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So, everyone was even more right than they thought: Alvin Bragg’s breathlessly awaited arraignment of former president Donald Trump really was the Oakland of all arraignments. It was just as Gertrude Stein said of that California city: there is no there there. The indictment had thirty-four counts — thirty-four!
Everyone expected them to be more or less the same count, just repeated with some sort of elegant variation to hold the attention of his audience. But, minimalist that he is, the George-Soros-funded district attorney exceeded expectation. Bragg came up with one charge. The statute of limitations had passed on it, but that didn’t matter. He liked the charge, misdemeanor though it was. He apparently thought that if he said it thirty-four times he could elevate the stale, passed-its-sell-by date charge, into a felony, or even thirty-four felonies.
175.10 Falsifying business records in the first degree
A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.
Falsifying business records in the first degree is a class E felony.
Somebody did the math and calculated that Trump could face 136 years in pokey if he is convicted on — well, not on all counts, exactly, but that one count thirty-four times, and had to serve his sentences consecutively.
I am not sure I have ever witnessed a legal proceeding that was so roundly condemned from virtually all sides. (I say “virtually” because there is a small but fetid fever swamp of anti-Trump sentiment that is cheering the persecution of the former president.)
Even Trump’s most potent rival, Ron DeSantis has condemned the indictment. “The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head,” DeSantis tweeted.
Andrew C. McCarthy, himself a former prosecutor, is no friend of the former president, but he, too, has been appalled by this nakedly partisan weaponization of the legal system are being too clever by half. “Bragg’s indictment fails to state a crime,” McCarthy wrote, “Not once… but thirty-four times. On that ground alone, the case should be dismissed — before one ever gets to the facts that the statute of limitations has lapsed and that Bragg has no jurisdiction to enforce federal law (if that’s what he’s trying to do, which remains murky).”
What’s going on here? Is it simply anti-Trump animus gone crazy? Maybe. A commentator at Ann Althouse’s blog was right, I think, when he observed that “Bragg could have released a single sheet of paper with Trump’s name on it and nothing else and it would have been more than sufficient for the prosecution of Trump in New York City.”
There is a dismal circus-like atmosphere to the entire proceeding, a sort of tin-pot reality-TV show that has forgotten it is fiction. Former attorney general William Barr has frankly acknowledged his exasperation with the former president. But speaking with the economics and political commentator Larry Kudlow, Barr described Trump’s indictment as “an abomination, the epitome of the abuse of prosecutorial power.” Indeed.
But he also went on to say observe that there may be wheels within wheels here. Why are the Democrats pursuing this ridiculous case so ferociously? Barr, like some other commentators, speculated that the real goal of this unprecedented attack on a former president was twofold: first, to inject chaos into the process of the GOP primary, and second, to help Trump in polls.
That second goal might seem to be surprising. After all, Democrats to a man (along with many Republicans) abominate Trump and want him exiled from the metabolism of American political life altogether.
Those two goals might seem like contradictory impulses, but the governing supposition is that Trump would be easier to beat than some other candidates, notably Florida governor Ron DeSantis. If that is the case, I suspect the clever pates who orchestrated this appalling weaponization of the legal system.
For his part, Donald Trump, having returned to his Palm Beach residence yesterday after his arraignment, delivered a brief, sober statement. “The only crime that I’ve committed has been to fearlessly defend our nation against those who seek to destroy it,” he said. “They can’t beat us at the ballot box ,” he continued, “so they try to beat us through the law.”
The Democrats think they can intimidate the public and neuter the former president by this show of force. Alvin Bragg struts and frets his hour upon the stage and will be heard no more after the next commercial break. But wiser heads know that they are riding a tiger. They seem determined to see their persecution of the immensely popular former president through to the end. Perhaps they can destroy him. More likely, I think, is that they will wind up inside the cat they failed to tame.
