Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has made history “in the worst possible way” with his indictment of President Trump.
Originally published by WND News Center. Used with permission.
The case, announced Thursday, still hasn’t been released, so few people know what it actually contains now.
But constitutional expert Jonathan Turley has written in a column that Bragg now has assured that Trump “will not be the last” president indicted.
And he’s charted a brand new “race to the bottom in political prosecutions.”
Turley explained, that the case may revolve around a payment made by a former Trump attorney to a stripper to keep quiet about an affair – an affair both have denied happened.
“History in this case — and in this country — is not on Bragg’s side,” he explained. “he only crime that has been discussed in this case is an unprecedented attempt to revive a misdemeanor for falsifying business documents that expired years ago. If that is still the basis of Thursday’s indictment, Bragg could not have raised a weaker basis to prosecute a former president. If reports are accurate, he may attempt to ‘bootstrap’ the misdemeanor into a felony (and longer statute of limitations) by alleging an effort to evade federal election charges.”
“While Trump will be the first former president indicted, he will not be the last if that is the standard for prosecution,” he explained.”It is still hard to believe that Bragg would primarily proceed on such a basis. There have been no other crimes discussed over months, but we will have to wait to read the indictment to confirm the grounds.”
He pointed out the DOJ, the FEC, and even Bragg’s office earlier decided there was no case.
“The Justice Department went down this road before and it did not go well. They tried to prosecute former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on stronger grounds (which I also criticized) and failed. In that case, campaign officials and donors were directly involved in covering up an affair that produced a child. …The prosecution … collapsed.”
And he said the prosecution already has been “tarnished” in the case, because one attorney who worked earlier on the case published a book about the evidence, “something that some of us view as a highly unprofessional and improper act.”
And Bragg ran for office “on his pledge to bag Trump.”
Bragg faces hurdles from the statute of limitations, too, in his “race to the bottom in political prosecutions,” he said.
“Bragg had a choice to make. He cannot be the defender of the rule of law if he is using the legal process for political purposes,” he said.
