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Joe Biden’s Fingerprints Are All Over the Criminal Prosecutions of Donald Trump

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JUNE 03, 2024

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MARGOT CLEVELAND

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In response to Americans’ outcry over the political prosecutions of Donald Trump and a Manhattan jury convicting the former president on 34 felony counts, President Joe Biden declared, “It’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged, just because they don’t like the verdict.” Coming from the Commander-in-Rigging, this proclamation means nothing.

Biden and those seeking to ensure his re-election have their hands all over Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of the former president. A lead prosecutor for Bragg during the trial was Matthew Colangelo. In December 2022, Colangelo left the Biden Department of Justice to “jump start” the criminal case against Trump. Biden had previously named Colangelo his acting associate attorney general—the third highest-ranking official in the DOJ.

There’s Plenty More Where That Came From

Colangelo’s role in prosecuting his former boss’s political opponent provides the most obvious evidence of the Biden administration’s involvement in the Manhattan D.A.’s criminal targeting of Trump, but the rigging started much earlier. As I previously reported, the incestuous relationship between the Manhattan D.A.’s office and Team Biden began as early as mid-February 2021. Then, “Bragg’s predecessor, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, arranged for private criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Pomerantz to be a special assistant district attorney for the Manhattan D.A.’s office.”

As The New York Times reported at the time, Pomerantz was to work “solely on the Trump investigation” during a temporary leave of absence from his law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison. “But even before being sworn in as a special assistant to the Manhattan D.A., Pomerantz had reportedly ‘been helping with the case informally for months.’” Even Democrats’ most reliable Old Grey Lady (of the evening) acknowledged, “the hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office.”

Soon after the Manhattan D.A. hired Pomerantz, two of his colleagues, Elyssa Abuhoff and Caroline Williamson, also took leaves of absence from Paul, Weiss to serve as special assistant district attorneys on the Trump investigation. “For a law firm to lend not one but three lawyers to the Manhattan D.A.’s office seems rather magnanimous, until you consider Paul, Weiss’s previous generosity to Joe Biden.”

As I previously reported, during Biden’s first run for the White House, “the law firm hosted a $2,800-per-plate fundraiser for about 100 guests.” Brad Karp, the chair of Paul, Weiss, also topped the list of Biden fundraisers, bundling at least $100,000 for the then-candidate. At the time, Karp wrote in an email: “As someone who cares passionately about preserving the rule of law, safeguarding our democracy and protecting fundamental liberties, I’ve been delighted to do everything I possibly can to support the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket.”

Biden’s relationship with Karp continued after his election, with the president including Karp and his wife at a state dinner with the Australian prime minister. Karp and his fellow Paul, Weiss lawyers continue to fund Biden’s re-election campaign. In fact, Biden’s connection to the firm is so strong Bloomberg branded Paul, Weiss the “Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center.”

But for Paul, Weiss lending Pomerantz to the Manhattan D.A.’s office to control the Trump investigation, the former president likely never would have been charged. According to Pomerantz, Bragg had decided “not to go forward with the grand jury presentation and not to seek criminal charges,” indefinitely suspending the investigation.

Pomerantz made those claims in the resignation letter he tendered to Bragg in early 2022, which was deliberately leaked to The New York Times. “Pomerantz’s letter and his claims that Bragg had suspended the Trump probe triggered a political firestorm, which the Manhattan D.A. sought to quell by telling the public the investigation was ongoing.” Soon after, Bragg capitulated, hiring Biden’s high-ranking DOJ lawyer, Colangelo, who proceeded to indict and convict Trump.

In contrast to the Biden-connected attorneys who secured Trump’s indictment and conviction, in late 2021, at least three career prosecutors in the Manhattan D.A.’s office asked to be removed from the investigation of Trump, reportedly “concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges.”

Not Just Manhattan

The Biden connection to the political targeting of Trump is not limited to the Manhattan D.A.’s office. In August 2023, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 other Republicans in a sprawling 98-page criminal indictment.

Earlier this year, court filings and testimony in the case related to motions to disqualify Willis and her former lover, Nathan Wade, revealed the Fulton County D.A.’s office had met with White House counsel in May 2022. Then, just three days after Trump announced his 2024 candidacy for president, Wade traveled to D.C. for an interview with the “White House,” according to Fulton County records. The Biden administration’s White House counsel’s office also dispatched two letters to Willis, according to one of her prosecutors.

Biden and his Democrat-run administration also have their fingers all over the remaining two criminal cases targeting Trump, both brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith. President Biden, according to an April 2, 2022, New York Times report, “As recently as late last year… confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted.”

The Times claimed Biden had expressed frustration with Garland’s “deliberative approach” and that the president believed Trump should be prosecuted. The president “has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.,” the legacy outlet reported.

Biden’s attorney general would eventually appoint Smith special counsel. Smith would later charge Trump in two separate indictments—one in Florida concerning documents the former president retained, and one in D.C. with various conspiracy to defraud and obstruction charges related to Trump’s challenging the outcome of the 2020 election.

Stretching the Law Past Its Breaking Point

With the D.C. indictment, the special counsel delivered to Biden just what he wanted—a prosecution of Trump “for his role in the events of Jan. 6.” To deliver for Biden, though, required Smith to stretch the federal criminal code to the point of breaking. In the case of two of the crimes charged, in the context of Jan. 6, 2021, defendants, the Supreme Court seems poised to limit the reach of the relevant statutes—a holding that could mean that Smith charged Trump with two non-crimes.

The final criminal case pending against Trump, Smith’s documents case, also connects back to the Biden administration. That case began when the DOJ launched an investigation prompted by a referral from the national archivist related to a dispute over presidential records—even though the same archivist declined to refer Hillary Clinton to the DOJ for mishandling classified documents. Later, a top aide to Smith, Jay Bratt, would meet with “White House officials multiple times, just weeks before Mr. Smith indicted former President Donald Trump.”

That case has been delayed after it was revealed the FBI agents who executed a search warrant obtained by the Biden administration had failed to keep the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in the same condition they were found, with the order of the materials mixed up. At the same time, it was revealed that the “classified cover sheets” depicted in the photographs of the evidence seized during the August 2022 search of Trump had been placed there by federal agents. The leak of those photographs falsely portrayed the former president as in possession of documents bearing classified cover sheets.

Biden can continue to deny his responsibility for the criminal targeting of his political opponent all he wants, but the facts tell a different story. So did the president’s malevolent smile on Friday when he was asked to respond to Trump calling himself a political prisoner and blaming the president directly.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Trump is Convicted: What Comes Next?

By: Jonathan Turley | May 31, 2024

This morning, many of us are emerging from the late coverage last night after the conviction of former President Donald Trump on 34 felonies. I was in the courtroom for the verdict, which hit like a thunderclap (particularly after a strange snafu with the judge). The question that everyone is asking: what happens next?

The scene in the court was a madhouse. Judge Juan Merchan told the court that the jury had not reached a verdict and would be dismissed for the day. Many reporters in the overflow courtroom were leaving when Merchan suddenly said that there was a verdict. People came running back into the courtroom. That was followed by 34 guilty verdicts.

I am obviously saddened by the verdict, but not surprised. Until the very end, I was hopeful that there would be a hung jury, a result that could restore some integrity to the New York criminal justice system. However, I previously noted that the jury instructions made conviction much more likely. I referred to the deliberations as a legal “canned hunt” due to instructions that made conviction a near certainty.

You could feel the weight of history in the courtroom, though we still have to see what history was made. For some, it was the conviction of the first president of a felony. For others, it was the key moment where the weaponization of the criminal system became clear and inescapable. It was both, obviously. Yet, the trial fulfilled narratives on both sides.

I ran outside to join the coverage. (One humorous moment was an officer screaming at reporters piling out of the courtroom to “walk not run.” It did not work.) It looked like the final judgment with everyone panicking to find an exit.

The scene outside the courtroom was surreal. The Trump supporters were outraged. The anti-Trump protesters were ecstatic, dancing and celebrating in the street.

While I have written a book about what I have called “the age of rage,” I am always shocked by such scenes. There is a dehumanizing element of these moments as people celebrate not just the first conviction of a president but a person. Rage is addictive and contagious. That was vividly evident outside the courtroom.

So, what happens next?

Obviously, appeals will be taken. As I said last night, we must keep the faith. Indeed, moments like this require us to take a leap of faith in a nation that remains committed to the rule of law. Manhattan is neither the entirety of the country nor the legal system. I believe that these convictions will be overturned, but it will take time. Judge Merchan committed, in my view, layers of reversible error. Eventually, this case may reach the United States Supreme Court.

It has been suggested that an appeal could be taken directly to the Supreme Court. I find that doubtful after the Supreme Court rejected an expedited process for Special Counsel Jack Smith in his federal prosecutions. It will work first through the New York appellate system.

As for the criminal process, Trump will have to meet with a probation officer for an interview. That officer will make recommendations to the court.

There is a possibility of a jail sentence for felonies that come with up to four years for each offense. Any jail sentences would almost certainly run concurrently. However, any jail sentence would be ridiculous in Manhattan for an elderly first-offender in a non-violent offense.

Consistent with his past commentary, MSNBC legal analyst and former Mueller aide Andrew Weissmann predicted that Merchan will give Trump jail time. He is not alone as legal analysts seemed to get caught up in a thrill-kill conviction.

It is much more likely that Merchan will impose a sentence without a jail sentence, though with fines. The most appropriate, in my view, would be a conditional discharge that requires Trump not to commit a new crime or face potential imprisonment.

Merchan could also tailor a sentence to require home confinement or even weekend jailing. Those options would raise serious conflicts with his campaigning and obviously, if elected, serving as president. Even the probation process will be awkward since a convicted defendant ordinarily has to get approval for any travel outside of the state from his probation officer.

Sentences can also include community service, counseling and other requirements.

After his ruling in this trial, it is impossible to rule anything out. However, any jail sentence would add even more outrage to an abuse of the criminal law system.

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Democrats, Not Trump, Are The Real Crooked Record-Keepers

BY: JOSEPH LOBUE | MAY 29, 2024

Donald Trump speaking about manhattan trial

JOSEPH LOBUE

President Trump is on trial in New York for allegedly falsifying business records because the bookkeepers in his organization recorded certain legal expenses — specifically, a legal settlement — as “legal expenses.” According to Democrat prosecutors, the bookkeepers should have recorded these payments as campaign contributions and expenditures because, they say, the payments were “intended” to “influence” the 2016 election “unlawfully” by concealing a purported sexual encounter with a pornographer.

Convoluted and bizarre enough for you yet? It should be. Because there is absolutely nothing “unlawful” about concealing a purported sexual encounter with a pornographer.

There is, nevertheless, a good deal of crooked record-keeping going on these days. But Democrats are the ones doing it.

False Characterization of Record-Keeping Requirements

Federal campaign finance law actually prohibits candidates from characterizing the payments at issue in the Trump case as campaign contributions and expenditures.

Brad Smith, a leading expert on campaign finance law and former member of the Federal Election Commission, was set to testify to that very thing in open court in the Trump case. Except Juan Merchan, the partisan Democrat Biden-donor judge presiding over the case, barred him from doing so.

To accept the prosecution’s case, one must conclude that New York law requires candidates to make business records that violate federal law. The supremacy clause of the Constitution does not allow that. So, it is Democrat prosecutors, not the Trump organization, that conspired to falsely characterize the record-keeping issues in the case.

Judge Merchan’s Manipulation of the Trial Record

Judge Merchan’s rationale for excluding Smith’s testimony is that judges traditionally instruct the jury on the law. The problem is that Merchan already allowed prosecution witnesses, and prosecutors themselves, to opine on their understanding of campaign finance laws. Once he allowed that, Merchan was constitutionally required to allow Trump to mount a defense on the same point.

Merchan also overlooked the fact that how people align their behavior with the law is based as much on the policies of the administrators who enforce the law as on the words of the statute itself. Smith, a former member of the regulatory body that enforces federal campaign law, was prepared to testify that the agency’s policy precludes candidates from treating payments like these as campaign contributions and expenditures.

This leads to the obvious conclusion that the Trump organization booked the payments in the manner that they did, not to “unlawfully” influence the 2016 election, but because they were (or at least thought they were) required to do so in that manner by federal law, completely negating the factual element of unlawful intent.

In fact, had Trump “intended” to “influence” the 2016 election by covering up the Stormy Daniels’ NDA payments, the easiest way to do so would have been to characterize the late October 2016 payments as campaign contributions and expenditures. This is because, under federal campaign finance law, contributions and expenditures made in late October of an election year do not need to be reported until after the election.

Unfortunately (and unjustly), the jurors in the New York case will not hear any of this exculpatory information because the partisan Democrat judge has excluded it from the record. Like I said, it’s the Democrats who have the record-keeping problem.

Talk About Falsifying Business Records to Influence an Election

Joe Biden is old. As Bill Maher puts it, Joe Biden is “cadaver-like” old. Polls show that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe Biden does not possess the mental fitness to serve another term as president. Do you think that might incentivize the White House to alter records to mitigate the political effects of Biden’s mental deterioration?

The White House is doing just that. It recently released the official transcript of Biden’s May 19 speech to the NAACP in Detroit. It was official. Except it wasn’t a transcript. It was a political circular designed to clean up the incoherent mess left by a mentally diminished man selfishly trying to hold onto the most difficult, demanding, and consequential job in the world.

The so-called “transcript” substantively corrected numerous significant instances of mental lapses or gibberish uttered by Biden, including the claim that he was vice president during the Covid “pandemic,” and that President Obama told him to go to Detroit and “fix it.”

Records? We Don’t Have to Show You Any Stinking Records!

There’s no need to falsify records if you improperly refuse to let the public see them at all. That’s what the White House did last week by claiming “executive privilege” over the audio recordings of Biden’s interviews with the special counsel investigating Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.

That’s the case where Biden took highly classified documents from the government while he was a senator and vice president, “willfully” retained them openly in dilapidated boxes in his garage, and then “willfully” disclosed the classified information to his ghostwriter as part of a lucrative $8 million book deal. Biden’s Justice Department declined to prosecute Biden, concluding that he would present himself to a jury like he did in his interviews — “as a sympathetic elderly man with a poor memory” — making it difficult to prove a felony “that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

In an effort to control the damage from the special counsel’s report, the White House and its allies released redacted transcripts of Biden’s interviews with investigators, apparently hoping that presenting the cold, written version of Biden’s testimony might minimize public fears about his declining mental state. It did not. Yet, it did open the door for Congress to subpoena the audio tapes of the interviews.

Last week, the White House barred the Justice Department from releasing those audio tapes to Congress on the grounds of “executive privilege.” However, the White House has already voluntarily released the transcripts of the interviews, so any privilege that may have existed has been waived. It is a basic principle of law that a party waives confidentiality privileges once the party voluntarily discloses any significant portion of the information. In fact, in these circumstances, the White House’s claim of executive privilege is not merely wrong, it is ludicrous.

The White House’s assertion of “executive privilege” is not really a legal one — it knows it has no chance of prevailing in court. Rather, the assertion of privilege is purely political. The White House believes it can conceal the audio tapes until after the election while the issue is litigated.

The audio tapes must be really, really bad for Biden. How do we know this? Because not releasing the tapes is really bad for Biden. The special counsel essentially reported that Biden appeared mentally diminished in his interviews. By refusing to release the audio tapes, Biden just confirms that perception.

There were no good options for the White House on the audio tape issue. Because the White House chose a bad option (withholding the tapes), one can only assume that the other option (releasing the tapes) was substantially worse.

Why Withhold Records if You Can Just Hide or Destroy Them Instead?

That, apparently, was the credo of one of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s top advisers — and possibly Fauci as well — during the Covid panic in relation to their dealings with EcoHealth Alliance and the now-admitted use of federal funding to perform gain-of-function research at the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology.

This month, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released shocking emails sent from the private Gmail account of David Morens, an adviser to Fauci, detailing an apparent effort by administrators to evade public open records laws — commonly referred to as “FOIA” — by improperly performing government work through private Gmail accounts or by deleting records altogether.

In one such email, Morens tells Peter Daszak, president of EchoHealth Alliance, that “there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his home. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

In another email, Morens confesses, “I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’d, but before the search starts, so i think we’re all safe. Plus, i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.”

Wow, that’s bad. But you have to understand, to Democrats, booking legal expenses as “legal expenses” is the real threat to democracy.

Joseph LoBue is a retired Naval officer and attorney.

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Getting Played: The Demolition of Cohen on Cross Examination Reveals “The Grift” to a New York Jury

By: Jonathan Turley | May 17, 2024

Below is my column on Fox.com on the approaching end of the Trump trial in Manhattan. With the dramatic implosion of Michael Cohen on the stand on Thursday with the exposure of another alleged lie told under oath, even hosts and commentators on CNN are now criticizing the prosecution and doubting the basis for any conviction. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper admitted that he would “absolutely” have doubts after Cohen’s testimony. CNN’s legal analyst Elie Honig declared “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a star cooperating witness get his knees chopped out quite as clearly and dramatically.” He previously stated that this case would never have been brought outside of a deep blue, anti-Trump district. Other legal experts, including on CNN and MSNBC, admitted that they did not get the legal theory of the prosecution or understand the still mysterious crime that was being concealed by the alleged book-keeping errors. The question is whether the jury itself is realizing that they are being played by the prosecution.

Here is the column:

In the movie “Quiz Show,” about the rigging of a 1950s television game show, the character Mark Van Doren warns his corrupted son that “if you look around the table and you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”

As the trial of former President Donald Trump careens toward its conclusion, one has to wonder if the jurors are wondering the same question.

For any discerning juror, the trial has been conspicuously lacking any clear statement from the prosecutors of what crime Trump was attempting to commit by allegedly mischaracterizing payments as “legal expenses.” Even liberal legal experts have continued to express doubt over what crime is being alleged as the government rests its case.

