Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, now a supporter of former President Donald Trump, released a video statement Monday morning condemning the hush money ‘criminal case’ against Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
The case is all over “hush money” payments Trump allegedly paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. The “star witness” of the trial is Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, an admitted liar.
Jury selection for the case started Monday morning. The New York Post reported:
The case marks the first time a former president has gone to trial over criminal charges. The trial is expected to last about two months, and Trump faces up to four years in prison if convicted.
Because it’s a criminal trial, the former commander-in-chief must show up at court every day that it’s in session.
“Alvin Bragg‘s case against Trump rests on the ludicrous legal premise that a candidate must use *campaign* funds to make personal hush money payments. Yet if Trump had done that, they’d undoubtedly be going after him for that. This isn’t the pursuit of justice, it’s a political persecution that is tearing our country apart,” Ramaswamy declared.
X/Twitter owner Elon Musk also weighed in, writing, “This case is obviously a corruption of the law. Lawfare.”
This case is obviously a corruption of the law.
Lawfare.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2024
The Wall Street Journal editorial board also published an opinion editorial on Friday, condemning the case against Trump, calling it a “legal stretch that should have never been brought.”
The WSJ op-ed begins:
Donald Trump on Monday will become the first former U.S. President, and the first leading presidential candidate, to be put on criminal trial. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will try to prove to a jury that Mr. Trump is guilty of 34 felonies related to his 2016 hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Eight years later, and seven months before the 2024 election, it’s a trial that shouldn’t happen in a case Mr. Bragg shouldn’t have brought. The Stormy affair was sordid business, but the DA’s argument is a legal stretch, in ways that might bother a skeptical juror or an appeals court.
The facts are these: Ms. Daniels has said that in 2006 she and Mr. Trump had one, er, intimate encounter. A decade later, as the 2016 election neared, Mr. Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. A nondisclosure agreement isn’t illegal. Mr. Bragg’s complaint is about the paperwork. Mr. Cohen was reimbursed through 2017 via a monthly retainer “disguised as a payment for legal services,” the DA said. He padded his indictment by separately charging each invoice, check and ledger entry to get 34 counts.
Falsifying business records in New York can be a misdemeanor, but the statute of limitations on that has expired. Mr. Bragg therefore must charge felonies, which under New York law means showing that Mr. Trump cooked the books with “intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”
“Now the country is on the brink of an extraordinary moment, as Mr. Bragg uses a weak and untested legal premise to put the other party’s presidential nominee on trial during the 2024 campaign,” the WSJ wrote.
The WSJ acknowledged that a New York jury pool is unlikely to favor Trump, but said Bragg still has to prove his case, and a single juror could upend the whole thing, or Trump could win on appeal.
“Mr. Bragg is making history all right, in the worst way,” the WSJ wrote.
The Stormy affair was sordid business, but Alvin Bragg’s argument is a legal stretch, in ways that might bother a skeptical juror or an appeals court.https://t.co/YFItvuskys
— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) April 13, 2024
WATCH: Legal expert Jonathan Turley blasts NY hush money case against Trump
The post SPECIAL REPORT: Ramaswamy, Musk and the WSJ all condemn New York Trump trial appeared first on Dennis Michael Lynch.
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