Without putting too fine a point on it, the gravamen of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s 34-count criminal case against former President Donald Trump is that he supposedly falsified business records as part of a scheme to conceal information about his alleged one-night stand with a porn star from voters. So, as the story of the Biden teams’ extraordinary efforts to cover up his long-time cognitive challenges unfold, we wonder if Mr. Bragg, and the presiding judge in the case, Justice Juan Merchan, will, on their own, reconsider the Trump prosecution which now appears, more than ever, unconscionable.
To be sure, last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity may force their hands, but under the circumstances, nothing short of volitional acts on their part can overcome the stench of partisan weaponization that has been attached to the case since its outset.
From the beginning, the case was treated by most legal commentators as a transparently political hit job. For one thing, combining a business records law with an election law in order to come up with a basis for a prosecution was as novel an approach as you can find. Surely though, novelty has little place in a forum where guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
In fact, while the Manhattan DA’s office has prosecuted falsification of business records cases before, there is no precedent for combining that law with another law, much less an election law. The Washington Post, certainly no editorial soul mate of Mr. Trump’s, reviewed the New York State Reporting Bureau as far back as 2000 for any relevant case law regarding this specific statue – and found none!
According to MSNBC, that fact indelibly marks Bragg’s decision to primarily premise the prosecution of a former president on that statute as even more novel.
The Trump prosecution reeks and it is really time for prosecutorial and judicial introspection – and self-correction.