There is also the failure of the prosecutors to establish that Trump even knew of how payments were denoted or that these denotations were actually fraudulent in denoting payments to a lawyer as legal expenses.

The judge has allowed this dangerously undefined case to proceed without demanding greater clarity from the prosecution.

Jurors may also suspect that there is more to meet the eye about the players themselves. While the jurors are likely unaware of these facts, everyone “around the table” has controversial connections. Indeed, for many, the judge, prosecutors, and witnesses seem as random or coincidental as the cast from “Ocean’s Eleven.” Let’s look at three key things.

1. The Prosecutors

First, there are the prosecutors. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg originally (as did his predecessor) rejected this ridiculous legal theory and further stated that he could not imagine ever bringing a case where he would call former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, let alone make him the entirety of a prosecution.

Bragg’s suspension of the case led prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz to resign. Pomerantz then wrote a book on the prosecution despite his colleagues objecting that he was undermining their work. Many of us viewed the book as unethical and unprofessional, but it worked. The pressure campaign forced Bragg to green-light the prosecution.

Pomerantz also met with Cohen in pushing the case.

Bragg then selected Matthew Colangelo to lead the case. Colangelo was third in command of the Justice Department and gave up that plum position to lead the case against Trump. Colangelo was also paid by the Democratic National Committee for “political consulting.” So a former high-ranking official in the Biden Justice Department and a past consultant to the DNC is leading the prosecution.

2. The Judge

Judge Juan Merchan has been criticized not only because he is a political donor to President Biden but his daughter is a high-ranking Democratic political operative who has raised millions in campaigns against Trump and the GOP. Merchan, however, was not randomly selected. He was specifically selected for the case due to his handling of an earlier Trump-related case.

3. The Star Witness

Michael Cohen’s checkered history as a convicted, disbarred serial perjurer is well known. Now, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., is under fire after disclosing that “I have met with [Cohen] a number of times to prepare him.”

Goldman in turn paid Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, more than $157,000 dollars for political consulting.

Outside the courtroom, there is little effort to avoid or hide such conflicts. While Democrats would be outraged if the situation were flipped in a prosecution of Biden, the cross-pollination between the DOJ, DNC, and Democratic operatives is dismissed as irrelevant by many in the media.

Moreover, there is little outrage in New York that, in a presidential campaign where the weaponization of the legal system is a major issue, Trump is not allowed to discuss Cohen, Colangelo, or these conflicts. A New York Supreme Court judge is literally controlling what Trump can say in a presidential campaign about the alleged lawfare being waged against him.

The most striking aspect of these controversial associations is how little was done to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interests. There were many judges available who were not donors or have children with such prominent political interests in the case. Bragg could have selected someone who was not imported by the Biden administration or someone who had not been paid by the DNC.

There was no concern over the obvious appearance of a politically motivated and stacked criminal case. Whether or not these figures are conflicted or compromised, no effort was taken to assure citizens that any such controversies are avoided in the selection of the key players in this case.

What will be interesting is how the jury will react when, after casting its verdict, the members learn of these undisclosed associations. This entire production was constructed for their benefit to get them to convict Trump despite the absence of a clear crime or direct evidence.

They were the marks and, like any good grift, the prosecutors were hoping that their desire for a Trump conviction would blind them to the con.

Bragg, Colangelo and others may be wrong. Putting aside the chance that Judge Merchan could summon up the courage to end this case before it goes to the jury, the grift may have been a bit too obvious.

New Yorkers are a curious breed. Yes, they overwhelmingly hate Trump, but they also universally hate being treated like chumps. When they get this case, they just might look around the courtroom and decide that they are the suckers in a crooked game.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.

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Getting Played: The Demolition of Cohen on Cross Examination Reveals “The Grift” to a New York Jury

By: Jonathan Turley | May 17, 2024

Below is my column on Fox.com on the approaching end of the Trump trial in Manhattan. With the dramatic implosion of Michael Cohen on the stand on Thursday with the exposure of another alleged lie told under oath, even hosts and commentators on CNN are now criticizing the prosecution and doubting the basis for any conviction. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper admitted that he would “absolutely” have doubts after Cohen’s testimony. CNN’s legal analyst Elie Honig declared “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a star cooperating witness get his knees chopped out quite as clearly and dramatically.” He previously stated that this case would never have been brought outside of a deep blue, anti-Trump district. Other legal experts, including on CNN and MSNBC, admitted that they did not get the legal theory of the prosecution or understand the still mysterious crime that was being concealed by the alleged book-keeping errors. The question is whether the jury itself is realizing that they are being played by the prosecution.

Here is the column:

As the trial of former President Donald Trump careens toward its conclusion, one has to wonder if the jurors are wondering the same question. For any discerning juror, the trial has been conspicuously lacking any clear statement from the prosecutors of what crime Trump was attempting to commit by allegedly mischaracterizing payments as “legal expenses.” Even liberal legal experts have continued to express doubt over what crime is being alleged as the government rests its case.

The judge has allowed this dangerously undefined case to proceed without demanding greater clarity from the prosecution.

1. The Prosecutors

Pomerantz also met with Cohen in pushing the case.

Bragg then selected Matthew Colangelo to lead the case. Colangelo was third in command of the Justice Department and gave up that plum position to lead the case against Trump. Colangelo was also paid by the Democratic National Committee for “political consulting.” So, a former high-ranking official in the Biden Justice Department and a past consultant to the DNC is leading the prosecution.

2. The Judge

3. The Star Witness

Michael Cohen’s checkered history as a convicted, disbarred serial perjurer is well known. Now, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., is under fire after disclosing that “I have met with [Cohen] a number of times to prepare him.” Goldman in turn paid Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, more than $157,000 dollars for political consulting.

They were the marks and, like any good grift, the prosecutors were hoping that their desire for a Trump conviction would blind them to the con.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.

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Unfixable: Michael Cohen Faces a Reckoning of Biblical Proportions on Cross Examination

Buy: Jonatan Turley | May 14, 2024

Below is my column in the New York Post on the first day of the examination of Michael Cohen. He is expected to start his cross examination today. How bad will it be? After lying to Congress, courts, banks, and most everyone else, it will be bad. Years ago, Cohen threatened a journalist and told him “What I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting.” Well, that bad. On cross examination, Cohen faces a reckoning of biblical proportions.

Michael Cohen apparently wants a reality show but, if his testimony Monday is any indication, reality is about to sink in for not just Cohen but the prosecutors and the court. In stoking interest in his own appearance, the former Trump counsel promised the public that they should be “prepared to be surprised.” Thus far, however, Cohen has offered nothing new and, more importantly, nothing to make the case for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Just before he took the stand, the New York Post revealed that Cohen has been peddling a reality show called “The Fixer,” including working with Colin Whelan, who helped create “Joe Exotic: Tigers, Lies and Cover-Up.” Whelan appears interested to stay within that genre.

The Cohen pitch came with a cheesy promo video where he promised viewers, “I am your fixer.”

His first post-Trump client, Bragg, may have to disagree.

Cohen had only one advantage for Bragg: His notoriously flexible morals and ethics, which allows him to say most anything to support his sponsors.

With the prosecution’s case almost over, Bragg needed Cohen to clearly state that Trump intentionally committed fraud to conceal some still poorly defined crime. The problem is that Cohen only confirmed that Trump knew he was going to pay for the nondisclosure agreement and that it would be buried before the election. None of that is unlawful.

On his reality show promo, Cohen tells viewers that he is now there to fix their problems because “the little guy doesn’t usually have access to people with my particular set of skills.” Those skills seem to have escaped all of the witnesses who were compelled to work with him.

Witnesses detailed how Cohen was ridiculed as someone “prone to exaggeration” and unprofessional. Former Trump associate Hope Hicks said that Cohen was constantly trying to insinuate himself into the campaign and that he “used to like to call himself Mister Fix It, but it was only because he first broke it.”

Cohen only succeeded in confirming that he put together this payment and advised Trump to go forward with it. He assured him that it would effectively kill the story before the election. None of that is illegal. The “Fix it man” assured Trump that he fixed it and now wants Trump to go to jail for following that advice.

In the course of that representation, Cohen also admitted to taping his client without his knowledge, a breathtaking breach of trust and confidentiality.

This is the man who, according to Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Keith Davidson, expected to be Trump’s Attorney General. Davidson said that Cohen was “depressed and despondent” and “I thought he was going to kill himself” when he realized that he would not be made a cabinet member.

Cohen contradicted Davidson and insisted that he only wanted to be Trump’s personal lawyer.

He also admitted that he was unaware that the publisher of National Enquirer, David Pecker, had long killed negative stories about Trump and other celebrities for decades.

Cohen has yet to fix the problem for Bragg.

More importantly, he has added to the problem for Judge Juan Merchan. Many of us have ridiculed this case as devoid of any criminal act.

Indeed, Merchan has allowed the prosecutors to proceed without clearly stating what crime was being concealed.

It is not even clear why paying one’s lawyer a lump sum for his services and costs (including the NDA payment) was not a “legal expense” or how it was supposed to be entered on a business ledger.

Absent a sudden epiphany in his final testimony on Tuesday, Merchan should rule in favor of a directed verdict — that is, throwing the case out before it goes to a jury. If he instead sends this farcical case to the jury, it is Merchan, not Cohen, who may have a better claim to a reality show as the ultimate “Fixer.”

Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Tricks Of The Trade

A.F. BRANCO

on May 14, 2024 at 5:00 am

Only Trump is Gagged – Cartoon — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

Gag orders are there to protect the defendant in a criminal trial, but the defendant, Trump, is the only one with a gag order? Not Stormy Daniels, Not Michael Cohen, or the prosecution. This is a textbook example of a corrupt kangaroo court.

Bill Maher Destroys Alvin Bragg’s Sham Trump Lawsuit Following Release of Porn Star Stormy Daniels’ 2018 Interview (VIDEO)

By Jim Hoft – May 12, 2024

In a recent episode of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher criticized Stormy Daniels’ credibility in the ongoing hush money trial involving former President Donald Trump, orchestrated by Soros-backed New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg.
Trump was accused of paying porn star Stormy Daniels, AKA, Stephanie Clifford, ‘hush payments’ through his then-attorney Michael Cohen in a scheme to silence her and stop the story about their alleged affair from being published in the National Enquirer.
The payments made to Stormy Daniels did NOT come from Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. READ MORE…

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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Paralegal Testimony: Alvin Bragg’s Office Tampered with Evidence

BY: BRIANNA LYMAN | MAY 13, 2024

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s paralegal testified on Friday that his office deleted from their evidence three pages of phone records between convicted liar Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson without notifying former President Donald Trump’s legal team, according to reports.

Trump attorney Emil Bove questioned paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider on Friday about three pages of 2018 phone records between Davidson and Cohen that Bragg’s office had deleted, according to CNN. Additional phone records between Daniels manager Gina Rodriguez and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard regarding Daniels’ claim about her alleged affair were also deleted, according to The Epoch Times.

The altered call records were submitted into evidence, but Bragg’s office did not tell Trump’s team that three pages were missing, The Epoch Times reported. Tampering with evidence is a class E felony in the Empire State under New York Consolidation Laws, Penal Law § 215.40, which states in part:

A person is guilty of tampering with physical evidence when: Believing that certain physical evidence is about to be produced or used in an official proceeding or a prospective official proceeding, and intending to prevent such production or use, he suppresses it by any act of concealment, alteration or destruction, or by employing force, intimidation or deception against any person.

Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., took to X on Friday calling the developments “insanity.”

“How on earth is this not a felony committed by Bragg and his minions? It sure would be if team Trump did it,” Trump Jr. posted to X.

Insanity! How on earth is this not a felony committed by Bragg and his minions? It sure would be if team Trump did it.

I’d love if we had actual journalists that would report on this ongoing travesty.

Sadly, proper journalism is dead. They’re just scribes for the regime. https://t.co/vQkLDk3t1T
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 10, 2024

Bragg — who campaigned for office on targeting Trump — indicted the former president in April 2023 on 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records. Bragg alleges Trump’s lawyer at the time, Cohen, paid Daniels before the 2016 election to stay quiet about an alleged affair that the former president denies. Bragg alleges Trump made this payment to help win the 2016 election so the expenditure should have been classified as a campaign expense rather than a legal expense.

Trump’s defense also made a motion for a mistrial, which Judge Juan Merchan denied. Merchan also kneecapped Trump’s team from defending the former president by limiting what former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith could say when testifying about campaign finance-related issues, noted Steve Roberts and Oliver Roberts in The Federalist Friday.

Smith was expected to testify, as Roberts and Roberts note, that “almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to ‘influence an election’” though “not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.”

Merchan ruled Smith can now only testify to the “general background as to what the Federal [Election] Commission is, background as to who makes up the FEC, what the FEC’s function is, what laws, if any, the FEC is responsible for enforcing, and general definitions and terms that relate directly to his case, such as for example ‘campaign contribution.’”

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.

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This Week In Lawfare Land: Prosecutor Misconduct Jeopardizes Another Case

BY: STEVE ROBERTS AND OLIVER ROBERTS | MAY 10, 2024

STEVE ROBERTS AND OLIVER ROBERTS

As the lawfare crusade continues, former President Donald Trump is racking up significant victories in court. Down in Florida, President Trump secured an indefinite delay in his criminal case involving alleged mishandling of classified documents. This delay was ordered following revelations that Special Counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors mishandled and misrepresented evidence, which is uniquely ironic given the subject matter of the underlying case.

In Georgia, where another criminal case is pending, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear President Trump’s attempt to remove Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis from the case. The Georgia Court of Appeals is set to consider and decide this issue in the coming weeks.

It is becoming increasingly likely that the ongoing Manhattan criminal case is the only trial that President Trump will face before the November election.

Here’s the latest information you need to know about each case.

Manhattan, New York: Prosecution by DA Alvin Bragg for NDA Payment

How we got here: In this New York state criminal case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who The New York Times acknowledged had “campaigned as the best candidate to go after the former president” — charged former President Donald Trump in April 2023 with 34 felony charges for alleged falsification of business records.

Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen paid pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement in which she agreed not to publicize her claims that she had an affair with Trump (who denies the allegations). Nondisclosure agreements are not illegal, but Bragg claims Trump concealed the payment to help his 2016 election chances and in doing so was concealing a “crime.”

The trial began on April 15, and jury selection was completed on April 19. Judge Merchan, a donor to Biden’s campaign and an anti-Trump cause in 2020, has issued a gag order on President Trump generally prohibiting him from publicly speaking on possible jurors, witnesses, and other personnel in this case.

Latest developments: This week, the jury heard testimony from porn performer Stormy Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford. Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal are central to this case because prosecutors allege that former President Trump paid them off and then falsified business records, to prevent negative media stories during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels alleges that she had a sexual encounter with President Trump in 2006, but President Trump denies the affair.

On May 8, President Trump’s attorneys cross-examined and discredited Stormy Daniels, highlighting her history of being a pornographer, her strip club tour, and her history of profiting off allegations against Trump. That same day, Judge Merchan denied a second attempt by President Trump to dismiss this case for a mistrial. President Trump’s attorneys argued that Stormy Daniels’s testimony was unfairly prejudicial against Trump due to its inconsistencies and unnecessary detail, which could improperly influence the jury.

The jury is soon expected to hear from President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who is the prosecutor’s star witness. Another key witness, Karen McDougal, is not expected to testify.

Judge Merchan handed the prosecution another win by ruling that former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith, an expert on campaign finance-related issues, is limited as to what he can say in his testimony in the case. One of the defenses raised by the president’s legal team is that even if such payments were made, they were not necessarily to influence an election but rather to protect Donald Trump’s name, his brand, and his family. Chairman Smith was expected to testify in support of this theory, as he has long asserted that “almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to ‘influence an election’” but “not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.” But after Judge Merchan’s ruling, Smith can now only testify as to the “general background as to what the Federal [Election] Commission is, background as to who makes up the FEC, what the FEC’s function is, what laws, if any, the FEC is responsible for enforcing, and general definitions and terms that relate directly to this case, such as for example ‘campaign contribution.’”

Fulton County, Georgia: Prosecution by DA Fani Willis for Questioning Election Results

How we got here: The Georgia state criminal case is helmed by District Attorney Fani Willis and her team of prosecutors — which until recently included Nathan Wade, with whom Willis had an improper romantic relationship. Willis charged Trump in August 2023 with 13 felony counts, including racketeering charges, related to his alleged attempt to challenge the 2020 election results in Georgia. President Trump is joined by 18 co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, and others. Some of President Trump’s co-defendants have reached plea deals; others have petitioned to have the case removed to federal court, each attempt of which has been denied. A trial date has not yet been set, though prosecutors have asked for a trial to begin on Aug. 5, just a few short weeks after the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Latest developments: On May 8, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear former President Trump’s attempt to disqualify Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis from the pending criminal case in Georgia. Trial court judge Scott McAfee previously denied President Trump’s attempt to remove Willis from the case, but the Georgia Court of Appeals will now determine whether that denial was permissible.

Southern District of Florida: Prosecution by Biden DOJ for Handling of Classified Documents

How we got here: In this federal criminal case, special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors with Biden’s Justice Department charged former President Trump in June 2023 with 40 federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. The trial was set to begin on May 20, 2024, but this date has now been postponed indefinitely. Additionally, venue matters: The trial is currently set to take place in Fort Pierce, Florida, in a locality that heavily backed President Trump in the 2020 election. If that remains unchanged, the demographics of the jury pool may result in a pro-Trump courtroom.

Latest developments: On May 7, Judge Aileen Cannon postponed the trial date indefinitely in this case. In an order, Judge Cannon stated “that finalization of a trial date at this juncture … would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court.” This delay comes after Special Counsel Jack Smith and other prosecutors admitted to tampering with evidence, stating “there are some boxes [of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago] where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” Prosecutors previously represented to the court that the documents were “in their original, intact form as seized.” Judge Cannon also recently unredacted documents showing the Biden administration’s involvement in this case.

