On Mar. 30 2023, former president Donald John Trump was indicted on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records – charges that stem from an incident wherein he convinced his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pay Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an affair. Trump falsely mentioned the payment as a business expense, a crime in New York.
On Friday, April 7 at the Political Roundtable Club’s weekly meeting, students voluntarily discussed the events.
“A former president has never been indicted before so we really don’t know how our members will react. Some will think the indictment is politically motivated and others will think that the indictment should not be politicized”, club leader Liam Coley ‘25 said. He added, “It is a big story when a former president is indicted in court, but I don’t feel this will have a large impact on our club. We will continue to discuss the story as it develops.”
During their meeting Alex Zhang ‘25 questioned “How did we even get here? How did we even get to this point? It’s been a wild three years… What specific events led us to this point?” Coley added, “It doesn’t matter if it’s politically motivated. Did he commit the crime or not, that’s what we have to answer.”
Political Roundtable was not the only place where the indictment was discussed. Kevin Flynn’s A.P. Government and Politics class also talked about it. “More people had heard about the Trump indictment than anything else the whole term,” Flynn says During class, “We talked about the facts as we knew them and I opened a little bit about the historical significance… In one of my sections, the students wanted to discuss the political strategy of the indictment… we’ll track it moving forward.”
“I’ve had students say to me privately they don’t feel they can share their thoughts in a lot of their classes when it comes to the political realm,” Flynn says. “I sort of leave that up to them. If they want to, I’m going to defend their right to do that, but I’m not going to force them and put them on the spot. The students I have are juniors and seniors, so a lot of them have that confidence to do it if they want to.”
The former president is set to go on trial in December 2023.
