More than 100 years before former President Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan, President Theodore Roosevelt found himself in a New York courtroom.

It was a libel trial that landed Roosevelt, who was sued by the leader of the state Republican Party’s political machine at the beginning of the 20th Century, in the Onondaga County Court. 

“A former president of the United States, one of the most famous, most popular, most polarizing figures in America here, is defending himself in a libel trial,” Robert Searing, curator of history at the Onondaga Historical Association, said of the event.

He said Roosevelt's policies and personality made him some enemies in his own Republican Party of the day.

“He’s trying to get the levers and mechanisms of government to work for the mass of the people, and so this made him unpopular with a lot of his aristocratic friends and family,” Searing said.

James P. Murphy, administrative judge for the 5th Judicial District in Onondaga County, said it wasn’t until Roosevelt left the presidency that the intra-party tensions landed him in legal trouble.

In 1914, Roosevelt released a statement accusing New York State Republican Party chairman William Barnes of corruption and “machine politics.” Barnes in turn sued him for libel in a case that in 1915 was moved to Syracuse from Albany due to the Barnes’ influence in the capital city.

“This was solely about clearing his name and that’s how he took it,” Murphy said. “He said what he believed to be true, and now they were suing him, which in his mind, suggested that someone was calling him a liar, because if he wasn’t being truthful, he was lying,”

Roosevelt then spent several days in Syracuse not defending himself against making a false statement, but testifying to prove the allegations of corruption that Barnes insisted weren’t true.

“Roosevelt, defended, saying essentially, 'Yes, they were,' and the jury believed him,” Murphy said.

Murphy and Searing say the media frenzy and intense public interest in the trial stands out in the annals of Onondaga County history.

“Hundreds of people lined up outside the courthouse to get into this very court room that we’re in right now,” Murphy said from the room inside the Onondaga County Courthouse where the trial took place, still looking much as it did then.

“One-hundred-and-fifty people jamming the court room, there are barricades outside, throngs of people have come from all over to get a glimpse of this guy,” Searing said of the spectacle.

As for a comparison between Trump and Roosevelt’s legal troubles, Searing says Trump’s are far more expansive. But in both cases exists the question of the role that politics plays, and if the situation will sway public opinion.

While he says he can’t predict the answer for Trump, for Roosevelt, a master of the media like Trump, there was a bit more than a just a legal victory.

“It kept him in the news, which, on one level, was really what Roosevelt was after, media attention, keeping his name out there because he needed that to feed his ego. Sounds familiar,” Searing said.

Notably, the sinking of the RMS Lusitania took place midway through the trial, and it is noted that Roosevelt gave his views on the pivotal moment in world history from the Onondaga County Courthouse.

There is no record of if Barnes also made any remarks.