As a result of this indefinite delay, it is unlikely that a trial will occur before the November election.

Washington, D.C.: Prosecution by Biden DOJ for Jan. 6 Speech

How we got here: In this federal criminal case, special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors charged former President Trump in August 2023 with four counts of conspiracy and obstruction related to his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. President Trump’s lawyers have argued that immunity extends to actions taken by a president while acting in his official capacity and that, in any event, the First Amendment protects his right to raise legitimate questions about a questionable election process.

Latest developments: This case is currently stalled while awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court on former President Trump’s immunity claim.

New York: Lawsuit by A.G. Letitia James for Inflating Net Worth

How we got here: In this New York civil fraud case, Democrat Attorney General Letitia James — who campaigned on going after Trump — sued former President Trump in September 2022 under a civil fraud statute alleging that he misled banks, insurers, and others about his net worth to obtain loans, although the loans have been paid back and none of the parties involved claimed to have been injured by the deals.

Following a no-jury trial, Judge Arthur Engoron — whom Trump’s lawyers have accused of “astonishing departures from ordinary standards of impartiality” — issued a decision on Feb. 16, 2024 ordering Trump to pay a $454 million penalty. Trump has appealed this decision and posted a required $175 million appeal bond. The appeals court plans to hold hearings on the merits of the full case in September 2024.

Latest developments: This case mostly remains on hold.

Steve Roberts is a partner and Oliver Roberts is an associate with Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinksy & Josefiak PLLC. They can be reached at sroberts@holtzmanvogel.com and oroberts@holtzmanvogel.com.

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Stormy Daniels Day: Alvin Bragg Lights Dumpster Fire in Manhattan

By: Jonathan Turley | May 8, 2024

Below is my New York Post column on the unseemly scene in the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan as prosecutors used porn star Stormy Daniels to present lurid details on her alleged tryst with former president Donald Trump. It was a dumpster fire that Judge Merchan watched burn for a full day and then said the jury may have to disregard much of what they saw and heard.

Here is the column:

Before the start of the Manhattan prosecution of former president Donald Trump, I characterized the case of District Attorney Alvin Bragg as based on a type of obscenity standard.

In a 1984 pornography case, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote “I shall not today attempt further to define [obscenity]. . . . But I know it when I see it.”

Bragg has refused to clearly define the crime that Trump was seeking to conceal when payments for a non-disclosure agreement were listed as a legal expense. We would just know it when we saw it at trial. We are still waiting, but this week, Bragg seems to be prosecuting an actual obscenity case.

The prosecution fought with Trump’s defense counsel to not only call porn star Stormy Daniels to the stand, but to ask her for lurid details on her alleged tryst with Trump. The only assurance that they would make to Judge Juan Merchan was that they would “not go into details of genitalia.” For Merchan, who has largely ruled against Trump on such motions, that was enough. He allowed the prosecutors to get into the details of the affair despite the immateriality of the evidence to any criminal theory.

Neither the NDA nor the payment to Daniels is being contested. It is also uncontested that Trump wanted to pay to get the story (and other stories, including untrue allegations) from being published.

The value of the testimony was entirely sensational and gratuitous, yet Merchan was fine with humiliating Trump. Daniels’ testimony was a dumpster fire in the courtroom.

The most maddening moment for the defense came at the lunch break when Merchan stated, “I agree that it would have been better if some of these things had been left unsaid.” He then denied a motion for a mistrial based on the testimony and blamed the defense for not objecting more. That, of course, ignores the standing objection of the defense to Daniels even appearing, and specific objections to the broad scope allowed by the court.

This is precisely what the defense said would happen when the prosecutors only agreed to avoid “genitalia.” There was no reason for Daniels to appear at all in the trial. Even if he was adamant in allowing her, Merchan could have imposed a much more limited scope for her testimony. He could also have enforced the limits that he did place on the testimony when it was being ignored by both the prosecutors and the witness.

Merchan said that he is considering a limiting instruction for the jury to ignore aspects of the testimony. But that is little comfort for the defendant.

The court was told that this would happen, it happened, and now the court wants to ask the jury to pretend that it did not happen. Merchan knows that there is no way for the jury to unhear the testimony. More importantly, the prosecution knew that from the outset.

Daniels appeared eager to share the stories for the same reason that she was eager to sell her story. While she said that she “hates” Trump and wants him “held accountable,” Daniels is no victim. She had an alleged tryst with Trump and then sought to cash in on the story.

It is a standard form of extortion of celebrities. She later sought to cash in on the notoriety by appearing in strip clubs as part of a “Make America Horny Again” tour. She is in her element in Merchan’s courtroom.

In New York, the relevance or credibility of witnesses like Daniels is largely immaterial.

This is a district that voted against Trump, 84.5% to 14.5%, in the 2020 presidential election.

New Yorkers elected a state attorney general, Letitia James, who ran on the pledge to bag Trump on something — without specifying any crime.

Bragg then indicted Trump without clearly defining any crime — a debate that continues among legal experts after two weeks of testimony.

This is entertainment for many in New York — as is the thrill of the possibility of his going to jail under Merchan’s poorly written and arguably unconstitutional gag order.

When it comes to a thrill kill trial, who better to call than Daniels?

After all, she has been treated as a heroine by many, even being given the key to the city of West Hollywood, California, on “Stormy Daniels Day.”

Well, it was Stormy Daniels Day in Judge Merchan’s courtroom this week, and it is a bit late for the court to express shock over her testimony.

It is not the witness, but the case that seems increasingly obscene.

You have a judge who should have recused himself given his daughter’s major role as a Democratic activist and fundraiser.

You have a gag order that is allowing a New York Supreme Court justice to regulate what the leading candidate for the presidency may say in an election on the weaponization of the legal system.

You have a lead prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, who not only left the Biden Justice Department to revive this case, but once worked for the Democratic National Committee.

You have a case based on two dead misdemeanors shocked back into life by a still mysterious theory of an undefined crime.

In comparison, Daniels may be the only authentic part of the entire case in New York v. Trump.

Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

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Jonathan Turley Op-ed: A Disbarred, Serial Perjurer Walks into a Court and Asks to Take an Oath…Seriously, No Joke

By: Jonathan Turley | May 6, 2024

Below is my column in The Hill on the expected appearance of Michael Cohen in the Manhattan trial of former president Donald Trump. It will be a scene that is both mesmerizing and repellent for many, particularly in the bar.

Here is the column:

A disbarred, serial perjurer walks into a courtroom and asks to take an oath . . . No, seriously, this is not a joke. Michael Cohen will soon appear in a Manhattan courtroom in what is sure to be one of the most bizarre moments in legal history.

Cohen nearly comprises the prosecution’s entire case against former President Donald Trump under a criminal theory that still has many of us baffled. It is not clear what crime Trump was supposedly trying to conceal by making “hush-money” payments to former porn actress Stormy Daniels. What is clear is that none of the witnesses called in recent weeks has had any direct involvement with Trump on the payments. The witnesses had a lot to say about Cohen, and most of it was not good. They described an unprofessional, self-proclaimed “fix-it man” who created a shell corporation to buy out Daniels with his own money. The money was later paid back by Trump after the election, with other legal expenses.

So, Cohen will now make the pitch to the jury that they should put his former client in jail for following his own legal advice. This would be difficult even for a competent and ethical lawyer. For Cohen, it is utter insanity. But Bragg is betting on a New York jury looking no further than the identity of the defendant to convict.

Cohen has an impressive history of lies and exaggerations that may be unparalleled. Just weeks ago, another judge denounced him as a serial perjurer who was still gaming the system. This is not the defendant, mind you, but Alvin Bragg’s star witness.

I have been an outspoken critic of Cohen going back to when he was still representing Trump. His unethical acts were matched only by his unprofessional demeanor. In 2015, after students on the Harvard Lampoon played a harmless prank on Trump, Cohen was quoted by a student on the Lampoon staff as threatening them with expulsion.

When a journalist pursued a story Cohen did not like, he told the reporter that he should “tread very f—ing lightly because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting. Do you understand me?”

It is not hard to “understand” Cohen. He has long marketed his curious skill of voluntarily saying whatever the highest bidder wants him to say. He is a convicted perjurer who seems to lie even when the truth would do. Each time he is caught lying, he claims to be the sinner who has finally seen the light, seeking redemption.

When he was called before the House to testify against Trump soon after his plea agreement with the Justice Department (for lying), Cohen was again accused of perjury. House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), warned Cohen repeatedly that he had better tell the truth this time. Cohen then testified that Trump wanted him to work in his administration and offered him multiple jobs, which he turned down. He also claimed, “I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump.” Multiple sources have said that Cohen’s lawyer pressed the White House for a pardon, and that Cohen unsuccessfully sought a presidential pardon after FBI raids on his office and residences last year.

Even after being stripped of his law license and sentenced to three years in prison, Cohen continued the pattern. In 2019, Cohen failed to appear to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing an inability to travel due to surgery. He was then seen partying before the hearing date with five friends.

Even while in jail, Cohen was accused of lying to a court, in violation of an order for early release due to medical problems. He was ordered back into custody after being spotted at a high-end restaurant.

But the most impressive moment came when Cohen was put back on the stand under oath and matter-of-factly claimed that he had lied in his prior hearing, when he pleaded guilty to lying.

In his 2018 guilty plea before U.S. District Judge William Henry Pauley III, Cohen admitted to this conduct under oath.

Then, when Cohen was asked by Trump’s counsel, “Did you lie to Judge Pauley when you said that you were guilty of the counts that you said under oath that you were guilty of? Did you lie to Judge Pauley?”

Cohen responded, “Yes.” He was then again asked “So you lied when you said that you evaded taxes to a judge under oath; is that correct?” He again responded, “Yes.”

Most of us expected the Justice Department to bring new perjury charges at that point. It is rare that a defendant will actually take the stand and confess to perjury. However, Cohen was now useful again. This time, he was willing to deliver Trump. The Justice Department and Manhattan prosecutors were clearly willing to tolerate a little perjury for that prize.

Cohen’s conduct has already loomed large in the Manhattan proceedings. When Keith Davidson took the stand — the attorney who represented both Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — he recounted how Cohen was furious about not being offered a job in the White House. That directly contradicts Cohen’s congressional testimony. Davidson said that Cohen believed he might be named attorney general.

The account, if true, shows that Cohen is not only unethical, but also delusional. Cohen was found incapable of being an attorney, let alone an attorney general.

As prosecutors set the table for the grand arrival of their star witness, the testimony only got worse. David Pecker, the former owner of the National Enquirer, said charitably that Cohen was “prone to exaggeration.”

Davidson described Cohen’s profane and unprofessional conduct, stating that “the moral of the story is nobody wanted to talk to Cohen.” That may be the first time the word “moral” was used in the same line with Cohen.

Former Trump associate Hope Hicks mocked Cohen on the stand. She said that he constantly tried to insinuate himself into the campaign, without success, and that he “used to like to call himself Mister Fix It, but it was only because he first broke it.” Mind you, these were his fellow prosecution witnesses, not the defense.

These witnesses also contradicted the basis for the prosecution. Pecker said that he killed stories for various celebrities for years, and that he did so for Trump for over a decade before he ran for office. Davidson testified that he did not consider the deal to be “hush money” but simply “consideration” to kill bad press.

Hicks testified that she believed Trump wanted to kill the stories in significant part to protect his family from embarrassment.

Cohen could not even maintain a consistent position during the trial. Many of us have denounced the gag order on Trump that prevents him from responding to Cohen’s unrelenting attacks in the media. Cohen then promised to stop any further comments. That promise may have set a record for Cohen. He kept it for roughly three days before being accused of trolling for dollars on social media by attacking Trump.

District Attorney Bragg will now call this disbarred, serial perjurer to make the case against a former president. Under New York law, the oath administered by the court is supposed “to awaken the conscience and impress the mind of the witness in accordance with that witness’s religious or ethical beliefs.”

Before the bailiff administers the oath to Cohen, Judge Juan Merchan may have to warn spectators in the courtroom not to laugh. For anyone familiar with Cohen, it will sound like the ultimate punchline to a bad joke.

Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.

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NY VS. TRUMP: A TRIAL IN SEARCH OF AN IMAGINARY CRIME

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Gregg Jarrett Op-ed: NY vs. Trump: DA Bragg’s web of deceit starts to unravel

By Gregg Jarrett Fox News | Published May 3, 2024 5:00am EDT

Liars don’t win trials. The truth does. That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway.

Fulfilling that maxim is the challenge for the defense in the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump. Lawyers for the former President are tasked with exposing the legal deceit of District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the chronic dishonesty of his star witness, Michael Cohen. Compounding the challenge is a presiding judge, Juan Merchan, whose anti-Trump bias is conspicuous and disgraceful.

Back on the stand Thursday was the Beverly Hills attorney who negotiated payments for two women who demanded exorbitant cash from Trump in exchange for their silence about purported affairs. But the witness, Keith Davidson, admitted he had no contact whatsoever with the defendant and never met him. He dealt exclusively with Trump’s ex-lawyer, Cohen, who appeared to be acting entirely on his own. Nothing in his testimony involved crimes allegedly committed by Trump.

Davidson’s description of Cohen was both accurate and scathing —profane, offensive, unceasingly angry, and often threatening. Importantly, he depicted Cohen as a liar who turned bitter toward Trump when the newly elected president refused to take him to Washington, D.C. Jurors learned that Cohen had delusions of grandeur, envisioning himself as White House chief of staff or even attorney general of the United States.

MICHAEL COHEN TIKTOK VIDEOS, FUNDRAISING STUN LEGAL OBSERVERS: MAY HAVE ‘TORPEDOED CASE AGAINST TRUMP’

When his bubble burst, Cohen detonated like a nuclear device with seething hatred for his former boss that became a maniacal obsession. He raged to Davidson, “Jesus Christ, can you f***ing believe I’m not going to Washington after everything I’ve done for that guy?” Cohen seemed suicidal. This helps shape the defense theory that Cohen’s real objective in testifying against Trump is vengeance, not truth.

It’s hard to imagine that any sentient or ethical prosecutor would ever rest his case on the slumped shoulders of an unhinged and inveterate liar like Cohen. After confessing in 2018 to a string of shameful fabrications under oath, he was dispatched to prison for perjury and fraud. He is exactly what a federal judge called him recently, “a serial perjurer.” He’s the Talented Mr. Ripley…without the talent.

After appearing incessantly on television shows trashing Trump and calling him a criminal, Cohen has taken to TikTok during the trial to comment on the testimony and escalate his Trump tirades. His social media rants reap financial profits, which means that now, more than ever, he has an economic motive to lie. Indeed, his livelihood depends on it. Prosecutors’ heads must have exploded when they discovered what he was doing. What little credibility Cohen might have brought to the courtroom has vanished.

The mere mention of Cohen’s name in a court of law should equal “reasonable doubt.” He’s the definition of untrustworthy. Without him there is no legitimate case to be prosecuted. But instead of throwing in the towel by admitting that their central witness has gone rogue and self-destructed, Bragg persists in his contemptible pursuit of Trump. The D.A. is like an attack dog who won’t let go.

If there is a sleaze factor to the trial, it has rubbed off on Bragg’s witnesses more than Trump. Increasingly, the defendant resembles a victim of blackmail, which the law defines as a demand for money under threat.

If Bragg thought that Davidson would be a stellar witness for the prosecution, it may have backfired. He refused to call the Stormy Daniels payment “hush money or a payoff” while insisting that its proper definition is “consideration.” That is a fancy legal term in contract law that simply means an exchange of benefits. Here, it was compensation in return for a non-disclosure agreement. Booking it as a legal expense would, therefore, be manifestly proper.

MORNING GLORY: THE SHOW TRIAL OF DONALD TRUMP

This key testimony blows a gaping hole in all of Bragg’s 34 charges against Trump that he falsified private business records. What was false? The Daniels deal was a legal settlement negotiated by two lawyers that culminated in the execution of a legal document. Of course, it was a legal expense. What else would it be?

On cross-examination, Davidson melted like a Joe Biden ice cream cone when confronted with evidence that he was once investigated by law enforcement for criminal extortion, although never charged. He admitted that much of his practice involved “extracting” money (he preferred to label them “settlements”) from celebrities. He also “brokered sex tapes.” For the defense, it fits a pattern of squeezing prominent people for cash during times of vulnerability. People such as Donald Trump.

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If there is a sleaze factor to the trial, it has rubbed off on Bragg’s witnesses more than Trump. Increasingly, the defendant resembles a victim of blackmail, which the law defines as a demand for money under threat. In 2016, as the presidential election neared, the cash ultimatums intensified and, in the case of Daniels, Trump reluctantly capitulated.

However, that does not mean that Trump himself committed any crimes. His personal reimbursements to Cohen did not constitute a violation of election laws, as Bragg contends. The two government departments that have exclusive authority over such matters —the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department— correctly concluded that the payments to Daniels did not constitute an unlawful contribution.

In other words, there’s no there there. But Alvin Bragg could care less. He deliberately commandeered a state statute that has no application to a federal election and twisted it into a pretzel to bring a preposterous charge against Trump that is utterly unsupported by the facts and the law.

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The consternation for the defense is the jurors who may be predisposed to convict in a politically charged case involving a presidential candidate they might dislike. Are they capable of setting aside their personal beliefs to see through the prosecution’s charade? Or will they be snookered into believing that there is an election crime here, even though there is none?

When an unscrupulous prosecutor contorts statutes and deploys nefarious or lying witnesses to fool a jury into convicting an innocent defendant, it is an assault on the rule of law and an abuse of our justice system. In Manhattan, the crooked cards are stacked against Trump.

We’ll see whether liars win trials…or the truth.

