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May 31, 2024 - 7:00am
There’s an old saying about the pliability of grand juries: that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich if he really wants to. In New York, it seems, it applies to the trial phase as well. If Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg can convict Donald Trump of a crime — of 34 crimes — then he can convict anybody, as long as he’s unlikeable enough to a New York jury pool.
Trump is no angel. There are multiple cases pending against him in multiple jurisdictions, state and federal. Some of them involve serious crimes. The matter of the classified documents that he refused to return is indisputably a real crime with potential real-world consequences to national security. The Georgia RICO case is a little more attenuated, but the underlying thing — attempting to get Georgia to change its election results — is something a president should never do.
Compare that to the actions that Bragg claims constitute a crime. Trump had a brief affair with a porn star and then is alleged to have paid her money through his lawyer in exchange for her silence. The FEC looked into this as a campaign violation, but declined to prosecute. Several years later, Bragg was elected and decided that using corporate money and disguising it as legal fees constitutes a crime under New York law: the falsification of corporate records.
That’s a misdemeanor, and the statute of limitations for misdemeanors had already run, but it becomes a felony if it is done in furtherance of another crime, which gives the state more time to prosecute. So, they claimed that the federal campaign law violation — something Trump was never even charged with — fits the bill, and they charged him with felonies.
Does that sound like something a man should face years in jail for? There was a time when we could condemn a man’s adultery and other moral failings without searching for some way to throw him in jail over it. That time was 1998, when Bill Clinton committed perjury about a consensual, adulterous relationship and no one in the press or the Democratic Party really thought he should pay any price beyond having his wife be angry with him.
Both men’s wives should be angry with them. But if every time a businessman or politician paid hush money to someone he had sex with, he gets convicted of a felony, half of Wall Street would relocate immediately. And maybe they should do so now, or at least make sure they stay in the progressive prosecutor’s good graces.
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SubscribeIt would be poetic justice indeed if this example of brazen establishment hounding and whatever-it-takes stitching up would result in an increased vote share for Trump.
We can but hope.
The Democrats have opened Pandora’s Box with this. It was meant to be an offensive, obnoxious political trial, purposefully used to silence their most dangerous enemy. What they’ve done is unlikely to just end here with Democrat elites high-fiving each other. Either this is the beginning of their end-democracy-to-save-democracy coup, or there will be a god almighty vengeful backlash. Either way, whatever happens is totally on the Democrats.
What will actually happen is that the world will continue to turn, Trump will be sentenced and he will then lose in another landslide in November. The Republicans will eventually return to something approaching sanity once they don’t have to humiliate themselves to placate a moron and his idiot cult.
Yes it’s a day of giddy euphoria for the Left, ecstatic that the working class won’t have a chance in November.
The damage to democracy would be unimaginable if the inbred war hounds of the foreign policy establishment and the globalist ecofascists wouldn’t get their favorite candidate elected … 😉
Donald Trump has been ordered to pay over $450 million to the State of New York for fraud. He has been found liable by two juries for sexual assault and defamation and ordered to pay Jean Carroll almost $90 million. Now he has been found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsely claiming that payments made to his lawyer were for “legal services”.
These court decisions are not a joke. They are deadly serious. Prosecutors, judges and juries are not supposed to decide cases based on politics. They are supposed to apply the law equally no matter who the defendant is. The United States justice system is concerned with justice, not politics.
But on the other hand, the jury verdict today is a joke. It has no support in fact or law. The trial was a show trial, featuring a tawdry stripper and a scummy fraudster, both out to get Donald Trump. The whole show was a political ploy, as nakedly crooked as any of the trials Russia courts paraded Alexey Navalny in.
Don’t get me wrong. I realize many people have political opinions that differ from mine, and that doesn’t mean that they are stupid or ignorant or malignant. Although my words might not always reflect it, I respect their opinions even when I disagree with them.
