When Donald Trump was indicted last year by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, I was skeptical. The indictment alleged that the 45th president had falsified payments to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, by classifying them as legal fees when in fact it was reimbursement for hush money to the porn star known as Stormy Daniels.
As the trial has unfolded over the past two months, Daniels has testified that Trump had sex with her at Lake Tahoe in 2006 and didn’t wear a condom or display much sexual endurance. Cohen testified that he dutifully made the payments to Daniels on Trump’s behalf because he was “knee-deep in the cult of Trump.” Former senior Trump aide Hope Hicks has testified to the lengths the 2016 campaign and Trump White House went to suppress stories of the former president’s past sexual scandals.
The resistance commentariat insists that Trump is going down. Republican Never Trump lawyer George Conway writes in The Atlantic that Bragg’s case is “kind of perfect.” MSNBC host and former Republican operative Nicole Wallace assures viewers that Trump’s lawyers “bombed” their cross-examination of Cohen. Former Justice Department official Andrew Weissman praises Bragg’s “crackerjack team of experienced attorneys” for building an airtight case.
But missing from this wall-to-wall coverage is any mention of the underlying crime that Trump falsified business records to advance his campaign. And that is a fatal flaw in the case, because New York law stipulates that falsifying business records can only be charged as felonies (as Bragg has done) if it’s done to further another crime. Trump has not been charged with another crime, though Bragg has floated the theory that the business records were falsified to deprive 2016 voters of information about his tryst with Daniels.
There are other flaws as well. Robert Costello, one of the lawyers who worked closely with Cohen at the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the Southern District of New York, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that his old office declined to prosecute the hush money case against Trump because Cohen was “totally unworthy of belief.”
Cohen is Bragg’s star witness. And according to Costello, Cohen told the U.S. attorney’s office in 2018 that the “payment to Daniels was his own idea, designed to try and get him back into the inner circle of Trump people in Washington.”
That is damning testimony from a far more credible source than Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress and served two and a half years in prison.
It’s still quite possible that the Manhattan jury will convict Trump on the 34 felony charges Bragg has brought. But there is no chance the conviction will withstand appeal, particularly given that it relies so heavily on Cohen’s testimony.
At best the anti-Trump “resistance” will win a Pyrrhic victory. They may get their headline: “Trump Convicted in Hush Money Trial.” But the charge will not stick.
In the meantime, Alvin Bragg has thrown the 2024 election into chaos by dragging the presumptive Republican presidential nominee into court to defend himself against an untested legal theory premised on the testimony of a convicted liar.
Trump already has proven that he will not recognize the results of elections that he doesn’t win. Bragg’s prosecution gives Trump and his supporters a ready-made excuse not to accept the results of the 2024 election should President Joe Biden prevail.
The hush money trial also gives permission and incentive to ambitious Republican prosecutors to repay Democrats in kind. Our legal system will soon be dominated by the whims of those in power as opposed to the rule of law.
Costello on Wednesday summed up the dangers of Bragg’s folly. “In the Trump case, they are seeking a conviction by any means necessary,” he said. “They do not care if it is overturned on appeal because that will likely not happen until after the election. In the meantime, they will have effectively interfered with the 2024 presidential election and perhaps influenced some voters because of an ill-gotten conviction.”
In other words, Alvin Bragg is destroying our democratic system in order to save it.
Eli Lake is a Free Press columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @EliLake and read his piece “Trump Probably Broke the Law. But That Law Shouldn’t Exist.”
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Eli is on fire. Stalin would be proud of this show trial. Bragg, Cohen, and Stormy are clowns in a kangaroo court destroying our justice system. Judge Merchan is beyond compromised because his daughter Loren is paid by many prominent Democrats’ campaigns. The left would go insane if a judge’s family member took money from Republicans and demand recusal over this blatant conflict of interest, but it’s ok when they do it!
https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-conduct-a-show-trial-merchan
They are also effectively creating a martyr.
I voted for Trump twice. Not because I love the man or think he never did anything wrong. Far from it. I voted for him because I think he's bully enough to do something about DC. He wasn't in his first term. He underestimated the rot and overestimated his prowess. I will vote for him again because I WANT scorched earth in DC. The clown show has gone on long enough. I don't want another polite, 'take the high road' Republican who gets steam rolled while the Dems party away. Enough is enough.
This sham trial just solidifies this in my mind.
I have never been to a Trump rally. I don't fly a Trump flag. I don't have a Trump sign in my yard. I am a thrice graduated college alum with a doctorate and a business owner. I am the silent Trump vote. I am the one you don't see coming. We are so disgusted with both sides. I am registered as a Republican but I hate them as much as Democrats for the most part.
The people in DC and at the top of both parties have absolutely no understanding of the population right now. They listen to their echo chamber idiot friends at cocktail parties and think they have it all figured out. Meanwhile, us normies are fed up and furious and want to burn the whole shit show to the ground and start over.
I think Trump would be willing to do that. I like DeSantis, but I don't think he has the stones to burn it all down. I like Kennedy, but he's too much rainbows and unicorns(kinda like Jimmy Carter--a GOOD man......but is he mean enough?). Trump IS mean enough. All these bullshit trials are just solidifying in his mind how much housecleaning needs to be done.
My biggest fear right now, and I don't think it's paranoia at this point, is assassination. These government leeches are terrified Trump will send them all packing and in the words of Chuckie Schumer....'they have 10 ways to Sunday to get you.'