Much has been said about the 34-count indictment handed down to former President Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — one of the main points of contention is, should Trump be facing misdemeanor or felony charges?
Bragg contends it is lawful to elevate the misdemeanor charges Trump allegedly committed to felonies if they are connected to or committed to conceal a subsequent crime. While his assertion is correct, the 34-count indictment does not specify how Trump’s alleged crimes meet that criteria.
The failure to disclose the underlying crime the former president intended to conceal through his alleged falsification of business records prompted legal experts on Wednesday to note that Bragg may have violated Trump’s Sixth Amendment rights.
The Sixth Amendment stipulates that defendants must “be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.”
Adding fuel to the simmering fire, when a reporter asked Bragg to state what specific crime Trump is accused of and how that alleged crime is tied to a secondary crime, the attorney general refused, saying:
“The indictment doesn’t specify it because the law does not so require.”
Legal analyst Gregg Jarrett told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that Bragg likely violated Trump’s civil rights, saying, “He does [have to name it, via] the Sixth Amendment.”
Jarrett added: “[The indictment] is therefore facially defective. It is deficient on its face and it would be susceptible to a motion-to-dismiss.”
Jarrett questioned how Bragg could make such a fundamental mistake in a landmark case, mockingly questioning if the district attorney slept through constitutional law class at Harvard.
Fox News reported that Jarrett ominously cited a “warning from former Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, a Nuremberg Trial prosecutor, who said the ‘greatest danger to justice is an unscrupulous prosecutor who targets a person and then scours the law books to find an offense he can pin on that person.'”
Jarrett then boldly claimed: “That’s what Alvin Bragg has done.”
Washington Times editor Charlie Hurt noted that the judge in this case previously ruled against Trump in a business-related trial and imposed a maximum fine in the matter — the maximum sentence in this trial could be 136 years, which is longer than the sentence infamous Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff received.
“[T]his is such a circus — it’s so absurd. It’s so ridiculous,” claimed Hurt. “Alvin Bragg has so embarrassed himself, embarrassed to the legal profession that it really is going to, I think, set the tone for anything else any of these wacko, crazed, lunatic, left-wing, politicized Democrat DA’s want to do to try to destroy Trump.”
As Trump gears up for the 2024 presidential election, Democratic prosecutors are coordinating a full-court press, moving forward with cases in Georgia, Florida and two in New York. Allegations include election tampering (GA), rape (NY), falsifying business records (NY) and mishandling classified government documents (FL).
Trump has denied all charges and characterized attacks against him as a “witch hunt.”
In a recent post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote: “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you — I’m just standing in their way.”
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