Not this time. I condemn Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and his prosecutors. I condemn judge Juan Merchan. I condemn the 12 Manhattan jurors who voted to convict. Your actions were a disgrace to your country — a slap in the face of lady justice, who unlike you is blind to politics. Shame on all of you.
Well said.
Actually, the judge told the jury that only four of them needed to agree for a guilty verdict to be reached.
Is that true? I don’t question your veracity at all but I’d love a reference for that so that I can refer to it. 4 out of 12?
As with everything associated with this case, the logic is very complex and convoluted. All 12 had to find him guilty, but they could all find him guilty of different things.
That is not quite correct. Breaking the law about making incorrect entries in the books of an “enterprise” is only a misdemeanor and has a three-year statute of limitations — unless it was done to promote or conceal another crime, in which case it’s a felony. So, the jury had to decide what other crime had been committed.
They were presented with three options — and the judge said each voter could decide for himself which of the three options they believed, and there was no requirement that they agree on an option.
Now, IANAL, but this seems to me to be massively unfair. First, if the necessity of breaking a second law was brought up during the trial, I missed it. It was only mentioned in closing arguments.
Second, the options were not given in the indictment. Therefore, Trump was denied the opportunity to defend himself against them.
Third, at least one of these secondary offenses and possibly all three are misdemeanors and have the same three-year statute of limitations. It has been eight years since the offenses were committed.
Fourth, there was no requirement for unanimity on the part of the jury, so Trump’s lawyers had to convince at least one juryman that Trump was innocent of all three — and that without being told what secondary offenses Trump was accused of.
This will be appealed. Again, IANAL, but if it isn’t overturned, that will be compounding a miscarriage of justice.
Excellent summary of a convoluted case. There’s almost zero chance of the conviction not being overturned on appeal. But who cares, the election will be over by then.
You people are incredibly stupid.
He was convicted for not reporting hush money as a campaign expense. Yes, I get there was some convoluted legal theory why this was a conspiracy and was supposedly illegal. Yet, imagine what would have happened if he did report it as a campaign expense. Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.
I’ve been a lawyer for many years, mostly in business but with a fair amount of experience in civil litigation and a smattering in criminal law. Just out of law school I clerked for a federal court judge and had an interesting year with several criminal trials. After each case, I talked with whatever jurors were willing to speak with me. I know how the process works.
This case from start to finish was like the cases Russia brought against Alexey Navalny and the case Israel brought against Adolf Eichmann. The outcome was never in doubt — a conviction. These trials had nothing to do with justice. They were all for show.
The prosecutors, judge and jury in this case ought to be ashamed of themselves. They are a disgrace.
Your claim to be a lawyer seems about as plausible as Trump’s golf scores.
Keep swinging though, bud – we’ll mark you down for a birdie!
Utter twaddle. There was no rule of law in the Navalny case and no equivalent Jury of 12 independent citizens.
Your reference to Eichmann is a little disturbing and may be telling us a bit more about yourself. There would be many cases you perhaps could have juxtaposed with the Trump NY case yet you chose this one? Maybe some sympathy for AE perhaps and the veil of the sort of beliefs you hold accidentally pulled back?
The trial of Adolf Eichmann was literally a show trial. He was kidnapped against international law and taken to Jerusalem where he was put on trial in a courtroom that was specially built as a television studio to broadcast the trial. It was reality television.
The motive of the trial was not to do justice but to strengthen Israel politically. The charges were a farce. Adolf Eichmann was a dull, even stupid, man who merely did a menial job that did not involve any deaths. He was banal, not evil. He did not deserve to be hanged. He was a scapegoat for the sin of the holocaust.
The trial of Donald Trump had a political purpose as well. The objective was to humiliate him and brand him a felon. The prosecutors, judge and jury knew the charges were not serious. Labelling payments to a lawyer “legal fees” didn’t harm a soul.
Alexey Navalny himself compared the treatment of Donald Trump to his own when Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. We should have heeded his warnings.
