My first-pass take on the Trump indictment *UPDATED*

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It’s petty, vicious, and overblown, and would never have happened were he not running for president again.

This is a reprint of my first-pass take at American Thinker:

The Trump circus came to New York today, and we have a little more information than before. I’m not a criminal defense attorney, but I can offer some opinions about what’s taken place, not just today, but in the years leading up to today. [Note: I didn’t mention any statute of limitations issues because I have no idea what the statute of limitations is on this cause of action. If it’s passed, the case should be dead in the water.]

The media and the leftists created a circus outside the courthouse. There’s really nothing to say about that beyond the obvious.

Bragg declined to take a mugshot of Donald Trump, which was a smart decision for the Democrats. Trump has already raised millions of dollars off the fact that Americans (rightly) perceive what’s happening as a Third World, banana-republic political persecution to kneecap the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 election. However, Trump provided a powerful raised fist moment before going into the courthouse, and that should do when it comes to reminding people about what’s happening:

Regarding many images that are circulating, AI is colliding with the moment, and frighteningly realistic Deep Fakes are out there. It’s clear that we have entered The Matrix. We’d better hope that “The One” is also out there somewhere because we badly need rescuing. (Alternatively, each of us is The One who is called upon to keep a tight hold on the Constitution and reality, and never to lose sight of those lodestars as Democrats take us deeper and deeper into their warped fantasies.)

The other important thing that emerged today is the 34-count indictment. Before I get to that, let me sum up a few of the facts we already know.

Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, the attorney whose testimony drives this persecution…er, prosecution, is a known liar.

In keeping with his image beginning in the 1970s, Americans knew Trump was not a virgin.

Trump is a notorious germaphobe which may mean that random sexual encounters are repugnant to him.

Stormy Daniels has admitted that she never had sex with Trump.

It’s not unusual for very rich men to pay off he said/she said accusers as a nuisance cost because it’s easier than proving the “she said” lie in court (that is, less time, less money, less risk of a jury getting its generic revenge on rich people). Lots of women have lied about Trump.

Cohen has admitted that he made the payment out of his funds to Stormy without Trump’s approval, although Trump conceded that he routinely had Cohen get rid of these nuisance claims:

The American people assumed that Trump was a player so his allegedly having sex with a raddled old porn star wouldn’t have changed their minds about him. That makes it more reasonable that, whether or not he had contact with Stormy, the payoff was to hide it from his wife.

With those facts in mind, let’s talk about the charges against Trump, which come in the form of a two-part document: A statement of facts and the actual indictment:

The gist of the facts is that Trump used his New York business records to hide that he was suppressing “damaging information from the voting public” in 2016. So, right off the bat, they’re not even pretending he illegally used campaign funds, which was the alleged federal claim that even the hostile feds couldn’t make stick.

Here’s a really slimmed-down version of the allegations: During his campaign, Trump worked with others in his organization and Lawyer A (Cohen) to hunt down people who had negative information about him and to suppress that information.

The National Enquirer’s publisher (AMI) and its CEO also admitted to paying for one person’s silence—and, even when it turned out the story was a lie, Trump and Cohen said to let the liar keep his money. There are allegations of other instances where Trump, Cohen, and AMI paid off people alleging bad things about Trump in exchange for silence. They also tried to shut down the Access Hollywood tape. So far, I believe that none of that is illegal.

When it came to the Stormy Daniels payment, the statement of facts alleges that Trump authorized it, contradicting Cohen’s own statements in 2018. It also says that Cohen set up a shell company and transferred his own money to the company.

Again, none of the above facts allege illegal activity. The gist of what’s allegedly illegal is contained in the paragraphs below:

25. The TO CFO (Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who was also bullied into pleading guilty by the manic push to destroy Trump) and Lawyer A (Cohen) agreed to a total repayment amount of $420,000. They reached that figure by adding the $130,000 payment to a $50,000 payment for another expense for which Lawyer A also claimed reimbursement, for a total of $180,000. The TO CFO then doubled that amount to $360,000 so that Lawyer A could characterize the payment as income on his tax returns, instead of a reimbursement, and Lawyer A would be left with $180,000 after paying approximately 50% in income taxes. Finally, the TO CFO added an additional $60,000 as a supplemental year-end bonus. Together, these amounts totaled $420,000. The TO CFO memorialized these calculations in handwritten notes on the copy of the bank statement that Lawyer A had provided.

26. The Defendant, the TO CFO, and Lawyer A then agreed that Lawyer A would be paid the $420,000 through twelve monthly payments of $35,000 over the course of 2017. Each month, Lawyer A was to send an invoice to the Defendant through Trump Organization employees, falsely requesting payment of $35,000 for legal services rendered in a given month of 2017 pursuant to a retainer agreement. At no point did Lawyer A have a retainer agreement with the Defendant or the Trump Organization.

In sum, rather than having the payments appear as nuisance payoffs, they were listed as legal expenses. Some of the funds came from Trump’s own account.

In April 2018, when the FBI went after Cohen, Trump allegedly asked Cohen not to cooperate. (Note that this was after a year and a half of the FBI’s knowingly fake Russia collusion investigation.) There are paragraphs in the indictment about Trump or his lawyers telling Cohen to stay strong, followed by Cohen pleading guilty. Cohen is a liar, but we also know from General Flynn that FBI bullying and open coercion lead even the strongest to plead guilty.

Based on those facts, the indictment alleges only falsifying business records, a violation of New York’s Penal Law  175.10. The 34 separate counts are achieved by making every allegedly unlawful ledger entry and payment to Cohen a separate indictment. If a Manhattan jury finds Trump guilty on all counts, he faces up to 136 years in jail. This is typical prosecutorial overcharging because if you can get the jury to sign on even one transaction, you’ve got a conviction—and juries like to play Solomon and split the baby (forgetting that it was wrong to split the baby and that Solomon only threatened to do so to suss out the truth).

So that’s the case: Trump had a fixer who paid off bimbos using Trump’s own funds. When Trump ran for president, he allegedly went into hyper-mode to stop what the Clintons used to call “bimbo eruptions.”

Trump never used campaign funds for this, and there’s no reason to believe that the purpose wasn’t to protect his relationship with Melania—again, given what the public thought it knew and already forgave regarding Trump’s bad boy days. Trump, either directly or through his agents, allegedly entered into a payment plan with Cohen to hide the nature of the payments. And therefore, he allegedly deserves 136 years in jail, and the American people must be deprived of the right to choose their preferred presidential candidate.

Trump has pleaded NOT GUILTY to all charges. Like you, I await word from knowledgeable criminal defense attorneys about Trump’s legal position right now.

UPDATE: Tucker Carlson had more information than I did:

Regarding whether Bragg alleged an underlying crime, I believe what he tried to bootstrap into an underlying crime was Trump’s allegedly entering into the agreement with Cohen to disguise the nature of the payments. Then, every book entry and payment to Cohen would be piggybacked onto that alleged crime — only it’s not a crime. The whole thing crumbles.

Alan Dershowitz’s take is worth watching, too:

Also, if you haven’t seen it, here is Trump’s statement. He appeared remarkably relaxed and was, as always, a bit discursive, but I was very happy seeing him attack the whole “classified documents” sham. He said clearly what I’ve said repeatedly: As President, he didn’t have classified documents because he had the absolute right to possess and declassify all documents — unlike Biden, who grossly violated national security laws when he was the vice president:

Image: Trump entering the courthouse. Twitter screen grab.

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