Happy Indictment Day!

I’m expecting an avalanche of commentary on the indictments late this afternoon. I have no doubt that battalions of legal experts are standing by ready to crank out analyses.

In the meantime, one of the best things I’ve read today is by Dahlia Lithwick:

While he has done yeoman’s work raising funds in the days since his indictment was announced ($4 million in the first 24 hours), it’s not clear whether that translates to actual minions in the street, poised to light a match for him yet again. As Aymann Ismail reported Monday, it’s awfully hard to predict the actions of uncoordinated angry extremists, but experts don’t see a lot of the markers of a coordinated insurrection campaign, despite TV threats-slash-demands that they occur. Perhaps that’s why the former president has already decided he’ll return to Mar-a-Lago Tuesday night in order to deliver an address from there—a streamed address doesn’t have to reveal the crowd size, after all. And at Mar-a-Lago, the sets still suggest he’s a king.

It’s almost as if—much like the ex-president himself—even the most emboldened supporters of Donald Trump now exist mostly in the frothy ether between Twitter and Truth Social, between Reddit and Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s busted memory chip. Asked to travel through corporeal time, in their actual bodies, to the streets of New York, where they might end up being deemed legally responsible for their actions, most of the zeal falls away. We can thank the January 6 committee and the prosecution of over 1,000 insurrectionists for the possibility that bodily, monetary, and liberty-based accountability may have been enough, this time, to deter another band of Trump enthusiasts from unloosing the violent protest he has repeatedly demanded of them in recent days.

Even so, the New York Times reports a Trump rally in lower Manhattan near the courthouses today (no paywall).

Scores of demonstrators from both sides began amassing hours before Mr. Trump, 76, was due at the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building, with a pro-Trump rally outside the courthouse headlined by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican from Georgia. …

…The appearance by Ms. Greene, who supports conspiracy theories and has falsely suggested that Democrats support pedophilia, had brought a crush of onlookers and counterprotesters.

Police were separating pro- and anti-Trump demonstrators in Collect Pond Park, keeping an aisle — and an array of officers — between the two groups, who were largely peaceful, though at least one small skirmish broke out. Ms. Greene’s arrival was accompanied by heavy security.

“Go back to Georgia!” one person shouted. …

…During a City Hall news conference on Monday, Mayor Eric Adams warned protesters from out of state to “control yourselves.”

“New York City’s our home, not a playground for your misplaced anger,” the mayor said, provoking a furious response from Ms. Greene, who falsely accused the mayor of sending “henchmen” to the pro-Trump event on Tuesday.

It might have been fun to see MTG subjected to the full NYPD crowd control treatment.  Your average henchmen are a mild and forbearing crew compared to New York’s finest. But the day isn’t over yet. Perhaps we can still hope.

Insider reports that only about 100 protesters showed up with Marjorie Taylor Greene. It isn’t clear if that number included just Trump supporters or all protesters. They were in Collect Pond Park, it says. As I recall, Collect Pond Park only occupies a square block or so. It’s basically a small pond and picnic tables surrounded by courthouses. Court employees eat their bag lunches there in nice weather.

Well, more later, I’m sure.