Gregg Jarrett is a Fox News legal analyst and commentator, and formerly worked as a defense attorney and adjunct law professor. His recent book, “The Trial of the Century,” about the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” is available in bookstores nationwide or can be ordered online at the Simon & Schuster website. Jarrett’s latest book, “The Constitution of the United States and Other Patriotic Documents,” was published by Broadside Books, a division of HarperCollins on November 14, 2023. Gregg is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.” His follow-up book was also a New York Times bestseller, “Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History.”

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Supreme Court Signals It Could Hand Trump Partial Win in Immunity case

By: Jason Cohen / April 25, 2024

Demonstrators participate in a protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 25, 2024, in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Trump v. United States, a case about presidential immunity from prosecution on obstruction and conspiracy charges. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Supreme Court justices on Thursday appeared to signal they may hand former President Donald Trump a partial victory in his presidential immunity case by possibly sending it back to a lower court.

Trump’s attorney Dean John Sauer argued that presidents should have constitutional immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted during their presidency. Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, brought up the potential for the Supreme Court to send the case back to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which could delay a trial on Trump’s election interference case until at least after the election, according to Politico.

A three-judge appeals court panel unanimously rejected Trump’s immunity claim in a Feb. 6 ruling in the case originating from an indictment Jack Smith secured against the former president over his efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election.

Roberts pressed Department of Justice (DOJ) counselor to Smith, Michael Dreeben, asking if the appeals court and the DOJ were arguing that Trump lacked immunity by default because he had been indicted.

“They said that there is no reason to worry because the prosecutor will act in good faith and there is no reason to worry because a grand jury will have returned the indictment,” Roberts said. “Now, you know how easy it is in many cases for a prosecutor to get a grand jury to bring an indictment and reliance on the good faith of the prosecutor may not be enough in some cases, I‘m not suggesting here, so if it’s tautological, if those are the only protections the court gave that is no longer your position, you are not defending that position, why shouldn’t we send it back to the court of appeals or issue an opinion making clear that that’s not the law?”

“Well, I am defending the court of appeals’ judgment and I do think there are layered safeguards the court can take into account that will ameliorate concerns about unduly chilling presidential conduct,” Dreeben responded. “That concerns us. We are not endorsing a regime that we think would expose former presidents to criminal prosecutions in bad faith, for political animus, without adequate evidence. A politically driven prosecution would violate the Constitution … It’s not something within the arsenal of prosecutors to do.”

Moreover, Justice Amy Coney Barrett indicated the possibility of establishing a test for presidential protection from prosecution, that would not quite be absolute immunity, which could also lead to delays if lower courts rule on it, according to Politico.

Justice Clarence Thomas questioned Dreeben about why no other president has faced prosecutions before Trump.

“Over the not-so-distant past … certain presidents have engaged in various activity, coups or operations like Operation Mongoose, when I was a teenager, and yet there were no prosecutions,” Thomas said. “Why? If what you’re saying is right, it would seem that would have been ripe for criminal prosecution of someone.”

“So, Justice Thomas, I think this is a central question,” Dreeben responded. “The reason why there have not been prior criminal prosecutions is that there were not crimes.”

Justice Elena Kagan characterized Sauer’s argument that a president may have criminal immunity for staging a coup after she presented him with a hypothetical as “sound[ing] bad,” which Trump’s attorney agreed with.

“It certainly sounds very bad, and that’s why the framers have a whole series of structural checks that have successfully, for the last two hundred and thirty-four years, prevented that very kind of extreme hypothetical. And that is the wisdom of the framers,” Trump’s attorney argued.

Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Alvin Bragg has his Trump trial, All he Needs Now is a Crime

By: Jonathan Turley | April 24, 2024

Below is an expanded version of my column in the New York Post on the start of the Trump trial and much awaited explanation of District Attorney Alvin Bragg on the underlying alleged criminal conduct. The curious aspect of the case is that the prosecutors are stressing that they will prove largely uncontested facts. Indeed, if all of these facts of payments, non-disclosure agreements, and affairs are proven many of us (including liberal legal experts) are doubtful that there is any cognizable crime.

Here is the column:

For many of us in the legal community, the case of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg against former president Donald Trump borders on the legally obscene: an openly political prosecution based on a theory that even some liberal pundits have dismissed. Yet, this week the prosecution seemed like they were actually making a case for obscenity.

No, it was not the gratuitous introduction of an uncharged alleged tryst with a former Playboy bunny or planned details on the relationship with a former porn star. It was the criminal theory itself that seemed crafted around the standard for obscenity famously described by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964): “I shall not today attempt further to define [it] … But I know it when I see it.”

After months of confusion of what crime they were alleging in the indictment, the prosecution offered a new theory that is so ambiguous and undefined that it would have made Justice Stewart blush.

New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury that one of the crimes that Trump allegedly committed in listing the payments to Stormy Daniels as a “legal expense” was New York Law 17-152. This law states “Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”

So they are arguing that Trump committed a crime by conspiring to unlawfully promote his own candidacy. He did this by paying to quash a potentially embarrassing story and then reimbursing his lawyer with other legal expenses.

Confused? You are not alone.

It is not a crime to pay money for the nondisclosure of an alleged affair. Moreover, it is also not a federal election offense (which is the other crime alleged by Bragg) to pay such money as a personal or legal expense. It is not treated under federal law as a political contribution to yourself.

Yet, somehow the characterization of this payment as a legal expense is being treated as an illegal conspiracy to promote one’s own candidacy in New York.

The Trump cases have highlighted a couple of New York’s absurdly ambiguous laws. Under another law, New York Attorney General Letitia James secured an almost half of billion dollar judgment against Trump for loans where the alleged victims not only did not lose a dime but were eager for more business from his company. The law does not actually require any loss to a victim to impose a roughly $500 million penalty against a defendant that James pledged to bag in her campaign for office. While the over and under valuing of assets is common in the real estate area, James singled out Trump.

James declined to explain how this law could be used against other businesses since actual losses or injuries are not viewed as necessary. Businesses would just have to trust her and her judgment. In other words, the law could have sweeping applications, but we will know a violation under the civil law when we see it.

As with James, Bragg saw it in Trump. His predecessor did not see it. He declined charging on this basis. Bragg did to. He stopped the investigation. However, after a pressure campaign, Bragg might not be able to see the crime, but he certainly saw the political consequences of not charging Trump.

In New York, prosecutors are expected to have extreme legal myopia: they can see no farther than Trump to the exclusion of any implication for the legal system or legal ethics. Of course, neither he nor his office has never seen this type of criminal case in any other defendant. Ever.

We have never seen a case like this one where a dead misdemeanor from 2016 could be revived as a felony just before any election in 2024. The misdemeanors in this case, including falsifying these payments, expired with the passage of the statute of limitations. But Bragg (with the help of Matthew Colangelo, a former top official in the Biden Justice Department) zapped it back into life by alleging a federal election crime that the Justice Department itself rejected as a basis for any criminal charge.

So now there is a second crime that is hard for most of us to see, at least outside of New York. Trump is accused of conspiring to promote his own candidacy by mislabeling this payment, even though it was part of a larger legal payment to his former counsel, Michael Cohen.

They do not see a crime in analogous mislabeling of payments by Democratic candidates. Take Hillary Clinton who served as senator from New York and ran for president against Trump. For months before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign denied that it had funded the infamous Steele dossier behind the debunked Russian collusion claims. That was untrue. When reporters tried to report on the funding story, one journalist said Elias that “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’”

It was later discovered that the funding was hidden as legal expenses by then-Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias. (The FEC later sanctioned the campaign over its hiding of the funding.). Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

Elias even went with John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, in speaking with congressional investigators and Podesta denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS.

While the funds were part of the campaign budget, they were listed as legal expenses and the Clinton people continued to insist that such payments to a former intelligence figure to put together the dossier was a legal expenditure.

It is not clear if Trump even knew how this money was characterized on ledgers or records. He paid the money to his lawyer, who had put together this settlement over the nondisclosure agreement. Cohen will soon go on the stand and tell the jury that they should send his former client to jail for following his legal advice.

In addition to running for president, Trump was a married host of a hit television show. There were ample reasons to secure an NDA to bury the story. Even if money was paid to bury these stories with the election in mind, it is not unusual or illegal. There was generally no need to list such payments as a campaign contribution because they were not a campaign contribution in the view of the federal government.

It is not even clear how this matter was supposed to be noted in records. What if the Trump employee put “legal settlement in personal matter” or “nuisance payment”? Would those words be the difference?

Again, it is not clear. But that does not appear to matter in New York. The crime may not be clear or even comprehensible. However, the identity of the defendant could not be clearer, and the prosecutors are hoping that the jury, like themselves, will look no further.

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Prosecutors Accuse Trump Of ‘Criminal Scheme’ To ‘Corrupt’ 2016 Election While Russia Hoaxers Walk Free

BY: BRIANNA LYMAN | APRIL 23, 2024

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In opening statements on Monday, Manhattan prosecutors sought to convince a jury that former President Donald Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.” Meanwhile, the perpetrators of the Russia-collusion hoax — the real criminal scheme that was orchestrated to meddle in that election — walk free.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg claims Trump broke the law after he classified payments made by his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pornographer Stormy Daniels, as “legal fees” rather than campaign expenditures. (It is not illegal to purchase negative press about oneself, and Trump likely would have run afoul of campaign finance laws if he had classified such an expense, which benefitted him personally rather than just his campaign, as a campaign payment.)

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, who formerly held a top post in President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, alleged Monday during opening statements that “this was a planned, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior.”

“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Colangelo continued, according to PBS News. “The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election. Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

Manhattan prosecutors seek to put Trump in jail for up to four years. Meanwhile, the operatives who invented a hoax accusing Trump of being a Russian asset in 2016, commissioned a dossier of fake oppo research, and shopped it to the FBI — which then used the shoddy “research” as a basis to illegally spy on the Trump campaign — have received a light tap on the wrist, if any punishment at all.

Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign lawyer who commissioned the discredited dossier, received no punishment. The DNC and the Clinton campaign — which together provided funds for oppo research firm Fusion GPS to hire former British spy Christopher Steele, who put his name on the so-called “Steele dossier” — were fined $105,000 and $8,000, respectively, for labeling the payments as “legal and compliance consulting” and “legal services.” Clinton herself, who personally approved the decision to leak the false accusations to the press, was still suggesting the 2016 election was “stolen” from her as recently as 2022 and has never received any repercussions for the Russia hoax.

Russian national Igor Danchenko, the “primary sub-source” whose testimony Steele relied on in creating the dossier, “fed Steele false information about the Trump campaign, which a Clinton booster had invented.” Danchenko was indicted by Special Counsel John Durham for lying to the FBI about a 2016 phone call he claimed he received from an anonymous person who he thought was Sergei Millian. Danchenko claimed the anonymous caller revealed a “conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and the Russians. These claims were added to the Steele dossier.

Evidence presented to the jury, as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland noted at the time, indicated that “Danchenko did not know Millian and had not received any telephone calls during the relevant time frame that might fit the description of the call Danchenko claimed he received.”

Nevertheless, a jury in a deep-blue Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. acquitted Danchenko in 2022.

Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was also acquitted, despite evidence suggesting he lied to then FBI-General Counsel James Baker in 2016. Sussman “presented Baker with data and whitepapers that supposedly showed the existence of a secret communications network between the Russian-based Alfa Bank and the Trump organization,” Cleveland explained. “According to the indictment [from Special Counsel John Durham], Sussmann was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and tech executive Rodney Joffe when he met with Baker, but falsely told his friend that he was coming on his own behalf to help the FBI.”

The only person who received any sentence was former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to forging an email to get a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. Clinesmith, according to Federalist CEO Sean Davis’ reporting on Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s findings, “altered an email from a separate U.S. federal agency, believed to be the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to falsely state that [Trump campaign affiliate Carter] Page had never worked with the CIA to investigate suspected Russia agents operating within the U.S.”

“In fact,” Davis wrote, “as Clinesmith was told by the operative, Page had worked with the CIA previously, as well as with the FBI.”

Clinesmith was sentenced to 400 hours of community service and one year of probation.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.

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Trump’s Jury Trial Will Be As ‘Fair’ As The Russia Hoax And 2020 Election

BY: BRIANNA LYMAN | APRIL 19, 2024

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Jury selection for 12 jurors wrapped up Thursday in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s lawfare against former President Donald Trump, with the next phase of the trial expected to begin as early as Monday. But with two selected jurors booted for potential bias and perjury and at least one juror who made clear she doesn’t like Trump’s “persona,” can he really get a fair trial?

Who Are the Jurors?

After two of the initial seven selected jurors were struck from the panel, another seven were chosen Thursday. The jurors will hear Bragg’s claim that Trump broke the law by allegedly classifying payments made by his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pornographer Stormy Daniels as part of a nondisclosure agreement as “legal fees” instead of campaign expenditures. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York declined to charge Trump in 2018.

The final selection of jurors is as follows:

A salesman originally from Ireland who follows MSNBC, The New York Times, the Daily Mail, and Fox News. This juror is reportedly set to serve as the case’s foreman, according to ABC News.
A corporate lawyer from Oregon who reads the NYT, Google News, and the Wall Street Journal. The juror “suggested that he could infer the former president’s intent without ‘reading his mind,’” according to ABC News.
A man who works in finance and follows Michael Cohen — a convicted liar and the prosecution’s star witness — on social media. The juror also said he believes Trump did some good for the nation, The New York Times reported.
A lawyer who told the court he has “political views as to the Trump presidency” in that he agrees with some policies but disagrees with others, according to The Times.
A product development manager who said she did not like Trump’s “persona,” according to ABC News.
A female health care worker who enjoys faith-based podcasts.
A woman who “works in an educational setting” and acknowledged that because Trump “was our president, everyone knows who he is,” according to The Times.
A businessman who likes to listen to podcasts on behavioral psychology.
A retired wealth manager who claims he has no opinions that would hinder his ability to be impartial.
An engineer who said, “No, not really,” when asked if he has strong feelings about Trump, according to the NYT.
An English teacher from Harlem who appreciated Trump speaking “his mind,” according to ABC News.
A female who works in technology and relies on the NYT, Google, Facebook and TikTok for news. According to the NYT, “she said she probably has different beliefs than Mr. Trump, but that ‘this is a free country.’”

Two jurors were struck Thursday, one who admitted her inability to be impartial and another who had a possible history of vandalizing conservative political posters. One female juror told the court “outside influences” could impact her decision-making and expressed concerns about her identity becoming public, according to the Associated Press (AP).

“Yesterday alone I had friends, colleagues and family push things to my phone regarding questioning my identity as a juror,” the woman reportedly said. “I don’t believe at this point that I can be fair and unbiased and let the outside influences not affect my decision making in the courtroom.”

A second juror was dismissed after the prosecution argued he may have been dishonest about his past when he claimed he had never been arrested. “Prosecutors said they found an article about a person with the same name who had been arrested in the 1990s for tearing down posters pertaining to the political right in suburban Westchester County,” the AP reported.

Will These Jurors Deliver a ‘Common Sense Judgment’?

The Supreme Court held in the 1975 case Taylor v. Louisiana that “The purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power — to make available the common sense judgment of the community as a hedge against the overzealous or mistaken prosecutor … or biased response of a judge.”

The Sixth Amendment is designed to protect the accused from any arbitrary and capricious trials perpetrated by a weaponized government. A jury of the accused’s peers is meant to check the power of the government, a right created in response to the British courts’ habit of permitting judges to compel juries to change their verdict if the outcome was not favored by the judge.

But from what we know of the Manhattan jury pool, it’s not clear these New Yorkers will be willing to check the government on a case that experts on both sides of the aisle have called “dubious.” New York County, which encompasses Manhattan, voted for Joe Biden over Trump 87 percent to 12 percent in 2020.

Trump’s lawyer objected to one potential juror who posted a video of a crowd of people celebrating Biden’s 2020 victory. Judge Juan Merchan decided to chastise Trump instead and refused to strike the potential juror for cause.

Another potential juror who was excused because of a job conflict told reporters outside of the courthouse that while she believes it is important for Trump to get a fair trial, she did not “approve of what he did as president.“

Meanwhile of the dozen jurors selected, a number said they get their news from corporate media like The New York Times — one of the outlets that spent years disparaging Trump and spreading false information about him.

Three NYT reporters won Pulitzer Prizes for their “reporting” on the Russia-collusion hoax, which they based on anonymous sources. But FBI official Peter Strzok, who ran the investigation into the alleged collusion, privately acknowledged the report was filled with “misleading and inaccurate” information, as pointed out by The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway.

Other jurors cited Google as a news source. Google “interfered” in elections at least 41 times over the past 16 years to harm candidates “who threatened [Google’s] left-wing candidate of choice,” a study from the Media Research Center found. In 2020, corporate media and Big Tech suppressed a bombshell report about the Biden family’s corrupt foreign business dealings mere weeks before the presidential election, adding to a pattern of burying negative press about Trump’s opponent while spreading lies about Trump.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.

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The Trump Trial in Manhattan is an Indictment of the New York Legal System

By: Jonathan Turley | April 15, 2024

Below is my column in the New York Post on the start of the Trump trial today in New York. I have long been critical of the case as a clear example of the weaponization of the criminal justice system. No one seriously believes that Alvin Bragg would have spent this time and money to prosecute what is ordinarily a state misdemeanor if the defendant was anyone other than Trump. One does not have to like Trump to repel from the spectacle about to unfold in Manhattan.

Here is the column:

The famous Roman philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero once said, “The more laws, the less justice.” This week, New York judges and lawyers appear eager to prove that the same is true for cases against Donald Trump.

After an absurd $450 million decision courtesy of Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will bring his equally controversial criminal prosecution over hush money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.

Lawyers have been scouring the civil and criminal codes for any basis to sue or prosecute Trump before the upcoming 2024 election. This week will highlight the damage done to New York’s legal system because of this unhinged crusade. They’ve charged him with everything short of ripping a label off a mattress.

