworn responsibility to uphold the Constitution. That may need been very true within the case of a candidate who has been indicted 4 instances and stands accused of rank disregard for the legislation.
Yet with lower than six months till Election Day, Mr. Trump, who has lengthy pushed messaging about “legislation and order,” is leaning into an outlaw picture, surrounding himself with accused criminals and convicts.
“I don’t suppose individuals respect the diploma to which Trump has embraced the picture of lawlessness on this marketing campaign,” mentioned Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist who labored for Jeb Bush’s presidential marketing campaign and has been deeply important of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Miller described Mr. Trump’s current visitor appearances as “a vetting resolution that might have been unthinkable in previous campaigns.”
Aides to Mr. Trump didn’t reply to an electronic mail in search of remark about what message he supposed to ship with these appearances.
Mr. Trump’s rally final week within the Bronx wound down with appearances from the 2 rappers, Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, whose actual names are Michael Williams and Tegan Chambers. Both had been charged in a conspiracy that Brooklyn prosecutors say led to 12 shootings. Mr. Williams additionally faces two counts of tried homicide. Both males pleaded not responsible and are out on bail.
Mr. Trump, from the rally stage, introduced the 2 males to the gang for a short remark. Mr. Chambers stored his message brief and to the purpose: “Make America nice once more.”
Two days later, as Mr. Trump spoke to an unfriendly crowd on the Libertarian Party’s nationwide conference in Washington, he promised to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the founding father of the black-market web site Silk Road, who was sentenced to life in jail in 2015. At the identical occasion, Mr. Trump took {a photograph} with the rapper Afroman, whose actual identify is Joseph Edgar Foreman and who pleaded responsible in 2015 to punching a lady attending certainly one of his live shows.
In the courtroom, Mr. Trump has surrounded himself with allies turned defendants. The week that his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, was set to testify that Mr. Trump had permitted a plan to repay a porn star and canopy it up, Mr. Trump marched into courtroom accompanied by his indicted prime authorized adviser, Boris Epshteyn, who has attended on daily basis of the trial since his personal fees arrived in an Arizona election interference case.
Also in Mr. Trump’s entourage throughout Mr. Cohen’s testimony had been Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner who hung out in jail on fraud fees and whom Mr. Trump pardoned, and Chuck Zito, a former actor who spent years in federal jail and was a pacesetter of a Hells Angels chapter in New York.
Mr. Trump has insisted that each investigation into him is political, the work of opponents conspiring towards him. He has tarred varied representatives of the authorized system — political candidates who campaigned aggressively towards him and prosecutors appointed to analyze him — with the identical brush, whereas backing his most controversial supporters.
This reflex of Mr. Trump’s — to disregard accusations if the accused is helpful to him — will not be new. But the dimensions has modified.
In his 2016 marketing campaign, Mr. Trump put Elliott B. Broidy, a financier who had pleaded responsible seven years earlier to bribing New York officers, on his fund-raising committee. It was a little-noticed transfer that may have raised extra eyebrows had Mr. Trump not been smashing one norm after one other because the presumptive Republican nominee.
Shortly after the election, Mr. Trump and his marketing campaign had been ensnared in an investigation into whether or not his political operation had ties to Russians. Several advisers had been swept up in that inquiry, together with his nationwide safety adviser, Michael T. Flynn; his marketing campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; his longest-serving adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr.; and Mr. Cohen, his fixer and private lawyer.
Mr. Trump, who denounced that investigation as weaponized, repeatedly attacked Mr. Cohen after he pleaded responsible to a variety of crimes together with a marketing campaign finance violation that he mentioned was at Mr. Trump’s behest. But the president in the end pardoned Mr. Flynn, Mr. Manafort and Mr. Stone, a part of a wave of pardons and commutations in his remaining weeks in workplace.
Mr. Trump additionally granted clemency to individuals like Jonathan Braun, a Staten Island man with a historical past of violent threats who on the time was being pursued by federal officers for his work as a predatory lender. Mr. Braun used a connection to the household of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as he sought clemency.
Earlier in Mr. Trump’s presidency, he commuted the sentence of Rod R. Blagojevich, the previous Democratic governor of Illinois. It was a transfer that some Republicans opposed, however Mr. Trump proudly had Mr. Blagojevich at a current Republican National Committee fund-raiser in Florida.
Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in workplace and thwart the switch of energy resulted in a number of investigations into him and his allies.
The individuals indicted in these inquiries embody Mr. Trump’s private lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani; his White House chief of employees, Mark Meadows; his present prime authorized adviser, Mr. Epshteyn; his authorized adviser Jenna Ellis; and a former Justice Department official, Jeffrey B. Clark.
Two different Trump advisers and allies, Stephen Ok. Bannon and Peter Navarro, had been convicted of contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas to cooperate with the House investigation into the previous president’s efforts to remain in workplace.
Mr. Trump’s most up-to-date conduct happened towards the backdrop of his attorneys’ arguments earlier than the Supreme Court that he’s immune from prosecution within the federal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. On social media, Mr. Trump has insisted presidents ought to have “absolute immunity.”
Despite arguing that he was performing inside his rights, Mr. Trump has turned his prison fees right into a commodity. He sells marketing campaign merchandise that includes his mug shot from his indictment in Georgia and aggressively raises cash off claims that he’s being persecuted.
One of the marketing campaign’s current fund-raising efforts has targeted on Mr. Trump’s false claims in regards to the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago, the members-only membership that serves as his residence, in August 2022. The search got here after he defied a grand jury subpoena requesting the return of any labeled paperwork nonetheless at his dwelling.
But the previous president has baselessly argued that the F.B.I. was making an attempt to assassinate him, taking part in off commonplace language utilized in an operations order for the search, which was lately unsealed as a part of a protection movement.
Prosecutors lately requested the judge overseeing the paperwork case to alter Mr. Trump’s situations of launch by barring him from making any additional remarks that would endanger federal brokers engaged on the case. In response, the Trump staff accused them of “unsupported histrionics” and demanded sanctions towards them.
“He both doesn’t know the reality, which is reckless, or he is aware of the reality and lied about it, which is abhorrent,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former United States lawyer and F.B.I. official, mentioned of the usual procedures that Mr. Trump has misrepresented.
“He cares very a lot about wielding energy, however not in service of some higher good,” Mr. Rosenberg mentioned. “Rather, he needs energy — together with over the Justice Department — to learn himself and his mates, and to hurt others. He sees that energy as solely applicable in his palms. That is a wretched corruption of what the rule of legislation means — and must imply — on this nation, and it’s deeply harmful.”
Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.
