The Frightening Precedent of Indicting an Innocent Former President
The U.S. devolves into a Banana Republic – with a deteriorating legal system.
By Rachel Alexander
We are living in an Orwellian era when the formerly most powerful man in the world, who remains very powerful, is being prosecuted in order to stop him from becoming president again. If they can take him down, they can take down any conservative. The left has weaponized lawfare, which started with merely civil lawsuits but has now progressed into disbarring attorneys and prosecution. Once they’ve gone after Trump through prosecution — even if unsuccessful — it will be easier to go after him again on other charges, and easier to go after any other conservative. And they won’t stop there, they’ll go after RINOs and those on the left who side with the right against the abuse of the legal system next.
Left-wing billionaire George Soros contributed $1 million to Color of Change’s PAC, which then spent over $500,000 to support the campaign of Alvin Bragg, the New York DA prosecuting Trump. Soros has been contributing millions to defeat conservative prosecutors and sheriffs around the country in recent years. When Bragg ran for office, he gloated about how he went after the Trump Foundation while serving as New York state’s chief deputy attorney general from 2017 to 2018. His primary opponent Tali Farhadian Weinstein accused Bragg of going after Trump “for political advantage every chance he gets.”
It’s an ethical violation for prosecutors to run for office on a platform of getting someone on the possibility they might find new crimes. The rule regarding trial publicity, which states have adopted, prohibits attorneys “from making an extrajudicial statement that the attorney knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding.”
Everyone knows the old saying, a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. That’s because the grand jury doesn’t get to see any arguments from the defense, they are only shown the prosecution’s case.
After five years of a fishing expedition, the indictment is expected to result in charges that Trump falsified business records on a payment his former attorney Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels, allegedly disguising the payoff as routine legal fees.
Daniels is now saying she was paid to keep quiet about an alleged affair she had with Trump. Hush money payments aren’t illegal. Falsifying records is a misdemeanor, but by claiming it benefited him in the election, to cover up another crime, it can turn into a felony. However, Trump is required to have known he was committing a crime. Trump denies he had the affair. And the statute of limitations for prosecuting him over the 2016 payment may have run.
Both Daniels and Cohen are not credible witnesses, having made previous contradictory statements. When a witness has conflicting statements, they can be “impeached” when testifying, rendering their trial testimony invalid.
Daniels issued a statement in 2018 which said, “I am not denying this affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.
A letter Cohen’s attorney Stephen Ryan sent to the FEC in 2018 states that Cohen paid $130,000 to Daniels, Trump was not a party to the deal, and he never reimbursed Cohen. Ryan asked the FEC to dismiss the complaint.
Cohen changed his story a little over six months later as part of a plea agreement, pleading guilty to making an excessive campaign contribution to Trump with the payment to Daniels.
Even if it was a campaign finance violation due to not reporting the payments as campaign contributions, politicians are frequently allowed to modify their campaign finance reports after they’re due with amendments to add omitted contributions or expenses. Look at any campaign’s finance reports online and you’ll almost always see amended reports, it’s routinely done. Unless you’re a juicy target of the left like conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, most quietly amend their reports.
When prosecutors tried to charge former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards with a similar crime in 2008, he argued that he was trying to hide the affair from his wife, not from the voters. The jury acquitted him on one charge and hung on the others, and the Justice Department dismissed the charges.
Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas pointed out that when President Bill Clinton got caught having an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, the RINO special prosecutor “refused to prosecute Clinton for perjury, fraud or anything else,” even though Clinton helped her line up blue-chip job interviews.
Clinton paid off Paula Jones after sexually harassing her. After Jones filed a lawsuit against him, alleging that he exposed himself to her in a hotel room, he agreed to settle it for $850,000 to make it go away. He was never prosecuted.
Daniels lost her defamation lawsuit against Trump, and must pay him $300,000 in legal fees. Her former lawyer Michael Avenatti is sitting in prison. Daniels had sued Trump over a tweet he made dismissive of her claim that a man threatened to hurt her daughter if she didn’t keep quiet about the sex allegation. His tweet said, “A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!”
The left is throwing everything they can at Trump in order to stop him from becoming president again. They brought impeachment charges against him twice. The FBI was sent to search his home. More indictments by other prosecutors are expected.
The U.S. is turning into a banana republic with this deterioration of the legal system combined with election fraud determining elections. As Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria famously said, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” Similarly, criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverglate wrote a book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” which explains how there are so many vague and broad laws now the average person commits three felonies a day and doesn’t know it. If they want to get you, they’ll figure out a way.