Back to Bragg
Six months ago, we suggested that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s Stormy Daniels hush money criminal case against Donald Trump take a backseat to the federal and Georgia state election subversion cases and the federal pilfered document case. The argument was that the offenses were far greater in the other prosecutions, as would be the penalties should Trump be convicted. The other three also occurred when Trump was president, related directly to his abuse of his office, while the alleged illegal Stormy deception began when he was still a candidate. Leading with your strongest hand was our thinking.
What happened instead is that what was supposed to be the first trial up, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Washington, D.C. indictment against Trump for trying to overthrow the legitimate 2020 results (at one pointed scheduled for March 4), has been sidelined as we all wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to review a unanimous appeals panel decision on presidential immunity that Smith won. The hope is that the Big Nine will quickly ratify the appeals ruling. But even if they decide so today, Smith’s trial of Trump will have to wait for a number of months.
Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said as much last week when he related during a hearing that he has been in touch with the D.C. trial judge and he went ahead and confirmed that the Stormy case will commence on March 25 and is expected to take six weeks.
The Smith case in D.C. will have to wait. As for Smith’s document case in Florida, it doesn’t have a date for a while, until late May, while the Georgia election case doesn’t even have any date at all (we are not factoring in the weird televised sideshow trying to disqualify DA Fani Willis).
So Bragg, who was the first to indict Trump back when felony indictments of a former president were notable, is back in the first spot. We still believe that Trump’s fake valuations of his properties, now devastatingly proven in Tish James’ successful civil trial, with an accompanying $355 million penalty, should have led to felony charges as well.
But the Manhattan criminal docket will have to suffice to the Stormy case and as Merchan’s 30page order makes clear, the case is solid.
The misdemeanors of falsifying Trump’s business records to hide his secret $130,000 payment to Daniels become felonies when it is done with the intent to commit another crime. And Bragg offers four other crimes: breaking federal campaign finance law, New York campaign finance law, New York tax law and the falsification of other business records. Merchan accepts the first three theories and doesn’t entirely reject the fourth. But Bragg only needs one for felony convictions.
The facts aren’t in dispute, so the case is fairly simple. The jury instructions to be written by Merchan will likely sink Trump. As to getting a fair and impartial jury of 12 Manhattanites (and some alternates) it can be done. They found fair jurors for E. Jean Carroll’s Manhattan federal defamation trial against Trump, twice.
Trump didn’t want to hide his Daniels payment because he was embarrassed; he wanted to hide the truth from voters right before the 2016 election. In other words, he committed election interference. Guilty as charged.