National
Review Online
Tuesday,
April 04, 2023
Along-standing progressive
fantasy was fulfilled Tuesday afternoon when Donald Trump was arraigned on criminal
charges in Manhattan.
The
spectacle of a former president driving in a motorcade to the courthouse
and sitting at a defense table surrounded by his attorneys will long
be remembered as a symbol of the poisonous politics of the Trump era.
It’d be
one thing if there were a clear felony violation that is consistently
prosecuted, but the unsealed indictment is as weak as advertised.
The
case, we learned, involves not just a hush payment to Stormy Daniels, but to a
Playboy playmate Trump also allegedly had an affair with and to a former Trump
doorman who claimed (apparently falsely) to know the story of a Trump love
child.
Hush
payments aren’t illegal. But the reimbursements from the Trump Organization to
Trump fixer Michael Cohen were logged as legal expenses. This was misleading
and is potentially a misdemeanor. Prosecuting Trump over misdemeanors would be
too ridiculous even for Bragg, who campaigned on nailing Trump and showing
leniency to street criminals. It would also run afoul of the fact that the
statute of limitations has lapsed on any misdemeanor.
So Bragg
needed a way to transform the misdemeanors into felonies, which he can do, in
theory, if the false business accounting was in the service of another crime.
There’s been a great deal of speculation about what that other crime is, and
the much-anticipated indictment . . . doesn’t say.
Instead,
it catalogues every false business entry, deeming each a felony, in a
frowned-upon practice known as “stacking” to try to make an attenuated or
relatively minor offense seem more serious through sheer repetition.
Asked
why he didn’t mention the other alleged crime in the indictment at his
post-arraignment press conference, Bragg said the law doesn’t require its being
specified in the indictment. Even he must know that’s absurd. The purpose of an
indictment is to put the accused on notice of what crimes he has committed, and
this other “crime” that Trump allegedly concealed by misdemeanor records
violations is essential to the case; the indictment fails its most basic
function by failing to specify it.
At the
press conference he held after his subordinates unsuccessfully sought a gag
order against the defense, Bragg cited New York election law (which doesn’t
apply to a federal race), a plan to make false statements to tax authorities
(he didn’t say whether these alleged misrepresentations were ever actually
made), and a violation of federal campaign-finance law (although it’s doubtful
the payments constitute campaign expenses). If Bragg had evidence that Trump
committed state tax or election-law crimes, he wouldn’t hesitate to charge
them. And if he really thought he had jurisdiction to enforce federal laws,
he’d have proudly cited campaign-finance offenses as the crimes Trump was
supposedly concealing.
Bragg is
dragging the country through a political and legal melodrama over this?
The next
hearing is scheduled for early December, right when the Republican primaries
will really start heating up. Reportedly, the prosecution asked for a trial in
January, on the cusp of the Iowa caucuses. The defense asked for a delay. But
as long as Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, there
is no good time for this proceeding.
Wisely,
the judge didn’t impose the aforementioned gag order on Trump. It would have
been crazy to try to stop a presidential candidate from discussing a very
important public matter, especially when the prosecution is, in effect,
constantly making public statements through leaks. That said, Trump’s comments
on the case have been typically outlandish and irresponsible.
Trump
has surged in the polls with the attention he’s garnered from the case and the
sympathy it has won him among Republicans. This dynamic was inevitable, but GOP
voters — no matter how much they hate this case — should remember that getting
indicted over payments to a porn star is emphatically not a recommendation for
the presidency, or an indication of potential strength in a general election.
There is a reason that Democrats are all but openly rooting for Trump to win
the GOP nomination.
The
proverbial “walls” have finally closed in on the former president in this case,
and it’s a bad thing for the country and the rule of law.
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