I just read the indictment handed down by the grand jury charging President Trump with 34 felonies.
It is ridiculous.
He is accused of “FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS IN THE FIRST DEGREE with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and conceal the commission of.”
This is repeated 34 times, in nearly the exact same verbiage, with details sparse enough to be meaningless. They apparently tracked entries in different accounting systems all for the same transactions. The prosecutor has strained himself into creating a felony situation, the indictment makes 34 felonies out of a single non-existent crime.
You can read the account here. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/04/politics/read-trump-indictment-file/index.html
But there are some slight problems with it.
First, in New York, the statute of limitations on a misdemeanor is two years, and for a felony, it is five years. Since the latest date of any action is December 1, 2017, the statute of limitations is expired on either. If the judge were impartial, this would have already gone away.
Second, where is this mysterious other “crime” that makes this a felony? It is not against the law to pay hush money – although blackmail by the likes of Stormy Daniels is quite illegal in most states. Where is the “intent to defraud”? It is Trump’s company and his business, did someone else suffer some damage from being “defrauded”?
Third, and most basically, were these bookkeeping entries actually improperly done? If they were improperly done, could it have been bad judgment or simply an error in bookkeeping? How does one normally account for alleged “hush money” payments in an accounting system? It is probably not standard, and likely not in the accounting software’s documentation.
A normal prosecutor would have looked at the standard of proof and said the odds are not only that there would not be a conviction on evidence that could be gathered, but also the possibility and/or probability that the accused is actually innocent. Certainly not worth the millions of dollars that have been and will be spent in taking this through a trial.
The problem with criminal prosecution in cases like these is that the accused has no recourse. He can’t sue the prosecutor, he can’t sue a biased judge, he can’t even sue members of a grand jury. The political forces behind all of this are untouchable.
What should you expect?
Trump wants this. He wants to show how the Democrats are making devious moves to undercut his election campaign. You should expect Trump to make a spectacle of all of this and use it to his advantage. He has to slow-play it a bit since if he wins too fast the other side will quit too early.
If it turns out that in addition to a corrupt prosecutor, we have a corrupt judge and a selection of biased jurors (easy to do in an area where almost 90% voted against Trump in the last election), then it will immediately go to an appeals court and get dismissed. Just the statute of limitations by itself should be enough.
Even if you are not a Trump supporter this should piss you off. Blatant abuses of power, blatant corruption of our legal system for the pursuit of partisan political gain.
What has America come to?