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| Trump -- Newsweek |
Other than former President Donald Trump, four Republicans have so far announced their candidacy for president. Democrats took note of Trump’s announcement in mid-November, 2022. Among them was Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who successfully indicted Trump for… aye, there’s the rub.
Bragg’s unsealed indictment showed Trump would be tried
on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records. Before the
indictment had been disclosed publically, Bragg strongly hinted that there may
be a new charge, as yet undisclosed, that would tie the felony charges to a
federal felony crime, thus vindicating his grand jury’s return of an
indictment.
“Get-Trump” leftists in the country have been salivating at
the prospect of an indictment for the entire length of the Trump presidency and
beyond. Finally, they supposed, Bragg would be able to attach the 34 donkeys’
tails to a stout donkey, a federal crime. There is, as yet, no visible sign of
a donkey. There is no mention in Bragg’s indictment of the federal crime that
would bear the weight of his hefty 34 charges, “related, according to a CBS report, “ to a $130,000
payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels made by Trump's former attorney and ‘political
fixer’ Michael Cohen in the days before the 2016 presidential election. Trump
has denied a sexual encounter with Daniels. Bragg's office announced last week
that a grand jury had indicted the former president.”
Trump was not cuffed in New York City, nor was a mugshot
taken of him, nor was a gag order imposed – unless, at some
future date in his rollicking presidential campaign, it could be determined by
presiding Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan that some stray remark of
Trump’s inflamed a hothead who then went on to disturb the peace.
What we appear to have here is a less than sound prosecution
pickled in politics.
Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., had worked on the Trump/Stormy
Daniel investigation without bringing charges of a kind endorsed by Bragg’s grand
jury, and Federal prosecutors had declined to prosecute Trump on federal charges.
When asked by CNN why Bragg had decided to bring a case Vance
previously had declined to prosecute, Vance said, “I’m sure that District
Attorney Bragg has new facts.” If so, they are well hidden in Bragg’s public
disclosures.
“Some wondered why Bragg revived a case he had appeared to
leave for dead just months ago,” Politico reported hours after
Bragg’s indictment was publically released. “Others questioned the specifics —
like how Bragg was able to elevate the ‘falsification of business records’
charges against Trump into felonies, a move that requires evidence that Trump
attempted to conceal a second crime. Still others focused on the delay in
bringing charges — six years after the core underlying conduct — and
anticipated that Trump will seek to toss the case for exceeding the statute of
limitations, despite the assessment of some legal experts that the case is
not time-barred.”
Bragg’s case against Trump relies heavily upon grand jury
testimony provided by Trump’s previous political-fixer lawyer Michael Cohen, a
star witness who previously had lied to investigators and, following his
imprisonment after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to
Congress, among other crimes has “spoken openly about his vendetta against
Trump since the two parted ways bitterly during Trump’s presidency,” according
to the Washington Examiner.
The Light Brigade, the Bragg directed District Attorney’s
Office, has bravely and – some would say, impetuously -- rushed in where others
had feared to tread.
Sharp legal critics noted during the past “history making”
week – the first time in U.S. history that a sitting or former U.S. president had
been booked, fingerprinted and formally charged with a felony crime -- that grand
Juries are largely prosecutorial instruments. Bragg’s case, they felt, was weak
because the prosecution so obviously appeared to be, at bottom, a pre-campaign political
stunt.
Utah Senator Mitt Romney, roughly treated by Trump in a Republican primary campaign, said
following Trump’s indictment, “I believe President Trump’s character and
conduct make him unfit for office. Even so, I believe the New York prosecutor
has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political
agenda. No one is above the law, not even former presidents, but everyone is
entitled to equal treatment under law.”
While there is a “separation of powers” doctrine hardwired into
the U.S. Constitution, there is no “wall of separation” here in the land of the
free and the home of the brave preventing the politicization of the judiciary
or the use of judicial means to bring low political opponents. Democrat
politicians, frequently during the Trump administration, their critics charge,
have used the judicial department as a “gotcha” avenging angel.
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