Trumped Up: When Language Outsmarts History

How a 300-year-old idiom found its perfect embodiment in the first American president convicted of felonies.

Idioms rarely wait three centuries to find their perfect host. But “trumped-up charges” has always been a phrase in search of a man. For generations it described fabricated prosecutions and political contrivances; now, it clings to the name of the first American president convicted of felonies. Language, it seems, has outsmarted history.

Donald Trump’s New York trial was momentous by any measure. Thirty-four guilty counts of falsifying business records—mundane in substance, seismic in consequence. The evidence was ample: checks, ledgers, testimony. On the facts, the jury had little room to doubt. What transformed bookkeeping misdemeanors into felonies, however, was a prosecutorial leap—arguing that the falsifications concealed an underlying election law violation. Ingenious, yes. Precedented, no.

Here lies the paradox. The very stretch that elevated these charges to felonies is what invites the old phrase back into play. By applying an untested legal theory, the prosecution secured conviction but also etched into the public imagination the suspicion of charges “trumped up.” That suspicion—whether justified or not—will trail this case through appeals, law reviews, and history itself.

Language is merciless with such ironies. McCarthyism was once a man, now it is a synonym for witch-hunt. Watergate was once a hotel, now it is the universal suffix of scandal. Trump’s trial, in the same fashion, may redefine trumped-up charges for future generations. To utter the phrase will be to summon the image of a former president, papers in hand, standing in a Manhattan courtroom while history folded an idiom around him.

Whether scholars come to judge the trial as justice served or justice stretched is an argument for the courts and for time. But in the lexicon, the verdict is already in: Donald Trump has given “trumped-up charges” the most literal meaning it will ever need.

By Scott Reese

August 22, 2025

Scott Reese is the voice behind this Substack, where history, culture, and commentary meet. Join the conversation by subscribing.