Maybe he just shouldn’t be having sex with a porn actress while his new wife is at home with his infant child? Had that ever occurred to you?
Commendably conservative of you, CS.
Yes, much as I have my issues with Trump, I don’t dispute his right to have consensual sex with whomever he pleases.
Indeed. However a problem when you try to hide your true character from an electorate by attempting to silence others and then covering up how you did that.
Why didn’t he just tell folks he’d had sex with a porn star whilst his wife was pregnant and let them decide if he was still worthy of their vote?
There’s lots of scumbags out there, especially in politics, on both sides of the aisle. Clinton and Schwarzenegger say hi.
Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger say hi.
Maybe porn should be illegal. Maybe women who sell their bodies on film should be prosecuted. Maybe unwed mothers, or women who’ve aborted their children, or lesbians, or all fornicators, too.
Did they ever occur to you?
Oh, right. I forgot. Only men can be guilty of sex crimes. Because equity is different from equality.
What are these insane ramblings?
Nobody has accused Trump of a sex crime (at least not in this case – he’s obviously a repeat sexual offender).
As always, its the cover up that gets you. Especially when you are as monumentally stupid as Trump and his merry band of incompetents.
Ironically, a trial on Staten Island might have reached a unanimous NOT guilty verdict.
Manhattan was the heart of a world class city. I see no reason to ever go back.
I don’t think you’ll be missed, bubba
I have a considered dislike for Mr Trump, but am very queasy indeed about these proceedings. Nothing good will come of this: not for anyone.
I also don’t have many illusions about the relationship between law and justice (I have too many lawyer friends and am too much an admirer of Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce), but justice must be generally agreed to have been done and I don’t see that obtaining, on any honest assessment.
I share your sentiment completely. This shows the complete breakdown of the Rule of Law in the United States.
The US, as a democracy, is no more. History will point to this date as the complete collapse of the United States of America.
It will be seen as the year in which you finally lost any claim to moral or political leadership of the West. You’ll still lead, to some extent, through sheer military and economic force, but then the old Soviet Union governed its bloc in much the same way.
You’re now in real danger of serious civil disorder on election night and beyond. And I write this, believe it or not, as a friend and erstwhile admirer of the United States.
I share your dismay. I also fear what’s next, which is the further application of this new arrow in the political quiver, lawfare, in the opposite direction. If all these charges can be brought to bear on someone who spent a mere 4 years in office, imagine the prosecutions that will take place with the likes of sleepy Joe and Ms. Hillary?
I have yet to hear any of you Trump cultists come up with good reason why your dear leader should be above the law. Do you actually consider him your king now?
Trump’s humiliation continues.
Which law?
How do you know what “the law” is? Where does one find such information? How would one determine if Bragg broke “the law” or if Trump did?
So you’re saying he should have filed the hush money as a campaign expense. Is this where we’re at now? What happens when the charges are dismissed on appeal – there’s almost zero chance this doesn’t happen. Do we get a do over for the 2024 election?
That’s exactly the point here: If you forced every single one of those jurors to put their life savings up in a bet on the result of the appeal, every one of them would bet that this judgement would be overturned.
In other words, they know this is the wrong decision. They’re doing it anyway, because they also know Trump is leading in the polls and this is a flagrant act of lawcraft.
How do you know all this GS? Were you there somehow?
Or this just saying more about you than them?
The scene was set in DC with the Trial of Steyn & Simberg. Anyone who listened to it wondered how the Judge didn’t throw it out, the ‘errors’ in financial numbers presented to the court in defence of Mann would have HMRC down on you like a ton of bricks checking for ‘cooking the books’ Even the defence admitted their ‘errors’ – BUT they got to show them to the jurors. AND then Mann was awarded $1 for the actual charge, before Simberg got $1000 punitive damages against him and Steyn $1Million. No punitive damages would have been possible If there hadn’t been the $1 for the defamation.
