Taking up where disgraced Democratic attorney Michael Avenatti left off, New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg has indicted former President Donald Trump with — well, no one is exactly sure how to describe the crime.
If Bragg were trying to ding Trump with a misdemeanor, he would have to show that Trump was knowingly involved in the false bookkeeping entries that the Trump Organization used to describe various hush-money payments regarding affair allegations. But Bragg brought 34 felony charges against Trump on the premise that the false business records were part of a greater criminal scheme.
ALVIN BRAGG'S WEAK, POLITICALLY DRIVEN INDICTMENT THREATENS TO RIP AMERICA APART
“On that front, the indictment unsealed on Tuesday is disturbingly unilluminating,” writes Washington Post liberal columnist Ruth Marcus, “and the theory on which it rests is debatable at best, unnervingly flimsy at worst.”
New York Times Washington correspondent Charlie Savage makes many guesses as to what the underlying crime might be. Hugh Hewitt collected those speculations in a Tweet:
From @charlie_savage at @nytimes, an unpersuasive attempt to cover the indictment of Donald Trump as other than the rank politicized prosecution it is and has been widely recognized to be: https://t.co/UE0sO1Em6Q pic.twitter.com/elePqGylQ1
— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) April 5, 2023
Is Bragg going to argue that the hush money payments should have been made from campaign cash? That’s a flimsy argument, made flimsier by the fact that Bragg is a state prosecutor and Trump was running for federal office.
If Trump had paid the hush money out of campaign cash, that would be its own scandal.
Another possibility Savage explores is that Trump and crew made the false bookkeeping entries as part of a plan for tax fraud. But if you read any of Bragg’s documents, and all of Savage’s piece, you never get a story as to who would benefit from what specific tax fraud.
Is the crime that the Trump Organization and Trump himself were reimbursing Michael Cohen for the hush money, but they paid him in the form of a salary? That just increased Cohen’s taxes, thus increasing how much Trump paid him in gross, and didn’t improve the Trump Organization’s tax position (since both legal fees and reimbursements would be tax deductible).
Think about how weak a case against Trump has to be for even Millhiser to view it with skepticism. What Bragg did here, just to get his 2 minutes in the sun, was indefensible. pic.twitter.com/s5DIMHUhAK
— AG (@AGHamilton29) April 4, 2023
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Even the most partisan analysts are totally unimpressed by Bragg’s prosecution.
Bragg has brought such a bad case against Trump that nobody can defend it.