The ‘Heart’ of Alvin Bragg’s Case Against Trump Is Misdirection
Porn star Stormy Daniels says she had sex with former President Donald Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel in July 2006. To keep her from telling that story, former Trump fixer Michael Cohen says, “the boss” instructed him to pay Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg says that nondisclosure agreement was a serious crime that undermined democracy by concealing information from voters. Of these three accounts, Bragg’s is the least credible.
“This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior,” lead prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said at the beginning of Trump’s trial last month. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.”
Contrary to Colangelo’s spin, there is nothing “pure and simple” about the case against Trump. To begin with, Trump is not charged with “conspiracy” or “election fraud.” He is charged with violating a New York law against “falsifying business records” with “intent to defraud.”
Trump allegedly did that 34 times by disguising his 2017 reimbursement of Cohen’s payment to Daniels as compensation for legal services. The counts include 11 invoices from Cohen, 11 corresponding checks and 12 ledger entries.
Falsifying business records, ordinarily a misdemeanor, becomes a felony when the defendant’s “intent to defraud” includes an intent to conceal “another crime.” Bragg says Trump had such an intent.
What crime did Trump allegedly try to conceal? Prosecutors say it was a violation of an obscure New York law that makes it a misdemeanor for “two or more persons” to “conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”
Why was the Daniels payment “unlawful”? By fronting the money, federal prosecutors argued in 2018, Cohen made an excessive campaign contribution.
Cohen accepted that characterization in a 2018 plea agreement that also resolved several other, unrelated charges against him. But Trump was never prosecuted for soliciting that “contribution,” and there are good reasons for that.
Such a case would have hinged on the assumption that Trump, in paying off Daniels, was trying to promote his election rather than trying to avoid embarrassment. While the first interpretation is plausible, proving it beyond a reasonable doubt would have been difficult, as illustrated by the unsuccessful 2012 prosecution of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, which was based on similar but seemingly stronger facts.
Federal prosecutors would have had to prove that Trump “knowingly and willfully” violated the Federal Election Campaign Act. But given the fuzziness of the distinction between personal and campaign expenditures, it is plausible that Trump did not think paying Daniels for her silence was illegal.
In any event, the Justice Department did not pursue that case, the statute of limitations bars pursuing it now, and Bragg has no authority to enforce federal campaign finance regulations. Instead, he is relying a moribund New York election law that experts say has never been enforced before.
That attempt to convert a federal campaign finance violation into state felonies is so legally dubious that Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., rejected the idea after long consideration. It reeks of political desperation and validates Trump’s complaint that Democrats are attempting “election interference” by undermining his current presidential campaign.
As Bragg tells it, Trump is the one who committed “election interference,” which the DA describes as “the heart of the case.” Bragg says his prosecutors “allege falsification of business records to the end of keeping information away from the electorate.”
Cohen, whom the defense team accurately describes as a convicted felon and admitted liar with a grudge against his former boss, is the only witness who has tied Trump to the production of those records. And since they were produced after the election, Bragg’s narrative is nonsensical as well as irrelevant — a point that should not be obscured by the salacious details of Daniels’ story.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @ jacobsullum. To find out more about Jacob Sullum and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
On May 11, Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker gave the commencement address at Benedictine College, a Catholic school in Kansas. Within 48 hours, the media elites were ablaze with outrage. There’s a “growing uproar,” warned NBC’s Hoda Kotb.
A Catholic speaker talked about Catholic issues to Catholic graduates. But the Butker critics who aren’t Catholics pulled out little snippets they could not abide.
First, they hated that Butker paid tribute to his wife Isabelle for making him successful, for assuming “one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.” That is like a curse word to the feminists. They can’t allow the notion that children might benefit from having a parent in the home.
He said to the female graduates that “some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.” He didn’t say they shouldn’t have careers. He did suggest that many women — especially Catholic women — put motherhood first.
Butker also inflamed the Left with a brief allusion to “the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it.” None of us should have pride in our sins, but the libertine Left is allergic to the entire concept of sorrow for sin.
Personally, this was my favorite political passage: “Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally. He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and prochoice.”
Lapsed Catholics and non-Catholics have no grasp of how the Catholic Church defines “scandal.” Catholics like President Joe Biden, who aggressively support the exact opposite of church teachings, confuse both religious and nonreligious people about what Catholics are called to believe — like abortion is by its nature a deadly sin.
But simplistic reporters don’t want anyone calling Biden a phony, any more than they want you to proclaim he’s a divider, not a uniter.
Jonathan Beane, the chief “diversity” officer of the NFL, put out a statement that “Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity. His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”
It never stops being comical to tout “inclusion” when you’re telling a conservative Catholic to shut up about “Pride month.” One can never dissent from the “diversity and inclusion” cops, who blatantly imply only the leftist side of the cultural debate defines their most precious words.
Bobby Burack at Outkick pointed out that the NFL had no public statement of objection for Butker’s Kansas City teammate Rashee Rice, who was recently arrested on eight felony charges concerning a hit-andrun accident “while dragracing his Lamborghini at 119 mph on a Dallas highway.” Reckless Rice is also under investigation for allegedly punching a photographer at a nightclub in Dallas, “leaving the accuser with noticeable swelling in his face.” The NFL has no comment.
Butker’s speech predictably prompted a Change.org petition calling for him to be fired by the Chiefs. Once again, it’s the Left that claims conservatives will “end democracy” and crush freedom of speech, while they demonstrate their absolute intolerance of an opposing point of view. They can’t achieve true “progress” until dissenters are heckled and banned.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters. org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.