By Steve BermanIn the worst possible prosecution of Donald Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg spent a year spinning the thinnest of webs dealing with “hush money” paid to Stormy Daniels over an affair that took place almost two decades ago. No other prosecutor, despite having spent two years looking at the facts, would touch the case, but Bragg isn’t interested in law.
It’s nothing more than political opportunism of the same kind that New York State Attorney General Letitia James displayed crowing on X/Twitter about her $sdfkjsj judgement against Trump.
So now that the former president has spent countless hours sitting in courtrooms hearing the same regurgitated stories against him, of how he ran his real estate company, he’s also subject to a bevy of gag orders, prohibiting him from speaking against certain witnesses. Bragg has asked judge Juan Manuel Merchan to order Trump not to speak about potential witnesses and jurors, as well as “statements meant to interfere with or harass the court’s staff, prosecution team or their families.”
Listen, I understand that it’s wrong for Trump to go after the judge’s family, or jurors, or court clerks. It’s wrong for anyone to cause that kind of stress on people who are not responsible for politics. I have already gone on record that supporters need to stop with their threats against people who speak out against or prosecute Trump. Threats of violence, doxxing, and SWATting are never acceptable. But a gag order in a case dealing with things that happened nearly 20 years ago, with a cast of characters consisting of people Trump has dealt with for a long time, in a political sense, is not only stupid, but a trashing of the First Amendment.
First of all: who is Trump going to talk to? He speaks at rallies. He posts on Truth Social. Then the media picks up his words and posts, and amplifies them to their audience. The media is protected by the First Amendment, but apparently, Trump is not. Many of the comments Trump makes are things he’s said for years. When he originally said them, they were fine, but now, they are unfairly targeting a prosecution.
Second: The entire purpose of the prosecution is to tie up Trump and get some kind of felony conviction on him before the Republican National Convention this summer, where it’s almost a certainty Trump will be nominated.
I am not a fan of Donald Trump; I never have been. But Democrats are nuts. Instead of the most straightforward way of keeping him out of the White House, by running a decent, physically and mentally able candidate against an incredibly unpopular former president; Democrats are sticking with President Joe Biden, the “Bruno” they don’t talk about–but they spend a whole lot of time talking about how it’s “taboo” to talk about Biden’s age or mental capacity.
Beating Trump at the ballot box is not a difficult thing to do–Nikki Haley, having no chance at the nomination, still took nearly 40% of the Republican vote in South Carolina. Trump has underperformed his polling in every primary since the Iowa caucuses. A lot of people would rather not vote for Donald Trump, and they are willing to go to the polls, even when it makes no difference in the outcome, to register their choice.
But no, Democrats have gone into full hammer-and-tongs mode, acting as if they are a junta instead of a political party. Letitia James went after Trump’s money–which is stupid because he funds his legal bills from political donors (this is legal, because his “leadership PAC” is set up to allow payments for anything other than presidential campaigns). Trump has already appealed the penalty.
Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis had a pretty good case against Trump for some kind of state election interference, but decided to go after the entire GOP on a racketeering case, in order to make Trump’s charges more serious. She was so stupid as to hire the guy she was sleeping with (who was married at the time), and pay him over $600,000 of the people’s money, while she took cruises and trips with him. Her case is about to crash.
Federal special prosecutor Jack Smith is going after Trump, not for insurrection, but for fraud against the United States because Trump told supporters the election in 2020 was stolen. It’s a novel approach. And there’s the case in Miami where Trump kept classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and refused to return them to the National Archives. Of course, there’s classified stuff all over the place in presidential libraries, and there was classified in the garage of Joe Biden’s Delaware home. But Biden was too mentally incapable of being tried for it.
This could have been solved at the ballot box, but Democrats want scorched earth. They want Trump in prison. Perhaps he deserves it, but not this way. And with gag orders, they won’t even let Trump say the stuff he’s said for a decade about people he’s talked about since 2015. Don’t they see? It won’t stop Trump from speaking. All it will do is make his chances of winning in November even better.
Alvin Bragg, Letitia James and Fani Willis were never interested in the law. If Judge Merchan grants another gag order, he will only add his name to others who have trashed the First Amendment in order to get Trump.
Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.
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