Alvin Bragg’s pathetic ‘bank shot’ bid to ‘get Trump’
So Alvin Bragg didn’t have an ace in the hole: The Manhattan DA’s long-awaited case against Donald Trump really does depend on a highly dubious legal bank shot.
All 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, that is, depend on linking them to campaign-law violations.
Otherwise, the fraud is just a misdemeanor crime that’s long past the statute of limitations.
Oh, and the 34 counts center on just three separate payouts; Bragg ran the number up by counting every document Trump signed.
That reach for quantity is basically an admission that the quality of the case is weak.
One slight surprise is that Bragg is alleging violations of not just federal campaign laws, but a New York one involving conspiracy to impact an election.
That’s because no one’s found any precedent for bootstrapping a state misdemeanor into a felony over purely federal-law violations.
Trump’s team is surely now researching past prosecutions (if any) under that New York law.
They may well have a “selective enforcement” excuse: No Republican county DA, notably, tried anything like this over the Hillary Clinton campaign’s falsification of records to fund the Steele Dossier in an effort to turn the 2016 election.
In any case, the campaign-law violation still depends on Trump’s intent: Was he covering up the alleged sexual misbehavior with an eye on the 2016 election, or simply to protect his marriage?
That is why the feds never tried to prosecute.
Follow The Post’s latest coverage on Trump’s indictment
And, presumably, why then-DA Cy Vance declined to bring charges in the past (though Bragg claims he has new evidence).
In short, there’s really nothing here that didn’t leak weeks ago: All the media cautions about “wait until we actually see the indictments” proved to be ridiculous posturing.
In fact, the indictments don’t even actually specify the felony crimes central to Bragg’s bank shot: That info is only in the accompanying statement of fact.
That weird omission, some experts warn, could get the case tossed even at this early point.
Bottom line: Alvin Bragg wanted to make good on his promise to “get Trump,” and it looks like nothing else mattered.