Go figure as the yanks would say. They are now an even bigger banana republic than the UK.
The West is stuffed. The future is in Asia AND we did it ourselves by electing the m0r0ns who rule us. Even worse, is IF we destroy our grid with Net Zero insanity, it will cease to be a political crisis and will soon become an existential one. The UK for a start can’t support 70m+ in the land of bugs and soya milk that the Greens aim for.
According to Dershowitz it will be very difficult to have the charges dismissed. He gives it a 5-10% chance. I followed his podcast arguments last night. He thinks that Trump’s lawyers weren’t good, especially their deliberations, but said that he could recommend some very good ones for Trump’s appeal, but doesn’t want the case himself. Dershowitz was shocked on legal grounds about the whole trial, which should have never taken place, although he predicted the outcome. Guess we have to wait what will happen, after all Weinstein got his new trial, but then Weinstein isn’t a politician, whom the whole Democratic political machinery is keen to get rid off.
If you are unable to rise above your partisan leanings and understand the implications of these judgements for the very fabric of the United States of America, then there is really talking to you.
It wasn’t a judgment GS. That’s a term for a Civil Ct conclusion made by a Judge. This was a criminal case and Jurors decided. This is a fundamental problem with the argument you make – you have to pull a contortion that somehow the 12 Jurors were all part of some conspiracy.
It’ll be lizards controlling us from outer space next.
I bet he wouldn’t have to be a fraction as contorted as the contortionists who managed to produce the charges 😉
I’d have to suspend less disbelief in reading Harry Potter stories than I’d have to do to believe this had anything to do with justice and an unbiased legal system.
I could invent a law you weren’t above. Simple enough – any one where any delusion is criminal. 34 counts would be far too few for you under that law 🙂
The Dems have crossed a disturbing line here. If you think it ends here, that’s a fantasy. Republicans will now start using the legal system to attack Democrats. The Dems will start prosecuting more Republicans. They have utterly smashed the Overton window.
I can’t help feeling that Trump should have used the Chewbacca Defense….
That’s a blast from the past!
That time was 1998, when Bill Clinton committed perjury about a consensual, adulterous relationship and no one in the press or the Democratic Party really thought he should pay any price beyond having his wife be angry with him.
The problem was the “committing perjury”, not the “having adulterous relationship”. I could have some respect for him if he had said “As a matter of fact, ah did have sexual relations with than woman, Ms Lewinski”.
This was the earthquake. Now we have to see what buildings are left standing as the tremors and aftershocks radiate out.
The Democrat side have got their man and are rerunning the ‘no-one is above the law’ mantra. They don’t care that it was a minor and convoluted conviction. Finally the courts found Trump was guilty of something, just like they always said he was. They have no eye to the possibilities that the law might have been bent out of shape to make the conviction – ethical principles don’t matter, they got him at last.
Their expectation is that this clears the way for a big Democrat win in November because they will play the felon card, and can hamstring Trump with the sentencing – he can’t campaign from jail or house arrest. And having beaten Trump, they can do the same thing against any other populists, or deniers, or non-believers. America will permanently be a land of milk and honey, at peace with the world, just like it is now in Joe Biden’s first term.
Outside the Democrat-bubble, this is being met with complete shock, despite being somewhat expected, as the will-they-won’t-they quantum state collapsed into a negative reality. The opposing presidential candidate has been convicted of a crime that even legal pundits struggle to articulate correctly, by a court in an area that supports the president, with a judge with family links to the president’s re-election campaign.
The shock is that If they are able, and willing, to do this to Trump, they can do the same thing against any other populists, or deniers or opponents. Part of a bigger Democrat scheme looking to target ‘wrong-thinking’ Supreme Court judges as an ongoing play to control the legal systems, so as to control any opposition. From this view, the verdict looks like a Hindenburg moment. Political actors abusing the system to have power by any means necessary, pressing the US towards a one party (inter-agency) state.
