The Patriot Post® · In Brief: Bragg's 'Election Interference'

Donald Trump called the trial in Manhattan “rigged,” and he’s right. The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel makes the case for why Democrats’ lawfare “every day look less like fair or sober justice.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s court case — which hinges on the claim that Mr. Trump falsely labeled seven-year-old business records about a nondisclosure-agreement payment to an adult film star — was always tenuous. To elevate this somewhat nonsensical issue to a felony, Mr. Bragg had to claim further the entries were mislabeled with intent to commit or conceal a secondary crime. After months of indecision, Mr. Bragg finally settled on a gotcha, suggesting the NDA payment made by lawyer Michael Cohen was an illegal campaign contribution — even though the money came from the candidate — that Mr. Trump criminally concealed from voters, amounting to election “interference” or “fraud.”

Consider the sheer nuttiness of this argument, especially when spooled to its natural conclusions. Campaigns exist to present a candidate favorably to the public—to highlight good things, hide unpleasant things. If it is felony “election interference” for a candidate to try to keep private the details of a seamy relationship, what other candidate concealments—of a lawful and entirely personal nature—must be reported? Must the out-of-pocket settlement for that fender-bender be disclosed, since it conceals a candidate’s bad driving skills? How about plastic surgery, since it masks the true ravages of age or health? Let’s raise donation caps now, since this will cost a lot.

Better yet, let’s march the entire political class to their jail cells now and save donors and the courts the costs. Many should already be there under the Bragg “concealment” theory. The Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 paid an opposition-research firm to produce a bogus dossier that accused Mr. Trump of collusion with Russia. They fed it to the FBI and leaked it to the public prior to the 2016 election. The DNC and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign reported the expenditures to the Federal Election Commission but concealed their true nature by describing the payments as “legal” services, as Mr. Trump did with his NDA. The FEC fined them for the deception, but under Mr. Bragg’s theory it should count as criminal election interference.

Even in Trump’s case, it’s nonsensical, she says, because the actual payment wasn’t made until just before the election, and people likely wouldn’t have known. Trump’s reimbursement, in fact, happened a year after the election. “Who’s the threat to democracy?” Strassel asks. And “who is actually ‘interfering’ with the election?”

She concludes:

Recent polls show more Americans this time think Democrats are a threat to democracy than think that of Mr. Trump. If Mr. Biden’s “threat” arguments fall flat this election, it will be another political collapse of his party’s own making.

Wall Street Journal subscribers can read the whole thing here.