You may have heard — it’s been all over the news — that some rich, orange-tinted dude, formerly from the borough of Queens, was indicted by a New York grand jury a few days ago on 34 counts of finagling with various financial records to hide hush money proffered to a porn star with whom he got down and dirty.
Yeah, that’s about the sum and size of it. Whether those charges against the nation’s 45th president, one Donald James Trump, can stick remain a bit cloudy. The claims, while provocative and more likely than not factually accurate, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, are based on an untested legal theory. Without resorting to too much mumbo-jumbo, the grand jury essentially raised the 34 counts from misdemeanors to felonies under New York law by asserting Trump’s actions were performed with the “intent to commit another crime.”
Whether this sad, deplorable mishegoss passes legal muster looks to be a 50-50 proposition. For one thing, no one appears able to identify the underlying other crime (Author’s note – I am far from an authority on New York’s legal intricacies, although I’ve watched Jack McCoy prosecute dozens of cases on Law & Order over the years).
Questions also exist about the statute of limitations. So it would come as no surprise if the judge tosses the case even though the indictment offers reason to believe that our boy falsified business records to disguise a booty call.
Futzing around with business records, which could conceivably carry tax implications, certainly doesn’t rise to the level of capital murder. But it’s unquestionably more serious than an overdue parking ticket, rendering it ripe for consideration somewhere within the nation’s legal system, leaving it up to a jury, in this nation’s grand, old tradition, to determine accountability.
Well, not according to some of our greatest Republican statesmen, who insist Trump is being treated worse that Dreyfuss, Devil’s Island or no Devil’s Island.
Kentucky’s unholy trinity – Sen. Rand Paul, R-JeffYass, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, and Rep. Jamie Comer, R-Whereverhehangshishatishishome – leapt to the defense of the MAGA darling in a regular Bluegrass putzarama.
(Please assume all of these statements were issued with foaming at the mouth intensity).
“I’m saddened for our Constitutional Republic and the rule of law. An overzealous, super liberal local prosecutor has filed drummed up charges against a former President, in a clear case of political prosecution,” Paul wrote on Twitter. “All Americans should stand up to this injustice, regardless of their political views or opinions of the former President.”
“Alvin Bragg should be disbarred and removed from office,” Massie said on the same social media site. “This is an egregious abuse of the legal system for political purposes and threatens the fabric of our judicial system.”
And, of course, batting clean-up we find the world champion schlemiel, Comer, retaining that title, threatening to call Bragg before the panel he chairs, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, to grill the prosecutor on his attempt to overthrow the rule of law. Or something.
Comer, who has recently visited the Fox News makeup room so frequently prior to unloading his bilge on air that his face has assumed a weird shade of puce, condemned the indictment even before it was handed down by the New York grand jury, momentarily pushing aside his obsession with Hunter Biden to hunker down on Bragg.
“The Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has weaponized his office to launch a blatantly political indictment,” he said on Fox & Friends, one of his favored venues. “This case rests on a far-fetched legal theory untested anywhere in the U.S. The American people deserve better than this cheap, political stunt.”
Now let’s be clear, we can write a book longer than Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” on the subject of James Richardson Comer Jr. and cheap, political stunts. For crying out loud, his entire political career is based on cheap, political stunts.
This time he is treading beyond that. Comer, along with two other House committee chairs, dispatched a letter to Bragg in wake of reports about a potential Trump indictment demanding that he appear before Congress to testify about the pending prosecution.
The letter further instructed Bragg to hand over records and communications regarding the case and the use of federal funds in its disposition.
“You are reportedly about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former President of the United States and current declared candidate for that office. This indictment comes after years of your office searching for a basis — any basis — on which to bring charges, ultimately settling on a novel legal theory untested anywhere in the country and one that federal authorities declined to pursue.”
Bragg, understandably, told the lawmakers to pound sand, accusing the authors of “unlawful political interference.”