The downstream test is if Americans even care – we won’t know until the next opinion polls as to whether heads will look up from TikTok or Instagram. Come November, if the Democrats win, Trump (bad, boo-hiss) may well disappear and this is all water-under-the-bridge, back to a Clinton-Bush normal.
It might rock the institutions a little, but they’ll settle and probably see it as a useful precedent for self-preservation. Republicans will continue in their naive faith in their shredded constitution and hope that things will turn out OK ‘in the next two weeks’ or at the ‘next election’. But so long as they have fast food, a car and some money in their pocket, what do they really care who runs things? Let the professionals do it. What could go wring?
A Democrat victory won’t mean a return to a ‘Clinton-Bush normal’ because it will result in
a further four years of wide open borders resulting in the replacement of civil society in the US with ghettoisation and tribal war. That is not good for anyone in the West.
The alternative to nation state democracy is not a global utopia ruled over by benevolent committees of the wise.
“The matter of the classified documents that he refused to return is indisputably a real crime with potential real-world consequences to national security.”
I can dispute this. Rather easily, in fact. A ‘real crime’ can only be said to exist if it is enforced fairly and universally. To apply a certain legal standard to one person and not another erodes the realness of the crime.
Well said. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton both committed the same “crime” as Donald Trump, but neither was charged. Nor should they have been. All three committed minor infractions that should have been dealt with nonjudicially.
Unfortunately your ignorance is tripping you up. The didn’t commit the same crime. The primary crime Trump is facing on classified documents is obstruction. If he’d just given them all back when issue came up we’d have heard little more. He didn’t. He tried to hide them, deliberately.
V different.
You need to read the indictment. The great majority of the claims are for violations of the Espionage Act.
Cohen went to prison for false statements and campaign violations. Why should Trump be treated differently?
We agree though the bigger crime is the classified documents, which is why when people start to rail about the politicisation of the NY legal process they should also be made to reflect om how Trump politicisation of Florida judiciary has been helping him.
Just before I read this article, I had made all the same arguments (and caveats) to my wife. She only “heard” a Trump supporter (which I am not) talking. The proliferation of blindly polarised comments on media sources (with the notable exception of UnHerd) is very saddening – but ever more unsurprising.
Women should not be allowed to vote. It destroys societies.
The author has a point on this case. But it is kind of late to get the politics out of the justice system. Item: The Clinton impeachment case, much favoured by Republicans: Invent an excuse to interrogate the man on oath about his sex life, and then go for perjury when he denies.
Rather more seriously: what is likely to happen to the serious cases against Trump? First his lawyers, with whatever Republican-appointed judges they can rope in will get them postponed till after the election. Then, if he wins, he stops the prosecution so he will never be held accountable. Would you accept a deal? In return for having the Stormzy Daniels case thrown out, Trump and his lawyers agree to expedite the serious cases so that he will be convicted (or acquitted, of course) before the start of the election. Any takers?
The Clinton impeachment was an action by Congress and its investigators and every impeachment case is 100% political.
This, in contrast, is law and justice – processes that are supposed to be blind to who is on trial and to apply the law without favour and with consistency. There should be no place for politics in the judicial arena. In a heated political environment, neutrality and being seen to be neutral should be the gold standard for handling such cases.
The serious cases are Georgia where the DA was found to be having an affair with her prosecutor (including a vacation) and has brought the case to a stop while the ethics are investigated. And Florida, where the judge has paused the trial schedule because of potential mishandling of evidence on the prosecution side. Both cases are potentially also impacted by a forthcoming Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. So the prosecutors are slowing themselves down with errors and mistakes, and there are bigger issues about presidential powers at play. Georgia is a state case, so even if elected, Trump can’t pardon himself out of it.
