Below is my column in the New York Post on the continued drama in Manhattan over the possible Trump indictment. Alvin Bragg may still secure an indictment, but the reports of divisions on the grand jury have captivated the press. Donald Trump remains Bragg’s political manifest destiny even if there is no legal landfall in sight.
Here is the column:
It appears that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will go another week in the legal effort to locate the nation of Kailasa on a map.
Recently, Mayor Ras Baraka and the city of Newark held a formal ceremony signing a partnership with the nation of Kailasa that pledged mutual cultural, social and political development.
After all of the fanfare, pomp and circumstance subsided, a small problem emerged.
Kailasa does not exist.
One can certainly wonder why no one in Newark has access to Google or bothered to ask how a Hindu nation was founded by an accused con man formed on an island off the coast of Ecuador.
However, to their credit, they did not continue to try to prove that Kailasa actually did exist under some creative geographical and political interpretation.
Despite similar widespread doubts over the existence of a viable state crime, Alvin Bragg continues a quest for his legal Kailasa.
While an indictment was expected this week, the grand jury looking into former President Donald Trump will go another week amid reports of opposition in the grand jury over what is viewed as a “weak” case.
The problem is that Bragg has long been searching for a crime in the criminal code to fulfill his pitch during his campaign that he was the man for voters who wanted to bag Trump.
The falsification of business records in reference to the $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels might have been a possibility, but it lacked two things.
First, it expired as a chargeable misdemeanor after two years — and that was roughly five years ago.
Second, it was a mere misdemeanor that could be brushed off by Trump even if they succeeded.
Prosecutors then created a Rube Goldberg approach and suggested that the misdemeanor was committed to conceal a federal election law violation — a crime that the Justice Department declined to charge.
That theory has been widely ridiculed, even by many on the left. The bootstrapping of a federal crime under this statute appears unprecedented and likely unsustainable.
The reason that the Justice Department likely declined the case was that it had previously tried to show that hush money paid to bury an affair was a federal campaign expense.
It failed in the case of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.
There are a host of reasons why a married celebrity like Trump might pay hush money separate from a presidential run.
Bragg himself scoffed at the theory and stopped the investigation when he came into power.
Two prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, then resigned and Pomerantz took what some of us view as a highly unprofessional and improper act of publishing a book on the case against Trump — a person who was still under investigation and not charged, let alone convicted, of any crime.
The pressure campaign worked and Bragg pushed the dubious theory to a grand jury.
Like Kailasa, the Bragg indictment has an established con man who insisted it exists.
Bragg has Michael Cohen, the former lawyer to Trump. A disbarred lawyer, Cohen is a convicted felon and one of the most repellent figures with a long history of false statements.
Then things got even worse when the lawyer for his star witness came forward with more than 300 emails contradicting his testimony.
Another letter on behalf of Cohen to the Federal Election Commission also surfaced that expressly contradicted his claims.
Finally, and probably most significantly for Bragg, the politics may have turned.
Even Democrats are hard pressed to defend the reported basis for the indictment and Sen. Chuck Schumer declined to express his support for the effort.
The media and pundits have warned that Bragg could be undermining other efforts to indict Trump before the election with this weak case.
Trump has said for years that Democrats have weaponized the criminal justice system against him and Bragg just gave him proof positive to support that claim.
With this raw political prosecution, Bragg fulfilled the narrative of Trump, who is rising in the polls at the very time that Biden is plunging.
The expectation is still that Bragg can get an indictment even out of a skeptical grand jury. He could then bank on a favorable and motivated judge and jury.
Moreover, even if the case ultimately fails on appeal, many in New York will still praise Bragg.
This is a thrill kill case and the prospect for many Democrats of Trump in handcuffs is exhilarating to the point of being indecent.
For some voters, it may be commendable that Bragg would prosecute Trump on a trumped-up case. After all, any prosecutor can bring a real case. It takes a true believer to prosecute when there is no viable crime.
So Bragg continues to stare at the map to find his Kailasa. He just needs to convince a grand jury that they see it, too.
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and a professor at George Washington University Law School.
It is still a travesty. The dual justice system is vacillating between “Should we keep trying to stop Trump from running?” vs “Are we helping Trump win?”
Only a few lawyers are talking about justice. Everyone else is trying to game out the political impact.
Da’ Bragg channeling his best Yvonne Elliman: “If he can’t have Trump, he don’t want nobody baby!!” Are all Dims Discophiles? They make mockery so easy in lots of ways.
Oh and Da Bragg is truly gambling his law license given his absolute obsession with lying by proxy:
“All perjury pollutes a trial, making it hard for jurors to see the truth. No lawyer, whether prosecutor or defense counsel, civil or criminal, may knowingly present lies to a jury and then sit idly by while opposing counsel struggles to contain this pollution of the trial. The jury understands defense counsel’s duty of advocacy and frequently listens to defense counsel with skepticism. A prosecutor has a special duty commensurate with a prosecutor’s unique power, to assure that defendants receive fair trials. 1It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate method to bring about one.'”( Hon. Andrew Kleinfeld writing in United States v. LaPage, 231 F.3d 488 (9th Cir. 2000) and citing Nix v. Whiteside, 475 US 157 (1986).