Just a few weeks ago, another judge imposed a roughly half billion dollar penalty in a case without a single victim who lost a single cent on loans with Trump. (Indeed, bank officials testified they wanted more business with the Trump organization).

Now Bragg is bringing a case that has taken years to develop and millions of dollars in litigation costs for all parties. That is all over a crime from before the 2016 election that is a misdemeanor under state law that had already expired under the statute of limitations.

Like his predecessor, Bragg previously scoffed at the case. However, two prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, then resigned and started a public pressure campaign to get New Yorkers to demand prosecution.

Pomerantz shocked many of us by publishing a book on the case against Trump — who was still under investigation and not charged, let alone convicted, of any crime. He did so despite objections from his former colleague that such a book was grossly improper. Nevertheless, it worked. Bragg brought a Rube Goldberg case that is so convoluted and counterintuitive that even liberal legal analysts criticized it.

Trump paid Daniels to avoid any publicity over their brief alleged affair. As a celebrity, there was ample reason to want to keep the affair quiet, and that does not even include the fact that he is a married man. It also occurred before the 2016 election and there was clearly a benefit to quash the scandal as a candidate. That political motivation is at the heart of this long-delayed case.

It is a repeat of the case involving former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. In 2012, the Justice Department used the same theory to charge the former Democratic presidential candidate after a disclosure that he not only had an affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter but also hid the fact that he had a child by her. Edwards denied the affair, and money from donors was passed to Hunter to keep the matter quiet.

The Justice Department spent a huge amount on the case to show that the third-party payments were a circumvention of campaign finance laws. However, Edwards was ultimately found not guilty on one count while the jury deadlocked on the other five.

With Trump, the Justice Department declined a repeat of the Edwards debacle and did not bring any federal charge. But Bragg then used the alleged federal crime to bootstrap a defunct misdemeanor charge into a felony in the current case. He is arguing that Trump intentionally lied when his former lawyer Michael Cohen listed the payments as retainer costs rather than a payment — to avoid reporting it as a campaign contribution to himself. Thus, if he had simply had Cohen report the payment as “hush money,” there would be no crime.

Once again, the contrast to other controversies is telling. Before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign denied that it had funded the infamous Steele dossier behind the debunked Russian collusion claims. The funding was hidden as legal expenses by then-Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias. (The FEC later sanctioned the campaign over its hiding of the funding.). When a reporter tried to report the story, he said Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

Likewise, John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was called before congressional investigators and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.

Yet, there were no charges stemming from the hiding of the funding, though it was all part of the campaign budget.

Making this assorted business even more repellent will be the appearance of Cohen himself on the stand. Cohen recently was denounced by a judge as a serial perjurer who is continuing to game the system. Cohen has a long record as a legal thug who has repeatedly lied when it served his interests. He has a knack for selling his curious skill set to powerful figures like Trump and now Bragg.

For those of us who have been critics of Cohen from when he was still working for Trump, it is mystifying that anyone would call him to the stand to attest to anything short of the time of day . . . and even then, most of us would check our watches.

Fortunately, witnesses are no longer required to put their hand on the bible in swearing to testify truthfully in court. Otherwise, the court would need the New York Fire Department standing by in case the book burst into flames.

So, this is the case: A serial perjurer used to convert a dead state misdemeanor into a felony based on an alleged federal election crime that was rejected by the Justice Department.

They could well succeed in a city where nine out of ten potential jurors despise Trump. Trying Trump in Manhattan is about as difficult as the New York Yankees going to bat using beach balls rather than baseballs. It is hard to miss.

However, this is a Pyrrhic victory for the New York legal system. Whatever the outcome, it may prove a greater indictment of the New York court system than the defendant.

Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

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NY District Attorney Alvin Bragg Does the Unthinkable

By: Kevin Jackson | April 2, 2024

Alvin Bragg brought a bogus case against Donald Trump. And he knows it’s complete BS. But that didn’t stop him from serving the higher-ups.

Because that’s what Leftists do. But now Bragg showed some of his cards.

The NY AG and fathead minion of the Biden administration filed a shocking motion in court. He revealed to Joe Biden-donor Judge Juan Merchan that he wouldn’t object to a 30-day delay in his trial of Donald Trump. That trial date was set to begin on March 25.

Trump’s team requested a 90-day delay and for good reason. The prosecutors at the Southern District of New York finally produced over 30,000 pages of documents requested by the Trump defense lawyers. Thus, a 90-day extension seems reasonable to review all the materials. But why did Bragg okay the delay?

Bragg brought the case. He shouldn’t have needed any delay to prosecute his frivolous case. Yet he appears to use the new information as an excuse.

What could the prosecutors of the SDNY provide in a case that began as a misdemeanor where the statute of limitations expired? And then to have such a case elevated to a felony when there is as in the case of Letitia James, no hurt party?

“The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which accused Mr. Trump of covering up a sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, said the delay would give Mr. Trump’s lawyers time to review a new batch of records. The office sought the records more than a year ago, but only recently received them from federal prosecutors, who years ago investigated the hush-money payments at the center of the case,” The New York Times reported.

“In response to the new records — tens of thousands of pages of them — Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested that the trial be delayed 90 days. Although the former president frequently requests such delays, prosecutors consenting to any postponement makes one far more likely,” The Times also reported.

What took so long?

The people out to get Trump have had plenty of time to review documents. The fact that the Trump team is just getting them says either (1) they have nothing, or (2) they fabricated “evidence”.

Why these documents are important

Politico asked some of the same questions I did:

One mystery was why SDNY didn’t turn over all of these documents when Bragg asked for them in early 2023. Bragg only partially answers that question today. For instance, Bragg says that SDNY only recently obtained five FBI interview memos, so they can’t be blamed for failing to produce them a year ago. A sixth memo was in their possession then but outside the scope of Bragg’s subpoena.

While Bragg says his “review is ongoing,” he says the only materials he’s identified as relevant to the case are 172 pages of notes pertaining to lawyer MICHAEL COHEN’s meetings with special counsel ROBERT MUELLER and “fewer than an estimated 270 documents” from Cohen’s phones. Those records, Bragg claims, are mostly “inculpatory and corroborative of existing evidence” — in other words, bad news for Trump.

These documents will reveal nothing new to help Bragg. And the scenario reminds me of Trump’s former personal lawyer’s supposed bombshells. Each one yielded nothing, and ultimately Cohen ended up in prison.

Bragg brought this case on the legally dubious theory that Donald Trump falsely marked nondisclosure agreement settlement in October 2016 as for legal services. The crux of Bragg’s novel legal theory is that Trump tried to cover up an illegal campaign donation from Cohen.

I remind you that both the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission investigated this matter and determined Trump didn’t commit any campaign finance violation. Candidates can pretty much do whatever they want with their own money, and Trump financed much of his own campaign.

Trump’s team requested these documents – including the 172 pages of witness statements. They contend that these documents will bolster their case and prove that Bragg invented a crime out of thin air.

Major Problems on the Horizon for Democrats

Democrats’ insanity against Trump and everyone connected to Trump created major problems. Here’s the timeline.

Judge Merchan is set to oversee the trial of Steve Bannon on charges relating to the Build the Wall campaign in May. Thus, any delay in the Trump trial means that trial can’t start until after the Bannon trial.

Trump is winning in all areas of his classified documents case. Judge Aileen Cannon likely won’t put the Mar-a-Lago case on the schedule until after the election. A Trump win will change the complexity of that case significantly.

As for Bragg’s non-case, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig commented:

“I think there’s now for the first time a real question about whether this case gets tried before the November election.”

Even Honig’s timeline is optimistic. Because my bet is with a Trump win, this case gets tossed on Nov 6.

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Operation Deplorable: A Who’s Who Of The ‘Get Trump’ Crusade

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | NOVEMBER 03, 2023

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The 2024 Republican presidential front-runner is faced with 91 state and federal charges one year from Election Day. After a series of failed attempts to capture the criminal conviction of Donald Trump, Democrats have charged their primary political opponent with nearly 100 crimes to thwart the former president’s triumphant return to the Oval Office. Here’s a “who’s who” of the key players in the Democrats’ latest crusade to achieve the top item on their policy agenda.

Alvin Bragg

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was the first prosecutor to land the coveted indictment of Democrats’ Public Enemy No. 1. In April, the New York prosecutor unveiled a 34-count indictment against Trump, carrying a maximum 136-year prison sentence. The charges stem from 2016 hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels in a case prosecutors previously declined to pursue.

The Manhattan charges, however, marked the fulfillment of a campaign promise Bragg made two years ago to prosecute the former president. Prosecuting Trump was apparently the top issue of his platform in 2021.

“Bragg often reminded voters on the campaign trail that he helped sue the Trump administration ‘more than a hundred times’ as a deputy in the New York state attorney general’s office,” Reuters reported that year.

The 50-year-old prosecutor’s own supporters pointed to his ability to pursue Trump in court as a reason to back him. The New York Times reported on Bragg’s endorsement from a former U.S. attorney in July 2021.

“Preet Bharara, a former United States attorney in Manhattan who supervised Mr. Bragg and endorsed his candidacy, said Mr. Bragg had varied experience as a prosecutor, and that his work on white-collar crime and public corruption cases could come into play in the investigation into Mr. Trump,” the Times read.

Bragg was also promoted to his current office with financial support from left-wing billionaire financier George Soros. The super PAC backed by Soros, Color of Change, pledged to bankroll Bragg’s campaign with a seven-figure sum in the spring of 2021. Soon after the cash infusion, the committee pulled back $500,000 of the donation when Bragg faced allegations of sexual misconduct of his own.

Bragg’s record in New York, meanwhile, has been one of unleashed crime while prosecutors pursue politicized investigations against the most popular Republican in the country. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, Soros admitted to backing candidates who promised to be soft on crime, branded as “reform prosecutors.” Bragg has held up to the pledge by prioritizing Trump instead of dangerous criminals. According to The New York Times, major crime spiked 22 percent during Bragg’s first year in office.

Letitia James

While Bragg pursues criminal charges against the former president, New York Attorney General Letitia James has Trump in civil court on allegations of fraud. In September last year, the attorney general filed a $250 million fraud suit with the state Supreme Court in Manhattan, accusing the former president of inflating corporate assets to obtain financial benefits.

“We found that Mr. Trump, his children, and the corporation used more than 200 false asset valuations over a 10-year period,” said James at a press conference.

James, 65, won in a partial summary judgment a year later, and in October, the trial began after the judge found the Trump family, including Trump himself, liable for fraud. The judge in the case ordered the termination of Trump’s New York business license and will now examine charges by James to determine additional penalties. In October, an appeals court put a hold on the judge’s mandate to dissolve Trump’s business in the state.

The aggressive effort against the Trump family’s New York business empire marks another campaign promise fulfilled by the state attorney general. Similar to Bragg, James ran for office in 2018 on a platform to prosecute the president. When first campaigning for the statewide job five years ago, James railed against the Republican president as “illegitimate” and an “embarrassment.”

“NY Attorney General Letitia James has a long history of fighting Trump and other powerful targets,” headlined an Associated Press profile of James in September.

“Letitia James fixated on Donald Trump as she campaigned for New York attorney general, branding the then-president a ‘con man’ and ‘carnival barker’ and pledging to shine a ‘bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings,’” the AP reported. “Five years later, James is on the verge of disrupting Trump’s real estate empire.”

James was reelected last fall just more than a month after she unveiled the $250 million lawsuit against the Trump family. Now James is on the cusp of capturing Trump’s corporate exile from the Empire State.

Arthur Engoron

The state-friendly judge presiding over James’ civil lawsuit against Trump is a Democrat who held the former president in contempt last year over subpoena violations. Arthur Engoron is a judge in the New York Supreme Court’s 1st Judicial District who ran unopposed for the seat in the 2015 general election.

In September, Judge Engoron devalued the former president’s Mar-a-Lago Florida estate from between $426 million and $612 million, as estimated by the Trumps, to a mere $18 and $28 million.

[READ: N.Y. Judge Cherry-Picks Lowball Mar-a-Lago Appraisal To Find Trump Guilty Of Inflating Property Values]

The stunning devaluation stands in contrast to smaller properties at Palm Beach, which sold for far more. Rush Limbaugh’s former residence, for example, sold for $155 million despite a $51 million appraisal. Mar-a-Lago, meanwhile, is the only property at Palm Beach to face the waterfront on both the ocean and the waterway.

Last month, Engoron also implemented a gag order to prevent Trump from even speaking out against the accusations against him. Trump was fined twice over violations of the gag order for a combined $15,000.

Jack Smith

Jack Smith, 54, a veteran prosecutor with years spent at the Justice Department, was appointed last November to lead two of the federal efforts seeking Trump’s conviction. Now special counsel in a pair of cases prosecuting Democrats’ top political opponent, Smith was previously head of the DOJ public integrity unit from 2010 to 2015. Among his most notable cases was the prosecution of former Virginia Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell, whom the Supreme Court exonerated of a bribery conviction in 2016. Smith was also involved in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax scandal targeting conservative nonprofits.

Now Smith is spearheading the federal government’s criminal efforts against Trump regarding classified documents and the events related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. In June, Trump was indicted with 37 counts of mishandling classified information, with three more charges handed down in the case about two months later. Smith indicted Trump with an additional four charges in a separate case this summer over objections to electoral certification, such as Democrats have made for decades.

Tanya Chutkan

Smith’s team at the Justice Department could not have landed a more friendly judge in the government’s Jan. 6 case against Trump than U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan. An activist judge with an obvious animus against the former president and his supporters, the Obama appointee was assigned to preside over the politically fraught Jan. 6 case after building a reputation as “a tough punisher of Capitol rioters.”

“Other judges typically have handed down sentences that are more lenient than those requested by prosecutors,” the AP reported. “Chutkan, however, has matched or exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations in 19 of her 38 sentences. In four of those cases, prosecutors weren’t seeking any jail time at all.”

When Trump complained the federal charges against him amounted to election interference by the DOJ, Chutkan shrugged off the accusations, saying, “That’s how it has to be.” Chutkan previously condemned comparisons between the Capitol turmoil and the far-left riots that characterized the summer of 2020 in other rulings of pro-Trump demonstrators. The fiery riots, she claimed, were actually “the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights.” Chutkan said comparisons between the two “ignore[] a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”

In September, Chutkan predictably denied Trump’s request to recuse herself from the Jan. 6 trial. In October, Chutkan handed down another gag order to prevent the president from speaking publicly and openly about the case. On Nov. 1, Chutkan handed down an order allowing Smith’s team to conceal evidence from Trump’s attorneys that the DOJ has identified as “classified.”

Fani Willis

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia upset a six-term incumbent when she defeated her former boss, Paul Howard, three years ago. Willis, who beat Howard in the primary runoff, carried the general election unopposed after no Republicans qualified for the November contest.

Willis’ investigation of Trump and the former president’s campaign team was one of her first acts in office and will define her legacy. In August, the DA for Fulton County, which covers most of Atlanta, charged Trump with 13 counts related to the former president’s efforts to protest aspects of the 2020 election. The Georgia prosecutor also indicted 18 Trump allies, several of whom have taken plea deals. Trump adviser Jeffrey Clark, however, filed a motion on Oct. 31 to dismiss the “massive and grotesque abuse of prosecutorial power.”

A September report from The Federalist revealed Willis possesses evidence exonerating Georgia’s alternate electors but continues to pursue criminal convictions anyway.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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Making Jordan Neely the New George Floyd Is the Next Step in the Left’s War on America

BY: JONATHAN S. TOBIN | MAY 08, 2023

New York subway — If the veteran who restrained the homeless man is prosecuted, it will establish a right to terrorize subway passengers and help revive the ‘anti-racist’ assault on justice.

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JONATHAN S. TOBIN

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Daniel Penny is not going quietly to the slaughter. The 24-year-old Marine Corps veteran who took action when fellow subway passengers were being threatened by a maniacal homeless person has lawyered up and will need all the legal help he can get if he hopes to avoid spending decades in prison.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has assigned Joshua Steinglass, a veteran prosecutor who led the trial team in the case that prosecuted former President Donald Trump’s family business, to conduct the probe that will determine whether Penny will be put on trial for killing Jordan Neely. But the decision won’t be made in a vacuum. The liberal commentariat is already damning Penny as the civilian version of Derek Chauvin. Leftist politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are accusing him of having committed a “murder” and Democrat and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is saying Penny’s actions were unjustified and demanding that “justice” be given Neely’s family.

Neely, the 30-year-old homeless person who died during an incident on a New York City subway train on May 1, had a record of mental illness. He had been arrested 44 times for criminal conduct and had an outstanding warrant for felony assault. On an F train stopped at the Broadway-Lafayette Street subway station in Manhattan, he allegedly began acting in a threatening manner to other passengers. It was at that point that Penny restrained him and put him in what appears on a cell phone video of part of the incident to be a chokehold.

In doing so, it could well be argued that he prevented Neely from committing another crime against a fellow passenger. Video released Sunday also seems to show Penny put Neely in a recovery position after Neely was subdued and appeared to be OK.

But the reason this case is already a cause Celebre, leading to leftist demonstrations in the subways and an endless stream of articles in corporate media, is that Neely’s fate is blamed on the supposed indifference of the public to the lives of the homeless.

Broader Racial Ramifications

Penny’s fate will, as Peachy Keenan wrote in The Federalist, be a test of whether young American men should dare to act courageously when others are in peril. But there’s even more at stake in this case. With Neely being anointed as the new George Floyd, the questions of whether Penny was right to restrain Neely or if he used inappropriate force to do so are merely sidebars to a broader narrative about American racism.

Floyd’s death became a metaphor for a myth about systemic police racism. Floyd’s actions the night of his death, his criminal record, and the fact that his body was full of what might have been a lethal dose of fentanyl were dismissed as irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was that he was a black man and that the cop who had, in an act of undoubted callous brutality, snuffed out his life was white. In the name of a belief, however mistaken, that Floyd’s death was just one of countless incidents in which blacks were being slaughtered with impunity, millions took to the streets in “mostly peaceful” riots that shook the nation.

More than that, it set off a moral panic in virtually every sector of American life that elevated the woke catechism of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to a new secular religion — since accepted by the Biden administration as mandatory for every government agency and department — that treats color-blind policies and even the goal of equal opportunity as forms of racism that must be eradicated.

Parallels to 1984 Case

Penny’s actions might, for those with a long memory of controversial New York subway criminal controversies, have more in common with those of Bernhard Goetz than of Chauvin. In 1984, Goetz opened fire on four black teenagers he said were trying to mug him on a No. 2 train. In an era of rampant crime, Goetz was largely supported by public opinion and acquitted of attempted murder, though he was fined and sentenced to six months in prison for illegal weapons possession. One of the people he shot, who was paralyzed in the incident, later won a $43 million civil judgment against Goetz that, as late as 2017, still hadn’t been paid.

As racially charged as that incident was, nearly 40 years later, we are living in a very different post-Black Lives Matter world. Any New Yorker who rides the subways knows how dangerous they have been made by authorities’ willingness to tolerate the presence of threatening people. But someone who isn’t a “person of color” is always going to be assumed to be in the wrong in any violent confrontation today, when the claim that America is an irredeemably racist nation is treated as inarguable by the chattering classes.

The prosecutor in the Kyle Rittenhouse case told him that “everybody takes a beating sometimes” and that he had no right to defend himself against lethal threats from armed BLM rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Penny’s chances of winning a trial in a New York City courtroom in 2023 are immeasurably lower than were Goetz’s.

Leftist Campaign Against Justice

As such, and regardless of the facts of the case, the campaign against Penny must be viewed as merely the next stage in a long-running leftist campaign against the justice system in which pro-criminal prosecutors like Bragg, elected with the help of leftist billionaire George Soros, are in the forefront. The sympathy for Neely, which is framed as compassion for the homeless, is akin to the so-called decarceration movement that takes it as a given that too many nonwhite people are being jailed for crimes and calls to defund the police.

The prosecution of the ex-Marine will not just establish a precedent that there is a “right” of a deranged, drug-addicted person to terrorize others with impunity. It will also, like Floyd’s death or that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, or a dozen other equally dubious cases, be routinely cited from now on as proof of American racism and a reason for doubling down on woke policies that will further divide and racialize the nation.

Talk about our indifference to the lives of the homeless is gaslighting, since it is the policies of the political left that have allowed such persons to camp out on streets or in subway cars rather than be taken by police to shelters and hospitals. The freedom for the homeless that has been established in New York — where the “broken windows” policing of the administrations of Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg has been abandoned — means the rights of other citizens to a livable city are abrogated. When people like Neely can harass people into buying their safety with donations in honor of performances like his Michael Jackson imitations or violent rants, then the rule of law is dead.

Leftists believe that, like Floyd, Neely died for our sins as a racist nation. That is why he is now being elevated to the status of secular saint regardless of or perhaps even because of his dysfunction and willingness to threaten others. The Floyd case led to de-policing throughout the country as cops, the only defense minority communities have against the black-on-black crime that afflicts their neighborhoods, have backed down in the face of prosecutions and demonization.

Penny’s prosecution will now pump new life into the BLM movement and ensure that public discourse about race and crime will continue to ignore the facts in favor of ideological myths that will send America’s cities into even greater squalor, violence, and racial conflict.

Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for Newsweek. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.

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Judge Nukes Alvin Bragg’s Request To Quash Subpoena Because ‘No One Is Above The Law’

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | APRIL 20, 2023

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A federal judge on Wednesday denied Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s request for a court order to prevent the House Judiciary Committee from questioning a former prosecutor involved in the investigation of Donald Trump. Bragg, however, didn’t just lose on the merits. The court’s 25-page order eviscerated the Manhattan D.A. — and his former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz.

Two weeks ago, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, issued a subpoena directing Pomerantz to appear before the House Judiciary Committee at 10:00 on April 20, 2023. Pomerantz was previously a special assistant district attorney before abruptly resigning because Bragg had allegedly decided not to seek criminal charges against Trump.

Bragg responded to news of the subpoena by directing Pomerantz not to provide any information about his prior work to the Judiciary Committee. He also filed a complaint in federal court against Jordan and the committee, seeking an order declaring the Pomerantz subpoena invalid. Bragg simultaneously sought entry of a temporary restraining order to freeze the subpoena pending resolution of his lawsuit.

On Wednesday, federal Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil denied Bragg’s request to stop the Judiciary Committee from questioning Pomerantz. “Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition. No one is above the law,” Vyskocil wrote in a transparent swipe at the New York prosecutor who hung his pathetic indictment on that platitude.

While Bragg posited that the Judiciary Committee lacked a valid legislative purpose to issue the subpoena, Vyskocil rejected that argument. Congressional committees have the constitutional authority to conduct investigations and issue subpoenas, the court explained, and the court’s role is “strictly limited to determining only whether the subpoena is ‘plainly incompetent or irrelevant’” to any legitimate committee purpose. Because Jordan and the committee identified several valid legislative purposes underlying the subpoena, the court held Bragg could not quash it.

The court also held that the “speech or debate clause,” which provides that “for any Speech or Debate in either House,” Senators and Representatives “shall not be questioned in any other Place,” likely would prevent Bragg from suing Jordan and the committee.

Vyskocil also rejected Bragg’s argument that requiring Pomerantz to submit to questioning would infringe on the attorney-client and work-product privilege the Manhattan D.A.’s office held regarding communications Pomerantz was privy to. Here, the court stressed that the indictment of Trump occurred long after Pomerantz had resigned and that any privilege that may have existed was likely waived by Pomerantz publishing his book, “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account.”

“As its subtitle indicates, the book recounts Pomerantz’s insider insights, mental impressions, and his front row seat to the investigation and deliberative process leading up to” the Trump indictment, the court wrote. Yet Bragg did next to nothing to stop the publication of the book. Under these circumstances, “Bragg cannot seriously claim that any information already published in Pomerantz’s book and discussed on prime-time television in front of millions of people is protected from disclosure,” the court concluded.

It Gets Better

The court’s conclusion, however, wasn’t the highlight of the decision. Rather it was Vyskocil’s summary of how the country arrived at a place where it sees a state prosecutor filing a complaint in federal court against the House Judiciary Committee that includes 35 pages and a vast majority of exhibits that “are nothing short of a public relations tirade against former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump.”

That descriptor alone should give pause to anyone still believing Bragg’s indictment of Trump was righteous. But the opinion highlighted many more facts that confirm the targeting of Trump was a witch hunt.

For instance, it included many excerpts from Pomerantz’s book showing the criminal charges against Trump were ridiculous. So-called “hush money” payments to Stormy Daniels “did not amount to much in legal terms,” Pomerantz wrote. “Paying hush money is not a crime under New York State law, even if the payment was made to help an electoral candidate.”

The book excerpts quoted by the court included numerous additional problems Pomerantz saw with the legal theory Bragg eventually relied upon in charging Trump. Trump and his legal team have been highlighting these same many flaws. And now a federal judge just told the country that the “very experienced, sophisticated, and extremely capable attorney” Pomerantz — who had wanted to charge Trump — agreed with all (or most) of Trump’s legal arguments.

The court also noted that Pomerantz was a “pro bono” attorney for the Manhattan D.A.’s office. This should strike the public as strange, especially in light of the well-heeled credentials the opinion highlighted: his clerkship at the Supreme Court, his work as a federal prosecutor, and his many years as a criminal defense attorney and partner at the prominent New York City law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

While the court omitted any mention of Paul, Weiss’ connections to the Biden administration and Democrats, referring to Pomerantz’s “pro bono” status should raise some red flags.

If not, Vyskocil was more explicit elsewhere in the opinion, such as when she said she was “unmoved by Bragg’s purported concern at the prospect of ‘inject[ing] partisan passions into a forum where they do not belong.’”

“By bringing this action, Bragg is engaging in precisely the type of political theater he claims to fear,” the court wrote.

Beyond chastising Bragg for playing politics, Vyskocil rebuked him for his legal arguments, most devastatingly when Bragg argued the court should quash the subpoena of Pomerantz to ensure the grand jury’s secrecy.

“The secrecy of the grand jury proceedings in the pending criminal case was compromised before the indictment was even announced,” Vyskocil countered, citing CNN’s coverage of the charges against Trump based on leaks.

The court also unleashed a few zingers on Pomerantz. While Pomerantz complains he is in a “legally untenable position” because he will be forced to make a choice between “legal or ethical consequences” or “potential criminal and disciplinary exposure,” the court “notes that Pomerantz is in this situation because he decided to inject himself into the public debate by authoring a book that he has described as ‘appropriate and in the public interest.’”

And in response to Pomerantz making “it abundantly clear that he will seek to comply with Bragg’s instructions” not to respond to the subpoena, the court remarked that Pomerantz “claimed deference to the District Attorney’s command is a surprising about-face, particularly given that Pomerantz previously declined the District Attorney’s request to review his book manuscript before publication.”

What Next?

Those already well-versed in the outrageousness of the indictment will take delight in the court’s ripostes. The question remains, however, whether the opinion’s detailed summary of the flaws in Bragg’s legal theory — as identified by Pomerantz himself — will convince the remainder of the country that the indictment is a sham. Or will they discard Vyskocil’s decision as a Trump-appointee diatribe?

Maybe it will take the Judiciary Committee questioning Pomerantz on those precise weaknesses for the unconvinced to realize that once again Trump is right — it is a witch hunt.

We should know soon whether the questioning will go forward and whether Pomerantz will respond to the questions or follow Bragg’s directive. But if the latter, both Bragg and Pomerantz will find themselves back in front of Vyskocil because the Trump appointee wisely ruled that any future disputes related to the Pomerantz subpoena or other subpoenas related to the Judiciary Committee’s inquiry must be filed in the same case mater.

Vyskocil’s devastating conclusion likely caused Bragg as much heartache as her denial of his motion to declare the subpoena of Pomerantz invalid. For Bragg knows that absent reversal by the Second Circuit, the same outcome awaits further challenges of the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena power.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Manhattan D.A. Enlisted a Who’s Who of Biden Admin Buddies for Trump Takedown

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | APRIL 12, 2023

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg with Joe Biden and NY AG Letitia James — There’s quite a pattern to the Manhattan D.A. office’s unprecedented use of outside, Democrat-connected lawyers to investigate Trump.

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A New York City law firm with “strong ties” to Democrats and the Biden administration, and a big-time fundraiser for both, lent the Manhattan district attorney three lawyers to help him take down Donald Trump. This cohort included former Special Assistant District Attorney Mark F. Pomerantz, whose leaked resignation letter appears responsible for the Manhattan prosecutor’s decision to indict Trump.

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg became the first prosecutor to bring criminal charges against a former president when he moved forward last week with the arraignment of Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The pathetic, barebones indictment was quickly denounced by pundits on both sides of the political aisle. Then on Friday, the House Judiciary Committee raised additional concerns about the role Matthew Colangelo, the former No. 3 man in the Biden administration’s Department of Justice, played in the targeting of Trump.

While Bragg’s hiring of Colangelo to reportedly “jump-start” the investigation into Trump further indicates the indictment was politically motivated, the Manhattan D.A. office’s unprecedented use of outside, Democrat-connected lawyers to investigate Trump pre-dates Colangelo’s arrival by nearly a year.

A Pattern

In early to mid-February of 2021, Bragg’s predecessor, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, arranged for private criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Pomerantz to be a special assistant district attorney for the Manhattan D.A.’s office. Pomerantz, whom The New York Times noted was to work “solely on the Trump investigation,” took a temporary leave of absence from his law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where he had defended former Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., against alleged campaign finance violations. But even before being sworn in as a special assistant to the Manhattan D.A., Pomerantz had reportedly “been helping with the case informally for months…”

According to the Times, “the hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office.” One must wonder, then, how much more unusual it is for the Manhattan D.A.’s office to receive the “informal” assistance of a private criminal defense attorney. The legacy news outlet, however, justified the hiring of Pomerantz based on the “usual complexity” of “the two-and-a-half-year investigation of the former president and his family business.”

A few months later, the D.A.’s office welcomed two more outsiders, Elyssa Abuhoff and Caroline Williamson, who also both took leaves of absence from the New York powerhouse Paul, Weiss to work on the Trump investigation as special assistant district attorneys.

For a law firm to lend not one but three lawyers to the Manhattan D.A.’s office seems rather magnanimous, until you consider Paul, Weiss’s previous generosity to Joe Biden. During Biden’s White House run, the law firm hosted a $2,800-per-plate fundraiser for about 100 guests.

The chair of the Paul, Weiss law firm, Brad Karp, also topped the list of Biden fundraisers, bundling at least $100,000 for the then-candidate. “As someone who cares passionately about preserving the rule of law, safeguarding our democracy and protecting fundamental liberties, I’ve been delighted to do everything I possibly can to support the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket,” Karp wrote in an email.

Karp’s support of the Democrat presidential ticket isn’t surprising given that his fellow Paul, Weiss partner Robert Schumer is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s brother.

Biden’s connection to the firm, however, dates much further back, with the former secretary of homeland security in the Obama-Biden administration, Jeh Johnson, also heralding from Paul, Weiss. Once elected president, Biden nominated Jonathan Kanter, a former partner of Paul, Weiss, to serve as the top antitrust enforcement official at the Justice Department. In fact, according to Bloomberg, Paul, Weiss has “emerge[d] as Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center.”

A Resignation

The three Paul, Weiss alumni sent to the Manhattan D.A.’s office to bolster the Trump investigations would all make news, but for different reasons. Pomerantz first garnered headlines when he resigned as a special assistant district attorney in early 2022, after Bragg became Manhattan’s D.A.

In his resignation letter, leaked to The New York Times, Pomerantz said that in late 2021, Bragg’s predecessor, Vance, had “concluded that the facts warranted prosecution, and he directed the team to present evidence to a grand jury and to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump and other defendants as soon as reasonably possible.” But after replacing Vance as D.A., Bragg decided “not to go forward with the grand jury presentation and not to seek criminal charges at the present time,” Pomerantz wrote, adding, “The investigation has been suspended indefinitely.”

What Pomerantz’s letter did not say, however, was that in late 2021, “at least three career prosecutors asked to move off the investigation,” reportedly “concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges.” Instead, in his resignation, Pomerantz declared he believes “Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations,” that “the public interest warrants the criminal prosecution of Mr. Trump,” and that “such a prosecution should be brought without any further delay.”

Pomerantz later rejoined Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and authored a book about the Trump investigation.

Pomerantz’s letter and his claims that Bragg had suspended the Trump probe triggered a political firestorm, which the Manhattan D.A. sought to quell by telling the public the investigation was ongoing.

Criminal Charges

Meanwhile, the Manhattan D.A.’s office pushed forward in its criminal case against the Trump Corporation. A grand jury had indicted the Trump Corporation in late June of 2021 on charges it engaged in a scheme to avoid paying taxes on the salaries of high-level executives by instead funneling compensation through perks, such as luxury apartments and cars. A second Trump corporation would later be added to the criminal case that went to trial in late 2022.

The trial team that prosecuted the case included the other two Paul, Weiss attorneys on loan to the Manhattan D.A.’s office: Abuhoff and Williamson. Bragg borrowed a third outside attorney, Gary T. Fishman, from New York’s Democrat Attorney General Letitia James. Along with three regular members of the Manhattan D.A.’s office, the three “special assistant district attorneys” helped convict the Trump-related business entities in early December 2022.

After securing convictions of the two Trump corporations, Abuhoff and Williamson ended their “special assistant district attorney” relationship with Bragg’s office in December 2022 and went back to Paul, Weiss — a return that would be short-lived. Abuhoff rejoined the Manhattan D.A.’s office in February 2023, and Williamson returned the next month, but now both as regular members of the staff.

So short was their time back at Paul, Weiss, in fact, that one must wonder if the firm paid them bonuses following their departure from the Manhattan D.A.’s office. The Federalist posed this question to Paul, Weiss, but the inquiry went unanswered. Paul, Weiss also did not respond to questions concerning whether the lawyers received any compensation or Paul, Weiss benefits while on leave to the D.A.’s office.

Abuhoff and Williamson’s return to the D.A.’s office followed the news that in early December, Bragg had hired Matthew Colangelo from the Biden DOJ to “jump-start” the office’s investigation into Trump. Upon his inauguration, Biden had appointed Colangelo to serve in the No. 3 slot at the DOJ, showing the trust Biden has in the lawyer now charged with taking down his opponent Trump.

Colangelo had also previously worked in the Obama-Biden administration and as chief counsel and executive deputy attorney general in A.G. James’ office, where he and Fishman reportedly investigated Trump. As noted above, James would later lend Fishman to the Manhattan D.A.’s office, keeping with her campaign promise to “be a real pain in the -ss” to Trump. It’s no wonder House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan is concerned about Colangelo’s role in the unprecedented indictment.

Connecting the Dots

But the issue goes much beyond Colangelo, for it seems likely Bragg never would have hired Colangelo had Pomerantz’s resignation letter never been leaked to The New York Times. It’s outrageous that Pomerantz was reportedly “informally” advising the former Manhattan D.A. while working for the “Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center” law firm with extensive connections to Democrats. Equally outrageous is the fact that the same law firm lent the D.A.’s office three lawyers to bolster the Trump investigation.

It seems Bragg was swayed by New York politics to alter the communist boast of Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” The Manhattan D.A. had the man but couldn’t find the crime.