Is it not a little naive to say that the various delays to the various trials have ‘just happened’? Trump’s legal team have a clear strategy of trying to delay them and have done their best to achieve exactly that. And is it really the case that those whose actions speed up trials against the Trump are purely partisan, whereas those whose actions (and judgements) slow them down, judges included, are completely neutral upholders of the law?
A defendant is going to defend themselves for sure, and though Trump’s lawyers have frequently complained about timescales to review documents/evidence, the Trump-side complaints suggest judges have been giving the prosecutors the benefit of the timescales.
However, the holes the cases are in now are because the prosecution sides have tripped over themselves, making it impossible for the judges to continue as business as usual. Should a conflicted DA be removed? How to deal with evidence which officers swore wasn’t tampered with, only to admit later there were discrepancies?
No, it is not “Too late to get politics out of the justice system.” (You might as well say “It is too late to save Western Civilization”, which is arguably true. )
The Constitution of the US guarantees equal rights and justice for all, which includes the right to a fair trial, and equal application and enforcement of justice.
Since 1865 to the present day, America has been emerging from historic inequality before the law, depending on one’s skin color. Well that’s a good thing. We want discrimination out of the justice system. How is it then okay to selectively persecute old, white, rich, men who are rude and vote ‘R’?
So long as justice applies fairly, to all equally, then it operates within the Constitution. But the hounding of Trump on tenuous charges, as the Presidential candidate defeated by a few tens of thousands of votes in the 2020 election, and the leading candidate for 2024 is not only unethical, but a violent affront to the Constitution of the United States.
The Democrat-driven DOJ persecuted political opponent Trump in the 4-year-long Russian Collusion scam in 2016 and will continue to destroy him until the American people realize that Trump is not the enemy, he is the victim. He is just a normal American who thinks differently to the elite. He deserves the same protection in law as everyone else. But he symbolizes dissent from the Democrats’ abuse of power and they cannot allow his voice to be tolerated. So rather than rely on the democratic process, they have corrupted the justice system as a political tool.
“The Trump verdict is politics by other means.”
As we limeys like to say, “No s**t, Sherlock”.
The contortions some will pull to defend this Grifter are unbelievable. This is the problem when you invest so much in the wrong guy. Sunk cost fallacy never clearer.
Some of us see a value in defending due process and a fair justice system – it doesn’t matter who is involved. Contorting the law to ‘get’ someone because you’ve decided the man is a ‘Grifter’ and so automatically guilty is not how things should work. ‘Getting someone’ is why Julian Assange, among others, rots in prison.
I still find the weirdest thing about Trump is how difficult it has been to pin something on him, so much so that they almost have to invent new ways of reading the law. For a Grifter they sure have difficulties finding prosecutable grift.
12 of his fellow citizens convicted him SD. A jury his legal team had a say in appointing. He had due process.
As it is he made so many political appointments to the judiciary he’s managed to keep the other 3 cases from getting to Court, and what were his appointments to the Supreme Ct if not political.
On convictions remember he’s been fined c$500m from two civil cases he lost, so this is a guy who’s done alot of illegal stuff and if he gets to Court he loses.
Sometimes it’s difficult to know if his supporters wilfully blind or just stupid.
Labelling people is a bad first move. What would it mean if these people aren’t blind or stupid and it’s just you missing something obvious, and it’s nothing to do with sideism? Take a look at the court proceedings and tell me they are good justice – fair, logical and above board.
ROFL – Stalin was a great fan of due process. Though in his case the final process was usually death. How long before the Democrats demand the death penalty for Trump for littering?
The fact that he is so difficult to ‘pin down’ suggests that he may NOT be the biggest Criminal that the Democrats claim – OR if he is, then he’s considerably smarter than anyone else in the US Establishment.
That Al Capone’s witnesses tended not to be alive to be interrogated is the only reason he appears to have been as hard to pin down as Trump.
I can’t remember the article writer or the article’s home, that pointed me to this. BUT I borrowed it.
Robert Bolt – A man for All Seasons. The Trial of Sir Thomas More.
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”