The behavior described in Trump’s Manhattan “hush money” trial is tawdry: alleged extramarital affairs with a Playboy model and with a porn star.
Legally, the case is a travesty.
Manhattan’s Democratic district attorney, Alvin Bragg, delayed indicting for years to orchestrate a trial during the 2024 campaign. The indictment fails to state the “conspiracy” crime that Judge Juan Merchan is allowing Bragg to present to the jury, and the business-records-falsification statute that Bragg invoked does not specify, as New York’s constitution requires it to do, that state prosecutors can use it to enforce federal campaign law.
Although nondisclosure agreements (“hush money” deals) are legal, Merchan has allowed Bragg to portray them as federal campaign-law felonies—even though they’re not and Bragg has no federal enforcement authority.
Merchan has green-lit testimony that Trump’s “fixer,” Michael Cohen, pled guilty to campaign crimes (he was trying to escape a prison sentence for fraud) and that Trump’s pals at the National Enquirer paid a fine to the FEC—evidence that, by law, is inadmissible to prove Trump’s guilt.
When Trump’s lawyers object, Merchan slaps them down—signaling to the jury that it is they, not prosecutors, who are engaged in sleight of hand.
Conviction appears inevitable.