Dersh has a book and its a doozy. “It’s about lying … to get Trump.””
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/03/25/dershowitz-the-left-will-stretch-the-constitution-destroy-the-constitution-to-prevent-trump-from-running-for-president/
Listen to Dershowitz here.
These TDS people cannot tolerate even the existence of opposing views and opinions under ANY circumstances.
They are deranged and being brainwashed by the nonstop propaganda media bias, Democrat lies and constant vitriol.
MAGA voters are being targeted for political persecution and personal destruction by their own government, FBI/LE, judges, etc.
How does the country withstand this?
https://rumble.com/v2eqqpg-dershowitz-the-lefts-created-an-atmosphere-of-fear-and-violence-to-strong-a.html
How does the country withstand this?
It doesn’t.
Not without a functioning ‘blind’ justice system that adheres to rule of law. We are teetering on the edge.
How does the country withstand this?
It doesn’t.
Not without a functioning free press — which we no longer have, if we ever did.
Not without a functioning justice system — which we no longer have, if we ever did.
Not without faith in elections, with integrity, with proper checks and balances — which we no longer have, if we ever did.
And we do not withstand the bloated, dysfunctional government bureaucracy, corrupted from top to bottom — which we currently have.
The crash is coming.
I don’t always agree with Bill Maher, but he said charging Trump the way the dims are going about this is a colossal mistake. This coukd blow up in their faces.
Donald Trump has a lot in common with Bill Parcells, the former coach of the New York Giants. One sunday afternoon the Giants were playing an away game at a division rivals stadium. As Parcells was walking on to the field from the locker room with the rest of the coaches and players there was a young assistant coach that was walking next to him. When the fans saw the Giants coming on to the field they went into a hate fueled frenzie. They started screaming and swearing and curseing at the Giants. They were throwing things at them and some looked like they were going to leave their seats and go on to the field and possibly assault them. Parcells noticed that the young assistant was visibly shaken by the behavior of the fans. So he looked at him and he said,” Ya know, it doesnt get any better than this”. And thats Donald Trump.
I love it!
Later this year, in the midst of Trump’s campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, the former president will be charged with crimes regarding classified documents he kept in his Mar-a-Lago home, which is guarded by armed Secret Service agents. This, despite the fact that 20 years ago Bill Clinton’s national security advisor, Sandy Berger, was given mere probation for smuggling classified documents out of the National Archives stuffed down his pants and his socks (look it up) as Bill was uncharged in the case. This, despite the fact that Joe Biden, for decades, has been swimming in classified documents stored haphazardly and unsecured in his various offices and private homes, including some classified documents found in cardboard boxes inside his garage.
There’s one set of laws for them and one for us. We all understand that. And there’s zip we can do about it.
Trump is a total buffoon… He never planned to win and when he did he blew the greatest chance we had or will ever had for real reform through appointing and hiring crappy people in 2017 and not getting things done when he had the Senate and House in Republican control…
But sort of by accident he did totally expose the swamp and the media for what they are so that their problems/crimes are now undeniable and recognized as such by the majority of Americans (see time series Gallup polling on media and DC bureaucracy)
Dennis – Trump is a buffoon, but at this point, he is our buffoon.
@King,
The interesting thing is that unlike Biden as VP or anyone else, Trump has more right to the documents regardless of their classification markings.
The law he has alleged to have broken has no penalty.
If they were to pursue this… it would blow up in their face.
If the Dems were smurt [sic], they would ignore Trump and focus on DeSantis as the front runner and starve Trump’s oxygen.
But that will never happen.
-G
“A number of the Florida governor’s donors and allies are worried his recent stumbles suggest he may not be ready for a brutal fight against Donald Trump. Some feel DeSantis needs to accelerate his timeline to run for the GOP presidential nomination and begin directly confronting Trump if he’s to have any chance of thwarting the former president’s momentum. Others believe DeSantis should sidestep Trump altogether and wait until 2028 to run. At a Sunday luncheon following the annual Red Cross ball in Palm Beach, Florida, a group of 16 prominent Republicans, described by one attendee as a mix of DeSantis backers and Trump “skeptics,” discussed misgivings about the governor’s standing for the future if he tussles with the former president.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/ron-desantis-donors-allies-question-ready-2024-rcna76246
Also, DeSantis isn’t the frontrunner.
As for Trump, if he’s broken any criminal laws, he should be charged. Time will tell, and we don’t have to pretend that we know what the grand juries know. Either way, he’s also facing multiple civil suits, and the trial for one starts next month.
The MSM is trying to create discord between Trump and DeSantis. Republicans and Independents should stay away. We will all have our chance to vote for one or the other if both run. We don’t need the left to create pictures for later use in the election.
That is how the left works. Create discord, lie and deceive.