The persecution of Donald Trump
The prosecution has wrapped up its case against Donald Trump in his New York trial on 34 felony counts of nobody is sure exactly what.
The 34 counts pertain to allegedly falsifying business records, but that’s not a felony in New York, and the statute of limitations on those misdemeanors expired years ago. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg elevated the misdemeanors to felonies by alleging that they were committed as part of another crime.
But he never said what crime that might be. Prosecutors didn’t say it in the indictment. They didn’t say it in the opening argument. And even now, having presented their case in full, Bragg and his prosecutors still haven’t said what “other” crime Trump is accused of committing.
A casual observer might think Trump had been arrested for rape in Central Park. Lurid but irrelevant details gushed into the record, a firehose of daily chit-chat for the TV news cycle. The prosecutors’ purpose seemed to be the general defamation of the leading candidate for the presidency of the United States.
It wasn’t too different from the “Russia collusion hoax,” which was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller for as long as possible before he had to admit he had found no evidence of collusion. Until that moment, newsrooms had feasted on innuendo and smug suspicion, all originating from a compilation of phony intelligence that was cooked up to serve as political opposition research. The so-called “Steele dossier” was a garbage heap of salacious and unverified nonsense that was used to justify surveillance and investigation of Trump, his campaign and his associates.
And here we are again, this time in a criminal court. After weeks of tawdry but irrelevant allegations, the prosecution has concluded its case without showing any evidence that Trump committed some other crime that these 34 allegedly falsified ledger entries supposedly furthered.
As the leading presidential candidate sat in the New York courtroom four days a week, prosecutors called witness after witness to testify that Trump did things that are not against the law.
It’s not against the law to pay someone to sign a nondisclosure agreement, or to buy the exclusive rights to publish a story that someone is peddling and then not publish it. It’s not against the law for a candidate to “conspire” with others to present a positive image to the public in order to win an election. In fact, it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry.
To sum up the proceedings so far, the prosecution has no crime, the witnesses have no credibility, and the judge and prosecutors have enough major conflicts to win a screenplay contest. Imagine the judge’s instructions to the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, please figure out what crime was committed. Don’t rush, the cable TV ratings are great. And did you meet my daughter the Democratic fundraising consultant? What a year she’s having with all the anti-Trump donations. Ka-ching, you know what I’m saying?”
It all recalls the words of 1930s screen legend Mae West, who was asked by a judge, “Young lady, are you trying to show contempt for this court?”
“No,” she answered. “I’m doin’ my best to hide it.”
One thing that would be very serious is if a presidential candidate used campaign funds to pay a law firm to secretly funnel money to a political operative in order to influence public opinion and win an election, and then made false entries in legally required campaign finance reports to conceal the purpose of the payments.
But the Federal Election Commission already reached a settlement with the candidate’s campaign and political party over those accusations. The candidate and the party paid fines totaling more than $100,000 after the FEC found “probable cause to believe” that the campaign and the party “misreport[ed] the purpose of certain disbursements” by calling them legal fees.
Aha! There’s the crime! But unfortunately for the New York prosecutors, Donald Trump didn’t commit it.
Hillary Clinton did.
According to the “conciliation agreement” with the FEC, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee misreported payments to their law firm, Perkins Coie, as legal expenses, when in fact some of the money was used to pay Fusion GPS through Perkins Coie to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump.
That opposition research turned out to be the Steele dossier.
Yes, Hillary Clinton was secretly behind the creation of a phony “intelligence” file that was used to launch surveillance and years of investigations into her then-opponent in the 2016 election, later the president of the United States.
Brazenly, Clinton appeared on MSNBC last week to opine that Trump’s trial in New York is about “election interference” and “trying to prevent the people of our country from having relevant information that may have influenced how they could have voted in 2016 or whether they would have voted.”
Clinton also complained that Trump’s other trials are proceeding too slowly and won’t be completed before the November election. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” she intoned, warning that the U.S. Supreme Court was doing “a grave disservice” by considering the issue of whether presidents have immunity from prosecution for some of their actions.
Meanwhile, James Carville, a longtime political advisor to the Clintons, released a video on social media in which he boiled with frustration that Trump is getting stronger in the polls. “It’s not working,” he ranted. “Everything that we’re throwing is spaghetti at a wall, and none of it is sticking.”
Interesting. Maybe he doesn’t remember how they spun a vast constellation of Clinton scandals into a single message that President Clinton was being impeached over his personal life. Who knows how many people saw themselves in Bill Clinton?
And who knows how many people who have ever felt they were treated wrongfully are now seeing themselves in Donald Trump?
The pollsters know. Soon everybody will.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley