The day after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who campaigned for office on the ideology of “getting” Donald Trump, released a 34-count indictment alleging business records violations that somehow tainted an election, a long list of experts and commenters were on the attack – against Bragg.
“If the New York bench retains any integrity, this case will be thrown out as legally improper with an admonition to Bragg and his office for politicizing the criminal justice process,” warned constitutional expert Jonathan Turley.
“In a single indictment, Alvin Bragg bulldozed any high ground that the Democrats had after January 6th. He has fulfilled the narrative of the Trump campaign by supplying a raw and undeniable example of the politicization of the legal system.”
It was John Bolton, long a harsh critic of President Trump, who said he was “extraordinarily distressed” by how weak the case is. “I think it’s easily subject to being dismissed or a quick acquittal for Trump,” he charged.
Even John Bolton recognizes that this is a bogus case. Bolton just said he is "extraordinarily distressed" by the indictment and it is "even weaker than I feared it would be and I think it's easily subject to being dismissed or a quick acquittal for Trump." pic.twitter.com/zPEAaCjAhR
— MAGA War Room (@MAGAIncWarRoom) April 4, 2023
Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Just the News the indictment didn’t really include any crime.
“In his [Bragg’s] press conference, he mentions a couple of them, but they all relate to Stormy Daniels and other kinds of personal, sexual and other payoffs. That’s just not a crime. It’s just not a crime.”
Bragg staged a press conference shortly after Trump was arraigned to boast about his “years-long” effort to create a case against Trump.
Trump pleaded not guilty to the 34 counts regarding his business records.
Dershowitz openly wondered, “Where’s the victim here? Who was hurt? Stormy Daniels isn’t the victim. Who is the victim here? And do you ever devote that much time and resources – a lawyer’s time to such a victimless crime?”
Commentator Paul Mauro at Fox News noted the “flaws” in the case, including “the issue of selective prosecution; the escalation to a felony by use of a federal statute over which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has no jurisdiction; the question of how a 2016 event comes within the statute of limitations on the purported charges.”
He also cited the premature release of information about the 34 charges by someone who had access to the indictment.
He pointed out New York law makes it a felony to release that information.
“So, in light of that – and in light of the equities involved in this ‘historic’ case – where is the leak investigation into this unlawful grand jury disclosure?” he wondered. And he went on, “Trump’s lawyers should not only file for a change of venue, as the former president has suggested, but they should also refer Bragg’s office to the New York State Bar Disciplinary Committee for potentially violating this basic tenet of criminal procedure law if in fact, an attorney is the leaker. They should also refer the matter to the New York State attorney general because there is a potential criminal charge here.”
The Washington Examiner, in an unsigned editorial, said, “This indictment is nothing but a mockery of the legal system. The charges brought against Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg are exactly as dumb and weak as advertised. They are highly unlikely to stand up in court unless it is through the good graces of a politically motivated judge.”
The commentary explains several failings, including that the events happened “outside the five-year statute of limitations,” and were sustained only by Bragg’s “tortured reasoning” that Trump was unavailable to contact while he was president.
Further, “All 34 counts hinge on the word of a convicted perjurer, Michael Cohen, that would be required to establish Trump’s direct involvement in any bookkeeping chicanery. And even beyond that, it is doubtful that any crime was committed at all. After all, it is not illegal to pay hush money.”
It continued, “Finally, there is no question that no one except Trump would ever be prosecuted on such flimsy allegations. This is just Bragg’s moment in the limelight. This is the self-promotion extravaganza of a man so lacking in professional ethics that he campaigned on a subtle but unmistakable promise to go after Trump, boasting that he had sued the Trump administration more than 100 times and promising ominously to hold people in power ‘accountable.'”
The Examiner accused Bragg of trying to “interfere” with an election and “make a big name for himself.”
Turley, on the faculty at George Washington University and routinely a witness before Congress on constitutional issues, had more.
“Bragg knew that he had no criminal case against Trump. However, after running on bagging Trump for some crime (any crime), Bragg knew that many would not care if he had a basis for a criminal charge. He would be lionized to be the first person to ever indict a former president in the blind rage against Trump.”
He warned that Bragg is trying to litigate a federal election violation that the Department of Justice chose not to charge.
Further, the indictment itself “is a series of stacked counts of falsifying business records for the purpose of influencing the election. The indictment seems to address the lack of legal precedent with a lack of specificity on the underlying ‘secondary’ felony. Bragg has done nothing more than replicated the same flawed theory dozens of times. This is where math and the law meet. If you multiply any number by zero, it is still zero.”
He said, “This is a defining moment for many who have rationalized this abuse of the criminal justice system. For those attorneys, they have reached the point described by Robert Oppenheimer after the development of the atomic bomb. He stated ‘In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humour, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.'”
He said, “The same is true for many in our profession. While some of us have warned that Mar-a-Lago could present a serious threat to Trump, we have warned that the Bragg prosecution is the denial of the core legal principle of blind justice. This expensive, drawn out effort would not have occurred for anyone other than Donald Trump. It is not just selective prosecution, it is exclusive prosecution for Trump and Trump alone.”
via wnd
