Unless there’s an eleventh-hour reprieve from a higher court, former President Donald Trump will become the first American president to face a criminal trial when it begins Monday in New York City.
Cue the sideshow.
Progressive Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg campaigned unethically on the promise to bring Trump down. Once he took office, Bragg exaggerated a nominal and time-barred misdemeanor into several dubious felonies by twisting the law and mangling evidence.
Bragg has transformed a single transaction into 34 different charges in what is known as “count stacking,” which good prosecutors never do. This is a clear window into an otherwise cloudy case.
The heart of the indictment is that in 2016, Trump used his lawyer to pay money to Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about a rumored affair that occurred a decade before, that he incorrectly recorded payments in business records, and that all violated election laws, even though they weren’t violated.
Surely, Bragg knows his case is spurious at best. However, it doesn’t matter. He is counting on a liberal trial judge’s sympathies — Juan Merchan — and the venom of a pool of jurors bound to be dominated by New Yorkers who hate Trump.
Once respected, the “impartial jury” idea is now treated as a mere inconvenience instead of a constitutional right.
It’s evident to many that the charges against Trump wouldn’t be brought against anyone else — unless their last name was Trump. The fact that he is the Republican’s choice for president in the November election is the only reason he’s being targeted under the false guise of prosecution.
The most corrupt aspect of DA Bragg’s case is that he still hasn’t identified the underlying crime that the former president allegedly committed. Of course, this is required under the 6th Amendment. However, no one, least of all Merchan, seems bothered by it. The judge ruled Bragg had presented “legally sufficient evidence” to proceed. Hmm…under what law?
In his malicious indictment, the DA vaguely accuses Donald Trump of “violating election laws” without pinpointing which ones were broken.
No relevant statutes are set forth. The reason for the masquerade is apparent — in a state case, a local prosecutor doesn’t have the authority to charge federal crimes allegedly committed during the process of a federal election—end of story.
None of this will stop Bragg or his flunkie judge. The District Attorney asserts any payments to Daniels were illegal campaign donations, disregarding the FEC investigation that concluded the payments didn’t constitute unlawful donations. Pay no mind that the Department of Justice studied the same expenditures and determined no crimes were committed. Even Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, chose not to charge Trump at the end of his years-long investigation.
It is established that money paid in exchange for non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) is common and perfectly legal. Individuals and corporations do it daily. You can assign the malicious term “hush money” if you want. But it is often an ordinary conclusion to settlement agreements and even encouraged by judges motivated to wrap up lawsuits that clog up their courts.
But Bragg is insistent that since Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-attorney, pled guilty to a federal charge of making an illegal contribution to a campaign, then that somehow makes former President Trump guilty as well. It doesn’t.
There are two reasons for this. First, one individual’s plea doesn’t determine another’s guilt. The second is that Cohen pled guilty willingly to a non-crime offered by federal prosecutors to gain leniency in his sentencing for other crimes he committed, including fraud.
In the end, Cohen was sent to jail for telling so many falsehoods that you’d need a calculator to keep track. However, Bragg has no reservations about featuring a confessed and chronic perjurer as his star witness against Trump.
A similar situation could be said of Daniels, who shared inconsistent stories about her possible relationship while posing for cameras in several interviews.
The only possible case Bragg could bring against the former president is falsely representing the NDA reimbursement as payment for legal services to Cohen. Even that unlikely legal theory — which requires evidence of an “intent to defraud” that is difficult to prove — constitutes a misdemeanor.
Overall, it’s barred by the statute of limitations that expired four years before the indictment. So, to circumvent the extinct statute, DA Bragg is twisting the law cleverly by attaching the misdemeanor to a felony that hasn’t lapsed but which he has no jurisdiction over.
An able and conscientious judge would have halted Bragg’s abusive maneuverings long ago. However, Merchan isn’t either. He is enabling the DA’s unlawful scheme to “get Trump” by ignoring fundamental rules of law and his own duty to see justice administered fairly.
Charges against Trump are a vital example of selective prosecution driven by political dislike. It’s a purely partisan attempt to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.
Manipulating the legal system by bringing many spurious criminal charges against an opponent to delegitimize his candidacy is “lawfare.”
It has gained popularity, particularly among media darlings who have happily embraced the righteous cause by declaring that Trump is guilty in the public’s opinion before any trial has started.
Will their trickery work? I don’t think so.
What the liberal press and Biden Democrats underestimate is the American voters’ intelligence. They see DA Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg, special counsel Jack Smith, and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s dirty tricks for precisely what they are — a harmful attempt to steal an election through abusing the legal system.
Instead of ruining Trump, their antics have backfired, shoring up his popular support. A growing number of people see the former president not as a villain but as a victim of unethical political enemies who weaponized the law to destroy him.
