Liberal Legal Analysts Are Outraged By Bragg’s Weak Trump Indictment, Says It Hurts Other Attempts to Get Trump

The outcry against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump has cut across partisan divides. Even liberal legal analysts are not convinced about the strength of the indictment with descriptions of the indictment being marked as “legally weak”, “hard…to get excited about”, “novel elements…that could complicate Bragg’s legal pathway”, and “dubious legal theory…painfully anticlimactic…unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him” among other exclamations being proffered in the liberal press.

Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, who argued for the impeachment of Trump, was one of the sources of the “legally weak” comment about Bragg’s case. Professor Feldman wrote that description of Bragg’s case in an article in Bloomberg. He began that article by noting that Trump’s criminal indictment “is historic and unprecedented” and even approved of the Republican presidential candidate being charged because such a thing “stands for the principle that, in the United States, no one is above the law.” Feldman, however, thinks that Trump should have been charged for his alleged interference in Georgia’s election in 2020 or over his possession of allegedly classified documents first.

As such he writes that “from the perspective of protecting U.S. democracy, the indictment is poorly timed” and that Bragg should have waited for those other hypothetical indictments first before acting. Bragg by doing what he did by bringing “relatively minor charges” may, in Feldman’s words, “make it more difficult to prosecute him for more serious crimes.” The Harvard professor also noted that the indictment “doesn’t say specifically what that other crime was [i.e. what the alleged falsification of record was meant to criminally cover up].”

Professor Feldman mused that “if even one juror doesn’t vote to convict [Trump], then the jury would hang and a conviction would not be possible. It is vanishingly unlikely that the district attorney would attempt to retry Trump, resulting in a mistrial that would be almost as great a victory as would be an acquittal.”

Michelle Goldberg, a columnist for the New York Times, tried to hype up the indictment’s charges as serious but even admitted that “these are hard charges to get excited about” and that “the indictment feels anticlimactic.” Ian Millhiser, a senior legal correspondent for Vox, wrote that it was a “dubious legal theory at the heart of the Trump indictment” and lamented that the indictment was “painfully anticlimactic.” His big statement was an acknowledgment that “there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax. It is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him.”

Jim Jordan Reveals What He’ll Be Tackling Next With Weaponization Committee, Calls For Defunding Federal Agencies

Paul Blumenthal, a Huffington Post reporter, acknowledged that “[t]here are novel elements to this case that could complicate Bragg’s legal pathway to a conviction while arming Trump and his allies with talking points about a supposedly overreaching prosecutor…No previous felony prosecution by the Manhattan DA on falsification of business records has relied on federal campaign finance charges. Such federal charges are not prosecuted by state and local prosecutors but rather by the Department of Justice.”

Charles Savage, a reporter with the New York Times, damningly wrote that Bragg is “plunging forward with a premise that has given pause to even some of Mr. Trump’s toughest critics” which appeared in an article that described the indictment as “a risky case against Trump.”

The substance of the indictment’s charges is ridiculous as pointed out by many an article at the DC Enquirer. So too is the ridiculous mantra about needing to charge Trump with something because no man should be above the law. Charges ought to have substance to them both in legal theory and in factual assertions. None of these apply in this context. What is applicable is that Trump is the subject of a destructive act of politically minded prosecution that damages the rule of law.

The two-tier justice system reveals itself through these awful acts and all who are not blinded by hatred of Mr. Trump can plainly see this in America. In the words of one article in DC Enquirer, there is “[o]ne system for elite…politicians who favor the bureaucracy in Washington and another system for those who threaten it, the encapsulation of which is Donald Trump.”