“Lend me your top attorneys to show me a crime,” is the new motto of the political machine New York Democrats built to purge the country, communist style, of Trump. That should horrify every American.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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12 Anti-Trump Pundits and Lawmakers Who Think Bragg’s Case is Terrible

BY: JORDAN BOYD | APRIL 05, 2023

Donald Trump arrives for arraignment in New York — Some of Trump’s most outspoken political enemies are casting doubt on Bragg’s attempts to send the former president to jail.

Author Jordan Boyd profile

JORDAN BOYD

VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX

For weeks now, former President Donald Trump and legal experts on the right predicted that the prosecution Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought against Trump was pathetic and partisan. Not long after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records during his arraignment on Tuesday, some of his most outspoken political enemies also began casting doubt on Bragg’s attempts to send the former president to jail.

Here are the notorious anti-Trumpers who willingly admitted that Bragg’s case against the leader of the Republican Party is a weak attempt to keep him from winning the White House in 2024.

Andrew McCabe

Former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe expressed disappointment on CNN on Tuesday after he realized that Bragg’s justification for elevating Trump’s charges to felonies “simply isn’t there.”

“I think everyone was hoping we would see more,” McCabe said.

He later added that “It’s hard to imagine convincing a jury that they should get there.”

"Disappointment," says Andrew McCabe on CNN regarding the indictment. "Everyone was hoping we would see more."

McCabe says the justification to try these misdemeanors as felonies "simply isn't there": "It's hard to imagine convincing a jury that they should get there." pic.twitter.com/PafSwiY2nZ
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) April 5, 2023

Jonathan Chait

Jonathan Chait, a political columnist at New York Magazine, wrote in the Intelligencer that Bragg’s case against Trump is littered with “legal deficiencies” and kicks off “the criminalization of politics.”

“Trump is being prosecuted charged because he paid hush money to a mistress, something it’s inconcievable he would have been charged over if he were never a candidate for office,” Chait tweeted.

Alan Dershowitz

Attorney Alan Dershowitz called Bragg’s case against Trump a “politicization of the criminal justice system” and “very, very dangerous for America.”

“This is a scandalous misuse of the criminal justice system,” Dershowitz told Sky News Australia. “It will create a terrible precedent in which other prosecutors will go after people of the opposing party.”

Carrie Cordero

CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero said she expected Bragg’s charges against Trump to be connected to the payments Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen made to Stormy Daniels but said the case itself is “a little underwhelming.”

“There’s not more to it. There are not more violations, tax violations. There’s not an incredible new set of facts that we didn’t know about publicly. It’s really the facts of this case, as they have existed for basically almost seven years,” Cordero said.

It’s a little underwhelming – – my reaction w/ @jaketapper & team @CNN in the moment the first ever indictment against a former president was unsealed. pic.twitter.com/USCc2LFCbM
— Carrie Cordero (@carriecordero) April 5, 2023

Sen. Mitt Romney

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney’s distaste for the former president is no secret but even his strong anti-Trump bias didn’t stop him from calling out the Manhattan D.A. for having “stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda.”

John Bolton

Trump-era National Security Adviser John Bolton says Bragg is “wrong on the applicability of the New York statute” that he charged Trump under.

“Speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, I’m extraordinarily distressed by this document. I think this 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,” Bolton explained on a CNN panel on Tuesday.

Even John Bolton thinks the indictment is a joke.
"I'm extraordinarily distressed by this document … This is even weaker than I feared it would be."
He predicts a "quick acquittal" because the case suggests everything a candidate pays for can be construed as campaign-related. pic.twitter.com/KTyBa72gLo
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 4, 2023

Bolton warned that “there is no basis in the statutory language to say that Trump’s behavior forms either a [campaign] contribution or an expenditure under federal law” which effectively renders Bragg’s case vulnerable to challenge.

“If you can construe the statute to cover this behavior then I think it violates the First Amendment,” Bolton said.

Ian Millhiser

Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox, called Bragg’s case against Trump “painfully anticlimactic” and said it was built on an “uncertain legal theory.”

In the second paragraph of the Vox analysis he penned on Tuesday, Millhiser acknowledges that “there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax” because “it is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him.”

“Bragg, in other words, has built one of the most controversial and high-profile criminal cases in American history upon the most uncertain of foundations. And that foundation could crumble into dust if the courts reject his legal arguments on a genuinely ambiguous question of law,” Millhiser reaffirms later in the article.

Noah Feldman

Bloomberg opinion columnist and Harvard law professor Noah Feldman wrote in The Washington Post on Tuesday that indicting Trump is a “Risky Bet for New York and the Nation.”

Feldman opens by invoking Democrats’ favorite Trump talking point — “no one is above the law”– but quickly criticized Bragg’s case against the former president as “poorly timed,” “legally weak,” and one that could easily result in a mistrial or acquittal.

“And not only may Trump potentially beat the charges, at trial or on appeal,” Feldman wrote. “He may be able to use those charges to create the impression among his supporters that he is a victim of politically motivated vendetta. In turn, that may make it harder for Georgia or federal prosecutors to bring and sustain much more serious charges against him.”

Mark Joseph Stern

“The Trump Indictment Is Not the Slam-Dunk Case Democrats Wanted,” Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern’s latest headline blared.

According to Stern, Bragg fails to disclose the specific election law that he believes Trump violated even though the “entire prosecution hinges on that question.”

“These charges will be difficult to prove,” Stern warned. “There can be no doubt that the district attorney faces an uphill climb.”

“They tell the story of a complex conspiracy to illicitly alter the course of the 2016 election—potentially, a powerful tale of corruption that persuades both the jury and the public of this prosecution’s necessity,” he continued. “But Bragg’s legal theory is, if not convoluted, a fairly confusing effort to patch together disparate offenses into one alleged crime, carried out over 34 illegal payments. This is not at all the slam-dunk case that so many Democrats wanted.”

Michael Avenatti

Even the lawyer who previously represented on-screen prostitute Stormy Daniels apparently cast doubt on Bragg’s ability to bring a successful case against Trump based on testimony from his former client.

“You can’t build a case on the testimony of Cohen and Daniels,” Michael Avenatti reportedly said.

Jonathan Lemire’s Democrat Sources

MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire told his fellow “Morning Joe” panelists last week that he and other Democrats are concerned Bragg’s case isn’t strong.

“Democrats I’ve spoken to, including some senior members of the White House, who do fear that because this case is weakest, that if it is brought first, that it will be potential — allow Trump to then paint this one as illegitimate, that it’s weak, and suggest that all of the other cases against him are as well. And that is something they’re worried about,” he warned.

Sarah Isgur

Harvard law grad and senior editor of the anti-Trump publication The Dispatch Sarah Isgur admitted on Twitter shortly after Trump’s arraignment that Bragg’s charges don’t make sense.

“He’s tying felony falsification of business records to another state crime that requires unlawful means…so now we need a third crime in order for this ‘felony turtles all the way down’ charge to work. The two state crimes can’t point back to each other!” she wrote.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – A Gift for Budweiser

A.F. BRANCO | on April 4, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-a-gift-for-budweiser/

A Gift to Budweiser for endorsing a mental health condition called gender dysphoria over real heroes like out military veterans.

Budweiser Transgenter — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Election Interference

A.F. BRANCO | on April 5, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-election-interference-2/

DA Bragg and the Democrats have weaponized the legal system against Trump to interfere with the 2024 election.

Democrat Election Interference — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden

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Trump Refused To Prosecute Hillary Clinton. Democrats Have No Such Restraint

BY: JOY PULLMANN | APRIL 03, 2023

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — If it is indeed ending democracy to jail political opponents, let’s be clear about which party is dragging the nation down that route.

Author Joy Pullmann profile

JOY PULLMANN

VISIT ON TWITTER@JOYPULLMANN

Bill and Hillary Clinton’s long, crooked political careers have been marked by multiple well-established high crimes and misdemeanors. Not the least of these was Hillary’s decision to commit what amounts to multiple felonies by using an insecure private email system to conduct top-secret public business while U.S. secretary of state under Barack Obama.

This criminal behavior that so-called U.S. justice systems openly and repeatedly refused to punish was undertaken to hide treasonous actions. Those include selling political access and favors to foreign adversaries, as journalist Peter Schweizer and others, including The Federalist and members of Congress, have repeatedly and thoroughly documented.

Selling political favors to foreign opponents, including communist China and authoritarian Russia, is clearly treason. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “treason” as: “The betrayal of allegiance toward one’s own country, especially by committing hostile acts against it or aiding its enemies in committing such acts.” The Clintons got filthy rich from it.

Clinton then compounded that with more treasonous conduct when she lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

It is by now well-established that Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid various actors to lie to U.S. intelligence agencies about Trump in an operation that eventually essentially negated the 2016 election — including encouraging federal employees’ treasonous behavior and two falsely predicated impeachments — and helped lose Republicans the 2020 election. Her campaign even tacitly confirmed this by paying a slap-on-the-wrist Federal Election Commission fine while still refusing to admit guilt for it a few weeks ago, seven years after the fact.

BREAKING: Last year Hillary Clinton quietly settled a campaign finance violation over reporting the *Steele Dossier* funding as legal services

She paid a fine and was never arrested pic.twitter.com/MoIoClVaQ8
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) March 30, 2023

Did FBI agents ever show up at Hillary Clinton’s house over her clearly criminal and treasonous “documents dispute”? Nope. The FBI’s director instead essentially confirmed she had committed multiple felonies but decided not to investigate or prosecute her for it because she was a presidential candidate for a major political party.

Hillary paid to have Trump falsely smeared as a traitor, laundering the slander through U.S. agencies that are supposed to provide equal justice under the law but now function as weapons to damage Democrats’ political opposition. In conjunction with others in the Obama administration that likely include Obama himself, she colluded with multiple security-state agencies to slander, undermine, hamper, and now threaten with jail time Democrats’ top political opponent.

That’s treason. It’s election erasure. It’s ongoing. And these traitors are all running about totally scot-free, while they jail their political opponents for what at best are misdemeanors, and for which they refuse to prosecute anyone on the left who perpetrates them — from street rioters all the way up to their presidential candidates.

My colleague Elle Purnell pointed out that when Trump countenanced chants of “lock her up” at his rallies over Clinton’s never-penalized repeat criminal behavior, Democrats lost their minds, and insisted this was the stuff of dictatorships, tyranny, and political repression.

“Dictatorships lock up the opposition, not democracies,” said Spygate intelligence official Michael McFaul. “Since when do Americans advocate jailing political opponents?” said top Spygate propagandist Julia Ioffe, then at Politico.

“In a democracy, you can’t threaten to jail your opponents,” Obama said in 2016. “We have fought against those kinds of things.” “In America, we don’t send our political opponents to jail,” tweeted an official Democratic National Committee Twitter account.

REMINDER In 2016 Trump got huge laughs for telling Hillary Clinton she'd be in jail if he was in charge of the law Then there was four years of agitprop about how this proved that Trump was "a dictator who wanted to imprison his political opponents."https://t.co/jJADWmsMSj pic.twitter.com/hNgTVnmI5W
— Michael Malice (@michaelmalice) October 21, 2022

The Clintons are clearly traitors willing to endanger their nation for profit, and it would be fully just to prosecute them as such. Yet as president when he had the chance, Trump decided not to pursue it. According to Trump Attorney General Bill Barr’s recently published memoir, “Trump brought up the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and surprised Barr by saying that he had wanted the matter to be dropped after the 2016 election,” according to a review of Barr’s memoir in the fall 2022 Claremont Review of Books.

“‘Even if she were guilty,’ he told Barr, “for the election winner to seek prosecution of the loser would make the country look like a ‘banana republic.’”

Ever since riding down his golden escalator, Trump has been ceaselessly vilified as a tinpot dictator, an evil supervillain, an authoritarian, the second coming of Adolf Hitler. But Democrats cannot change the facts, which include that Trump had fully legitimate justification to prosecute his horribly corrupt political opponent and refused to do so. They can make no such argument for themselves.

So, if it is indeed the stuff of banana republics and ending democracies to jail one’s political opponents, let’s all be clear about which political party is dragging the nation down that route. And let all in authority who care about equal justice under the law begin fiercely applying Democrats’ standards to them until they stop perverting justice to destroy our country.

The no-holds-barred legal shutdown and prosecution of leftist insurrectionists filling state capitols in support of a transgender child murderer would be one such proportionate response.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her just-published ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. Her many books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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If ‘No One Is Above The Law,’ Democrats And Their Partisan Pawns Would Be Arraigned, Not Trump

BY: JORDAN BOYD | MARCH 31, 2023

POTUS Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — If Democrats truly valued rule of law, they would pursue cases against many more people before even considering indicting Trump.

Author Jordan Boyd profile

JORDAN BOYD

VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX

America’s two-tiered justice system status was solidified on Thursday after a Manhattan grand jury voted to hit former President Donald Trump with a felony indictment and the threat of imprisonment. Cue the chorus of Democrats and corporate media mouthpieces who spent all of Thursday night on Twitter condescendingly warning: “no one is above the law, not even the former president.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the anti-Trump Adams, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Rep. Adam Schiff, and even Trump’s ex-attorney Michael Cohen say Trump- or anyone else- doesn’t just get a free pass because he’s a 2024 presidential candidate. Yet, it doesn’t take an expert to know that the sole reason Trump ever faced indictment is because his political enemies requested it.

In addition to suggesting that Trump is not “above the law,” former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed that the former president has the opportunity to “prove innocence” in court. Of course, the law, smugly touted by Pelosi, dictates that defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty- not the other way around.

Whether Pelosi’s “innocence” comment was a Freudian slip or a genuine assertion, we may never know. What we do know is that for years, Democrats have operated under the belief that their party members and their partisan allies are above the law.

1. The Criminals Alvin Bragg Refused To Prosecute

While Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was busy searching for ways to indict Trump, violent criminals were taking over New York City streets.

During Bragg’s first year in office, major crime in New York City increased by 22 percent. Since then, the DA has made a career out of reducing charges for armed robbers, freeing cop-beaters, relaxing bail, and letting violent antisemites off.

Bragg’s soft-on-crime policies may have earned him left-wing billionaire financier George Soros’ favor and dollars, but even Democrat-voting New Yorkers know that he’s no stranger to giving better treatment to convicts than law-abiding people like this bodega owner who defended himself against a murderous criminal.

2. Hillary Clinton

If Democrats truly cared about campaign finance law violations, they would have already prosecuted several members of their party, including Hillary Clinton.

In 2022, the Federal Elections Commission fined Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign for falsely attributing the money that the Democrat used to orchestrate the Russian collusion hoax. If Trump is guilty of intent to conceal a campaign finance crime, a motivated prosecutor might look at the DNC and Clinton campaign’s efforts to hide their involvement in the so-called Steele “dossier” and find they were guilty of the same crime.

In addition to her election meddling, Clinton and her staff mishandled highly classified information, which resulted in at least 91 security violations. Instead of raiding her house and asking the DOJ to prosecute her, the FBI “inexplicably agreed to destroy [Clinton staffers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson’s] laptops knowing that the contents were the subject of Congressional subpoenas and preservation letters.”

Clinton also played a central role in the decision to abandon four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, where they were murdered by terrorists.

3. Barack Obama

Before Clinton was forced to pay for her scheming, President Barack Obama faced “one of the largest fees ever levied against a presidential campaign,” $375,000, for “campaign reporting violations.” Instead of facing calls for prison time, Obama received years of protection from the corporate media and fake fact-checkers who repeatedly downplayed his violation as a proportionally small infraction compared to the billion dollars he raised on the campaign trail.

4. Election Law-Breakers Like Marc Elias

Marc Elias has repeatedly tried to undermine U.S. elections. He has such a reputation for meddling and manipulating elections that even a federal judge reprimanded him for it. Unlike Douglass Mackey, who was charged by the DOJ for posting a meme encouraging Hillary voters to “text” their votes, however, Elias has not faced any charges or unannounced raids.

5. President Joe Biden

A president avoiding paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes seems like the kind of thing federal agencies, including the recently financially invigorated Internal Revenue Service, should explore. Yet Biden, who hasn’t explained millions of dollars of his recorded income, and First Lady Jill Biden together reportedly dodged about $517,000 in Medicare and Obamacare taxes between 2017 and 2020 without scrutiny.

6. Hunter Biden

The president’s son isn’t just a walking liability for the Biden family name, he’s a glaring national security threat with a long, infamous history of using illicit drugs, engaging in possibly criminal sexual escapades with foreign women, and selling access to his dad under the guise of doing business with foreign oligarchs from places like China.

Besides all this and his reckless handling of a lost gun in 2018 — which, against normal protocol, the Secret Service reportedly helped him cover up — Hunter likely lied on federal forms about his drug use to purchase that gun, a felony, with barely a whisper of punishment.

7. Eric Swalwell

Speaking of communist China, Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell canoodling with a known spy for the nation’s No. 1 enemy seems like a pretty serious offense. Instead of a member of the House Intelligence Committee facing consequences for giving foreign spies access to key U.S. government offices and information, Swalwell is still comfortably rage-tweeting about Trump and MAGA supporters and appearing as a guest on corrupt corporate media programs.

8. Eric Holder

Former Attorney General Eric Holder misled Congress during its investigation of the Obama-era “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal, which used taxpayer dollars to put guns into the hands of Mexican drug lords. Holder was held in contempt, but that’s pretty much the only punishment he received for intentionally dodging subpoenas and hiding documents from congressional oversight.

9. Susan Rice

President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, unmasked members of the Trump transition team and then lied about it. Unmasking may be a legitimate and legal process for those with the authority, but covering up an attempt to target the political enemies of the regime is an abuse of power that deserves examination.

Instead, it was yet another action taken by the U.S. intelligence apparatus to justify spying on American citizens.

10. The Pelosi Family

Suspected insider trading deserves at least a second glance by federal investigators, but it looks like, so far, Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul have gotten away with conveniently timing their stock purchases and sales to massively grow their wealth.

