Right: Then-president Trump December 3, 2020 (Eduardo Munoz, Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
March 31, 2023
The indictment of former President Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a dark day for our nation. No honest person can deny the Trump prosecution is politically motivated. Bragg is no honest broker. The far-left DA has openly acknowledged his mission to get Trump.
Incredibly, when running for New York DA, Bragg promised to focus on investigating Trump and that indicting him was “the number one issue”. Bragg also boasted that as New York Attorney General, he sued Trump more than 100 times.
Bragg is following in the footsteps of the ruthless secret police chief under communist tyrant Joseph Stalin who famously bragged, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” In a free country, prosecutors are not supposed to target a man, then look with a microscope under every rock to find/fabricate a crime- what Bragg has done to Trump in NY.
Bragg’s case hinges on a “hush money” payment paid to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s then-attorney and now-convicted felon Michael Cohen paid Daniels from his personal funds. The Trump Organization later reimbursed him under the guise of legal expenses. The “crime”- the Trump team incorrectly recorded the payment in their personal bookkeeping files. Bring out the electric chair!
At best, the record-keeping offense is a misdemeanor, which prosecutors never charge. The Department of Justice’s Southern District of NY, the Federal Election Commission, and Alvin Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance Jr, investigated Trump’s alleged “crime” and declined prosecution. Bragg also initially refused to indict Trump, prompting the resignation of two prosecutors in his office, one of whom wrote a book critical of Bragg entitled “People vs Donald Trump”.
Almost a year and a half into his tenure, why is Bragg bringing the charges now? Does anyone believe if Trump was not running for re-election and surging in the polls, Bragg would divert taxpayer resources to an alleged petty offense by a former President of the United States? Of course not! Undoubtedly, Bragg also knows that achieving a conviction against Trump in solidly blue Manhattan, where almost 90% voted for Joe Biden in the last presidential election, would be an easy feat.
In a move only worthy of third-world banana republics, to inflate the charges and get around the expired statute of limitations, Bragg bootstrapped a state misdemeanor charge to a federal felony charge -a campaign finance violation. Never before has this been done.
Bragg asserts that Trump paid Daniels to aid his political campaign. Trump is a married father of five with a global business enterprise. It is not even remotely reasonable for anyone to maintain that Trump had no other reason than his upcoming election to stop a porn star from publicly accusing him of an affair. Further discrediting the campaign finance violation charge, the Trump camp did not use campaign money to pay Daniels.
Further highlighting the egregiousness of Bragg’s case against Trump, Bragg’s star witness Michael Cohen is an admitted liar, convicted of numerous crimes, including tax evasion, bank fraud, and lying under oath. Moreover, in the past, Cohen vigorously denied that Trump was even aware of the payment to Daniels. In a 2018 letter written on Cohen’s behalf by his attorney to the FEC, Cohen asserted that:
“In a private transcaction in 2016, before the US presidential election, Mr. Cohen used his personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stepahnie Clifford [Stormy Daniels]. Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford…”
Cohen also holds an extreme bias against the former president. Since his release from prison, Cohen frequently appears on MSNBC and CNN, where he often spews venom against Trump. In a fair legal proceeding, the testimony of a congenital liar with an ax to grind against the defendant is worthless.
Equal treatment under the law is a bedrock of a functioning democracy. Unfortunately, in Bragg’s world, this American tenet is disregarded. On Braggs first day as Manhattan DA, he released a memo to his subordinates ordering the downgrading of certain crimes from felony cases to misdemeanors, including armed robberies and drug dealing.
Bragg’s memo stated his office “will not seek a carceral sentence” except for homicides and some other violent crimes causing severe injury. And no matter the crime, his office will never seek a life sentence -the maximum is 20 years.
Consequently, last year Bragg’s office reduced 52% of all felonies to misdemeanors, and only 29% of misdemeanor cases resulted in convictions. In other words, if you want to commit crimes with impunity, do so in Manhattan. The exception- if your name is Donald Trump and you are the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, a bookkeeping discrepancy is a felony.
President Trump’s arraignment is on Tuesday when he will be fingerprinted and have his mug shot taken. Undoubtedly, Bragg and his fellow compatriots on the left are salivating over the upcoming events around Trump’s indictment.
Founding father John Adams once famously stated that ours is a “government of laws and not of men”, meaning that in a free society, laws must be fixed and immutable to the whims of individual men and women. Unfortunately, Bragg and others on the left do not believe in “equal application under the law”.
The fall-out of the political prosecution of a former president has reached beyond our shores. El Salvador president Nayib Bukele yesterday tweeted that after the Trump indictment, the US has lost its authority to lecture other nations about fair elections and democracy. He is not wrong.
The left has been wielding government powers against political enemies with increasing frequency- the FBI surveillance of Trump’s 2016 political campaign, the FBI entrapment of Trump’s National Security Advisor- Mike Flynn, multiple sham Russian collusion investigations, two Trump impeachments… etc.
However, a political criminal prosecution crosses a new low, which will forever change the landscape of our nation. Trump is the first former president to be indicted by a politically motivated prosecutor, but, be assured, he will not be the last.
