In Brief: A Prostituted Court and Verdict
Three editorial boards weigh in on the travesty of justice in Donald Trump’s case.
Our Douglas Andrews aptly took on our official reaction to the conviction of Donald Trump on 34 trumped-up felonies. But we thought three editorials made some critical points as well.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Judge Juan Merchan got their way Thursday, maneuvering a jury of former President Donald Trump’s peers into finding him guilty of … something. …
You can see why jurors didn’t realize that the only testimony indicating criminal intent on Trump’s part (something utterly necessary for a guilty verdict) came from Michael Cohen, a confessed serial liar who admitted to a personal vendetta against the defendant.
Nor see that Bragg’s team didn’t even show that Trump had actually falsified any business records.
All that should get the verdict tossed on appeal, but for now President Biden’s campaign can and will call Trump a “convicted felon” every minute through Election Day.
That is: Bragg and Merchan have completely prostituted the justice system for a purely political purpose.
Well, Alvin Bragg got his man.
In a case that will eventually be remembered as a textbook instance of selective prosecution, the Manhattan district attorney breathed life into an alleged bookkeeping misdemeanor that the statute of limitations had expired on and, Merlin-like, transformed it into 34 felonies. …
The business-records charge requires not just that a record is false (Trump’s reimbursement to Michael Cohen was booked as an ongoing legal fee rather than a loan reimbursement) but that there is an intent to defraud. There isn’t any evidence that Trump sought to defraud anyone with a bookkeeping entry that no one would even see.
To transmogrify the alleged bookkeeping offense into a felony, it had to be in furtherance of another crime, which Bragg declined to include in his indictment and wasn’t explicit about for most of the trial, although his prosecutors said it was federal campaign-finance law in their closing arguments. Still, since Merchan instructed the jurors to take a Chinese-menu approach to the second offense — they didn’t have to agree among themselves which of three possible criminal violations Trump committed — it’s impossible even now to know with certainty what Trump has been found guilty of.
The idea that it was a violation of federal campaign law is not credible. Paying porn stars for their silence is not a campaign expense. Moreover, Trump would have had to willfully violate the law, and there’s no evidence that he was even thinking of campaign-finance law. …
There’s no denying, though, that Alvin Bragg has made history — by becoming the first prosecutor in the history of the country to abuse his office in hopes of damaging an opposition presidential candidate ahead of a national election.
Twelve New York jurors have found Donald Trump guilty of falsifying business records, a total of 34 felony counts, in history’s first criminal conviction of a former President. What a volatile moment for the country. Will the judge jail Mr. Trump? Will voters re-elect him in November anyway, in disgust of this concocted case? What if it’s thrown out on appeal? Will Republicans retaliate? The nation might soon regret this rough turn. …
What if Mr. Trump loses the election and then is vindicated on appeal? If Democrats think that too many Republicans today complain about stolen elections, imagine how many more might next year.
The conviction sets a precedent of using legal cases, no matter how sketchy, to try to knock out political opponents, including former Presidents. Mr. Trump has already vowed to return the favor. If Democrats felt like cheering Thursday when the guilty verdict was read, they should think again. Mr. Bragg might have opened a new destabilizing era of American politics, and no one can say how it will end.