[Read: “Democrats Say ‘No One Is Above The Law,’ But This List Of Their Corrupt Allies Proves Otherwise”]

The same people who love lording “no one is above the law” over Americans are the ones who think they are above any semblance of oversight or law, or constitutionality. If Democrats truly valued rule of law, illegal border crossers, Russia hoaxers, Jeffrey Epstein’s clients, pro-abortion vandals, rioters, and the people who run corrupt government agencies like the Department of Justice, the FBI, the NSA, and the Manhattan DA’s office would be the ones standing in court next week, not Trump.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Democrats’ Banana-Republic Persecution Of Donald Trump Must Meet A Republican Response

BY: TOM CRIST | MARCH 22, 2023

TOM CRIST

American media has bombarded us daily from all directions to make sure we know that Donald Trump indirectly paid a woman to shut her mouth as she and her now-convict lawyer, Michael Avenatti, shook him down for money.

In New York, false financial accounting can be a low-level misdemeanor, but it’s rarely prosecuted. Now Alvin Bragg, a municipal prosecutor, is trying to make a name for himself by charging former President Trump with that crime.

This is the equivalent of a nationally televised jaywalking arrest to humiliate a person due solely to personal hate. George Soros, Bragg’s benefactor, must be grinning from ear to ear.

Hillary Clinton Got Off For a Worse Deed

Trump’s former lawyer accounted for the payment as consulting or attorney’s fees. Allegedly, so did President Trump, and $130,000 changed hands.

For perspective, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee paid $1 million for the infamous fictional “Steele dossier.” They paid for this using one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent lawyers, Marc Elias, as a cutout to hide who was paying for this opposition research that falsely claimed Trump was colluding with Russia.

They then laundered the dossier through various contacts to try to destroy Trump and get Clinton elected president. Those people officially accounted for the $1 million dossier expense as “legal fees.” So, one side paid people to lie. The other paid someone not to lie, or at least not to speak.

Clinton lives in New York, the state in which Trump is likely to be charged over a $130,000 payment. She has not been charged for the $1 million payment. Do these events really sound vastly different to you?

Bragg hopes to spin that unserious charge into a federal campaign finance violation. Meanwhile, the dossier fraud, which affected two presidential elections and two presidential impeachments, was settled with a $113,000 fine.

Bragg’s Case Is a Mess

City prosecutors cannot charge people with federal crimes. Only feds can charge federal crimes, not some city prosecutor. Bragg has allegedly met with the Secret Service about how they will react to a New York City police officer approaching President Trump with handcuffs (if they can find one who will do it). Bragg is way over his head and wading into deep political waters.

New York Attorney General Tish James ran for office almost exclusively on a “get Trump” platform. She hated the man and promised to find a crime he committed, rather than responding to a crime and looking for a perpetrator. After years of not finding anything, she did not charge Trump with any crimes. Same state. Same New York laws. More investigative tools. Yet she passed on the opportunity to arrest a president.

The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the same alleged crime and also chose not to prosecute. Every prosecutor in the state above Bragg’s office passed on this one knowing they could not prove President Trump committed a crime. Or they realized that no serious person could charge Trump and not also indict Democrats.

Bragg is the same Manhattan DA who has publicly decriminalized crimes in the name of wokeness. This alleged prosecutor will ignore criminal violence and release people on their own recognizance after a stern talking to for beating someone half to death or attacking police. But he wants to charge Trump for this garbage after every one of his superiors has declined to do so. Why? Incompetence? Tunnel vision? Irrational hate? Why choose?

Democrats’ Hate Could Prompt a Constitutional Crisis

Many Democrats want Trump arrested for anything. They want to see him in cuffs more than they want their own kids to be happy and healthy. They have been searching for someone stupid or reckless enough to “perp walk” the man for the cameras. They might very well have found him. If Bragg does it over this fluff, it will prove to be a poor career choice for him and could have much broader implications that are rungs above his pay grade.

Some Dems even want conservatives to riot if a cop cuffs Trump, just like a lack of security made it easy for people to barge into the Capitol through open doors just to be charged and arrested. They might get their wish. And it is likely a trap. If it happens and people protest, see whether New York City will give them all “room to vent” like city officials gave lefty rioters for months. Hopefully, any protests will be peaceful. I will not be involved in any of it.

A lot of people continue to be surprised at these events and have truly had enough of the second set of rules for conservatives. If the hard left keeps pushing this kind of thing, it will eventually be deeply sorry.

Feds raided Trump’s house with a tactical team over papers a librarian wanted. Oddly, CNN was present and ran the story on a loop. Joe Biden dropped 50 years of classified documents all over the country and the feds let his personal lawyers (who lacked security clearances) sort them before giving them to the government at their leisure.

They investigate Trump from all sides. They give Biden a pass on everything. The feds investigated Trump’s sons and son-in-law for any irregularity. Yet Hunter Biden, a man in a long line of alleged Biden bag men, lives in a $40,000-per-month Malibu beach house and sells splatter paintings to anonymous purchasers for exorbitant amounts.

Wildly Unequal Legal Treatment

Everyone is supposed to just sit back and accept the different treatment and think it is okay and normal. This is far from normal—it is a thumb in the eye of half the American population.

Even apparently peaceful Jan. 6, 2021 protestors have been in pre-trial detention for two years. Black Lives Matter and Antifa got carte blanch to riot and burn courthouses with impunity with at least tacit support from the White House and open support from the vice president, who encouraged people to donate money to bail the rioters out of jail.

Firebomb a pro-life crisis pregnancy center and take credit for it, and Biden’s inept AG will give you a pass. Pray in front of an abortion clinic and you will be charged with a list of felonies. This is not sustainable. People, in large numbers, will eventually stop taking it.

The Acceleration of Dangerous Trends

In accordance with their oaths, prosecutors are not supposed to charge people with crimes they cannot prove, since doing so can ruin people’s lives even if they are eventually acquitted. The citizenry remembers the charge, not the acquittal.

Likewise, presidents are not supposed to issue executive orders they know will be overturned as unlawful, just for political gain and show. Both have been happening for the last two years at a clip never before encountered. Team Biden is daring half the country. Stand up, but do not take the bait.

Many think Bragg will charge Trump soon because he can. These people might not be ready for the fallout they will provoke. And by that, I do not mean violence. I mean turnabout.

Republicans may politically finally address Democratic Party lawfare, taking an eye for an eye. Some have recently shown backbone their predecessors lacked. Their voters will increasingly elect officials who promise to do so. Trump himself was a harbinger of this.

Republicans Need to Respond, Good and Hard

If Bragg pulls the proverbial trigger, everyone had better be really sure about his next moves. Bragg and his upstream cronies will not be able to take it back, apologize, call for calm, or put that leftist authoritarian genie back in the bottle.

If they think they are right and their ideas the best, Democrats should square up and try to beat at the polls whomever the Republican candidate is in 2024. Another round of transparent politically driven rigging, especially like this, after the ridiculous failures of their impeachment efforts and Jan. 6 show trials, will light a dangerous fuse for which the American people have lost patience.

Most countries that fail to address unequal treatment start dying from within. Every American should want to avoid that for all our sakes. Bragg staying out of presidential politics and focusing on the skyrocketing violent crime rate in his own backyard would be a welcome next step.

When Republicans take the White House, they should make sure prosecutors at every level have every resource and unclassified document they require to investigate and, if mandated, charge everyone on team leftist. No letting things slide. If the Dems want old-fashioned dirty politics, the other side might finally give it to them good, hard, and thoroughly.

Thomas Crist is a husband, father, lawyer, and political conservative who loves his country and despises all myopic hypocrisy regardless of its source.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Fishing Trip

A.F. BRANCO | on March 22, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-fishing-trip/

Soros-funded D.A. Alvin Brag is ignoring the rising crime in his district to go after President Trump.

DA Alvin Bragg — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

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Indicting Trump Will Usher In America’s Banana-Republic Stage

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MARCH 21, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

A Manhattan grand jury appears poised to indict Donald Trump, according to news reports and the former president himself. Here’s what you need to know to understand the chatter about the anticipated criminal charges against Trump—and why the move to indict a former president for the first time in our country’s history will make political prosecutions the new norm in America.

While only the grand jury and prosecutors know for certain what charges against Trump, if any, are being considered, the consensus is that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, is pursuing a criminal case against Trump for allegedly falsifying business records, in violation of Sections 175.05 and 175.10 of the New York Penal Code.

Section 175.05 provides “a person is guilty of falsifying business records in the second degree when, with the intent to defraud, he makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.” Falsifying business records in the second degree is a misdemeanor, subject to a two-year statute of limitations.

A violation of Section 175.10, however, is a felony, subject to a five-year statute of limitations. That section defines the offense of falsifying business records in the first degree and provides that if a person falsifies business records with the “intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission” of another crime, the offense is one in the first degree.

The underlying factual theory for charging the former president rests on Trump allegedly causing the Trump Organization to falsely report payments made to Michael Cohen in 2017 as “legal expenses,” when the money instead reimbursed (and then some) Cohen for the $130,000 payment he made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to keep the pornography performer from publicly claiming she had sex with Trump a decade earlier. In total, the Trump Organization reported legal expenses of $420,000 paid to Cohen in 2017, at a monthly rate of $35,000. Cohen, however, had provided no legal services for the Trump Organization that year.

To bump what would be a misdemeanor under New York law to a felony, pundits are suggesting the D.A. will argue Trump caused the Trump Organization to falsify its business records to conceal the commission of one or more federal election crimes. The Manhattan prosecutor, however, might also advance the theory that Trump caused the Trump Organization to falsely report the payments with the intent of committing tax fraud.

Even before reaching the merits of the legal theories being bandied about to charge Trump criminally, a public suspicious of the Get-Trump attitude seen over the last seven years will notice the statute of limitations seems to bar Bragg’s prosecution of Trump. But Bragg has two ways to sidestep the two- and five-year statutory time limits.

First, if Bragg charges Trump with a felony, the longer five-year period applies. While more than five years have passed since the Trump Organization last recorded a “legal expense” to Cohen, New York’s former governor, Andrew Cuomo, by executive order extended the statute of limitations for one year (or thereabouts) due to Covid-19. That tolling would make a felony indictment against Trump timely.

Alternatively, because New York law provides that any time a defendant remains “continuously outside” of the state is excluded from the statutory period, an indictment against Trump would be timely. From late January 2017 on, Trump was “continuously outside” New York, first in D.C. and then in Florida, meaning the statute of limitations only ran those few times Trump was in New York. That isn’t even close to the two years necessary for the misdemeanor statute of limitations to expire, much less the five-year period applicable to felony offenses.

So, the statute of limitations won’t likely bar one or more falsifying business records counts. But what about the merits?

Cohen already pleaded guilty to federal charges related to his payments to Stormy Daniels. But to convict Trump on the anticipated state charges, the Manhattan prosecutor would need to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump (1) caused the Trump Organization to falsify its business records (2) “with the intent to defraud.”

From public reporting, it appears Cohen is a star witness for the prosecution, likely testifying Trump directed him to make the payments to silence Daniels and promising reimbursement from the Trump Organization. Whether a paper trail supports Cohen’s testimony is unclear, but without one, it will be Cohen’s word—the word of a convicted felon—crucial to establish the crime.

Cohen’s testimony also already appears under fire. A “former legal advisor to Cohen,” Robert Costello, reportedly testified before the grand jury on Monday, “solely to undermine” Cohen’s credibility.

But prosecutors will need to prove more than that Trump caused the Trump Organization to falsify its business records. They will need to establish he also had the “intent to defraud.” Here, the defense can easily counter that Trump’s intent was to avoid embarrassment to his family caused by what he claims is a lie, rather than to “defraud” anyone.

Should prosecutors nonetheless prove their case, it is only a misdemeanor, unless they can further establish Trump intended “to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission” of another crime. Proving either will be even more challenging.

First, to establish Trump intended to conceal a violation of federal election law, the Manhattan D.A. would need to prove Trump had committed an election-law crime. While Cohen alleged paying off Daniels to advance Trump’s electoral chances, Trump has another justification, namely avoiding any embarrassment for himself and his family, that does not run afoul of federal election law.

Proving Trump intended to commit tax fraud would likely be a difficult case to prove as well, with prosecutors needing to establish Trump’s knowledge of the intricacies of the corporation’s tax filings to show he held the requisite intent.

This inside-the-law analysis reveals an exceedingly weak case, but that is only a fraction of what the public will care about. On top of the questionable charges, the general public will see a man hounded for seven years with false claims of Russia collusion and other supposed crimes. They will see a statute of limitations that on its face appears to have run. And they will see a local prosecutor pushing charges previously rejected by a federal U.S. attorney.

Then there was the public pressure placed on Bragg to indict Trump, best exemplified by the backlash he faced after he apparently backed off charging the former president for crimes supposedly connected to the Trump Organization’s finances. At the time, “two prosecutors quit his office,” and “one of the prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz, wrote a highly critical book that the media has celebrated.”

In short, the public will see a vindictive political prosecution of Trump.

Maybe there will be a time to charge a president or a former president with a crime, but the facts here do not support making that leap. While D.A. Bragg and those pushing for Trump’s indictment may seek cover behind the well-worn American proposition that “no one is above the law,” the corollary is equally important: Our political enemies are not targeted for prosecution.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Arresting Trump: An End-Of-America Watch Party

BY: EDDIE SCARRY | MARCH 20, 2023

Author Eddie Scarry profile

EDDIE SCARRY

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As the saying goes: If even Never Trump Jonah Goldberg doubts your wisdom in bringing criminal charges against the former president, then you know it’s a stupid case.

Nobody actually says that, but it’s one of many indicators that the indictment potentially coming this week from Democrat New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg (yes, that’s his actual name) is so absurd as to make anyone wonder if our justice system really is a joke.

Trump on Saturday announced that he expected to be arrested soon in relation to the very old, very stale, very tiresome allegation that he violated campaign finance laws when he reimbursed his lawyer for a payment made to a porn actress in order to supposedly cover up a past affair. The accusation is that Trump did it to protect his campaign and intentionally neglected to publicly disclose the payment, as would be required by law.

I think Democrats have no interest whatsoever in campaign finance violations and really just enjoy thinking about Trump’s sex life. But even if they really were concerned with the integrity of our convoluted election money regulations, no serious person thinks Bragg has a case. That’s evidenced no less than by the fact that the people who considered pursuing this charge previously eventually dropped it— including Bragg!

While Trump was in office and Bragg was a U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, his office looked at this very case and decided it wasn’t worth pursuing. It’s a horse that has been beaten to death, resuscitated, and beaten again. Then smacked on the rear one more time.

But persecuting Trump has no downside for Democrats chasing fame. And now is as good a time as any. The historic nature of putting a former president in handcuffs as he campaigns for another term is too good for a low-rent prosecutor to pass up.

Not so good for a republic that wants to last another year, let alone 200, but that’s never top of mind for people like Bragg.

Try to wrap your mind around it. The former president, the likely Republican presidential nominee in 2024, might be seen on live national television cuffed, placed in the back of a squad car, and taken to a police station for his mug shot. All this over campaign paperwork that would any other time be resolved with a corrected filing and, perhaps, a penalty fee.

And that’s only if you presume Trump is guilty. Rational people think he might have tried hiding an affair, but that it’s absolutely possible it was for other reasons. (I wonder if anyone has ever in American history tried hiding an affair for reasons outside of protecting his prospects to be elected U.S. president. Interesting question, but far from settled!)

If Bragg brings an indictment, that’s one up for him and another one down for faith in America.

Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of “Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone.”

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Manhattan DA Reverses Policies Amid Backlash Over ‘Soft on Crime’ Approach

REPORTED BY BRIANNA LYMAN, REPORTER | February 04, 2022

New York Gubernatorial Candidate Letitica James And NYC Mayoral Candidate Eric Adams Attend Get Out The Vote Rally — **(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)**

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg scrapped two policies Friday following immense public backlash as the city sees a rise in violent crime. Bragg appeared to deflect blame onto his staff in his memo released Friday, noting his Jan. 3 memo was meant to provide “framework” with which his office should follow.

“As I emphasized in my remarks to the office, you were hired for your keen judgment, and I want you to use that judgment – and experience – in every case,” Bragg wrote.

US President Joe Biden’s motorcade drive past New York Police Department officers near the NYPD Headquarters in New York on February 3, 2022. (YUKI IWAMURA/AFP via Getty Images)

Under the new memo, Bragg said commercial robberies committed with a gun “will be charged as a felony” regardless of if the gun “is operable, loaded, or a realistic imitation.” Robberies committed at knifepoint or with another weapon will also be charged as a felony, according to the memo. Bragg also said “people walking the streets with guns will be prosecuted and held accountable” and that the “default in gun cases is a felony prosecution.”
“Violence against police officers will not be tolerated,” the memo continued. “We will prosecute any person who harms or attempts to harm a police officer.”

Prior to the changes, Bragg’s initial memo said armed robberies would be treated as petty larceny, a misdemeanor, if no victim was seriously injured and there was no “genuine risk of physical harm.”

Widow of slain New York Police Department Officer Jason Rivera, Dominique Luzuriaga, slammed Bragg for not keeping the city safe during her husband’s funeral service.

WATCH: Widow of @NYPDnews officer Jason Rivera slams @ManhattanDA though not by name: "We are not safe anymore. Not even the members of the service. I know you were tired of these laws, especially the ones from the new DA. I hope he's watching you speak through me right now." pic.twitter.com/zHPQ1scMgy
— Jackson Richman (@jacksonrichman) January 28, 2022

“The system continues to fail us,” Luzuriaga said. “We are not safe anymore, not even the members of the service. I know you were tired of these new laws, especially the ones from the new DA. I hope he’s watching you speak through me right now.”

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