“Like any other defendant, Mr. Trump is entitled to challenge these charges in court and avail himself of all processes and protections that New York State’s robust criminal procedure affords,’’ the response read. “What neither Mr. Trump nor Congress may do is interfere with the ordinary course of proceedings in New York State.”
Regardless of whether the offenses rise to the level of felonies – and that issue will almost certainly be adjudicated – a case can be made that Trump illegally fiddled with corporate records to avoid his participation in a sexual adventure outside the bounds of his marriage. Critics may want to point to former president Bill Clinton, and his tete-a-tete with Monica Lewinsky, but Clinton, at least escaped any charges because he wasn’t stupid enough to illegally falsify documents.
It appears the same can’t be said for Trump.
Comer and the others demanding that Bragg come tell them all the gory details is ridiculous, even by Republican standards. For one thing, former president, current presidential candidate or not, Trump is bound by the laws of the republic. If any Joe Schmo can be charged with fiddling with corporate records to his illicit advantage, so can a meshugana like Trump.
And there is an obvious, constitutional separation of powers issue here. Prosecutors, participants in the judicial branch, can’t demand that the legislative branch pass certain laws. Similarly, legislators can’t tell prosecutors who to indict on the state or federal level. In this instance the indictments are based on New York state, not federal, law.
So why is Comer sticking his nose in the middle of this? Basically, the boy’s gone Hollywood. As chairman of the House’s primary investigative committee, Comer is puffing up his chest demanding that mere mortals bend to his will. The ego-trip involved here is truly astounding.
Who’s playing politics, Comer and the other mugs yowling in defense of a potential Republican candidate for president or a local Democratic prosecutor handling a criminal case involving that same candidate based on charges handed down by a grand jury? Now Comer claims he received a call from a local Kentucky prosecutor looking into whether he can charge and try President Biden for who knows what.
Yeah, that’ll help.
Here’s a tip: Trump and his gang are likely hoping the presiding judge winds up tossing the case, which is a gamble. The better strategy might be his lawyers go to Bragg, offer to plead guilty to a handful of the 34 counts, claim accounting error, pay a substantial fine and move on. That will give Trump time to deal with other potential prosecutions of more serious consequence – one rumbling in Atlanta where he’s being investigated for illicitly attempting to overturn the results of his 2020 presidential election loss in Georgia and the Justice Department probe into his involvement in the Jan. 6 uprising.
Sometimes you gotta pay the piper.
• • • • •
Remembering Richard Wilson
I rise on a point of personal privilege:
My friend, Dick Wilson, who brought great honor to the field of journalism during his time at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, sadly died this week and the newspaper game lost a champion.
Even among old school journalists, Dick Wilson was old school, relying on shoe leather, an uncountable number of reliable sources, and brains to keep the public informed. He was peerless when it came to covering higher education – probably the best in the country during his tenure – and can lay some claim to actually pushing a reluctant commonwealth toward improving a moribund educational system.
We can talk all day about Dick’s journalistic exploits and how he outdistanced anyone who tried to outwit him. But what folks who knew him will remember, simply, that Dick was a great guy, full of good humor, an established raconteur and someone you always knew was around as a result of the aroma emanating from the smoldering pipe tobacco in the pipe clenched in his teeth.
Kentucky lost one of the best
Rest In Peace Richard Wilson. May his family also find peace during this time of loss…
Thank you for acknowledging there are drummed up charges against Trump in this scenario. That alone discredits the majority of your affectation.
“neither Mr. Trump nor Congress may do is interfere with the ordinary course of proceedings in New York State”
Ordinary Proceedings?! There is nothing ordinary about what Bragg is doing. You are letting your “orange-man-bad” prejudice blind you to horrible legal practice.
I’m no Trump guy, hugely NOT a fan. Even if only 1/10th of the alleged impropriety were true, the man is a sleaze.
These proceedings are anything but normal and are purely politically motivated. Bragg is equally a sleaze or at least short sighted.
His actions are inviting like-actions. It is ironic that the party that whines about “violence” is the first to wield the prosecutorial assault weapon and then wonder why there is any residual return fire.