Man er ringe serviceret af Danmarks Radio når det kommer til amerikanske forhold. Her er det blot Trumps “fortælling” når han konstaterer, at sigtelserne imod ham i forbindelse med betalinger til pornoskuespilleren Stormy Daniels er politisk motiverede. Hvad lytterne ikke får at vide, er at statsanklageren Alvin Bragg er blevet valgt på at få Trump tiltalt for et eller andet. Hvordan kan et valgløfte være andet end politisk? Danmarks Radio får 3,5 mia af skatteydernes penge hvert evigt eneste år.

Tillad Jonathan Turley, at forklare hvorfor Danmarks Radio skal nedlægges

Indicting Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records, Bragg left out a small detail: The underlying felony Trump allegedly sought to conceal over and over. That, apparently, is left to the suspension of disbelief.

For many weeks, experts on both the left and the right expressed doubts that Bragg could charge Trump with falsifying business records, a misdemeanor with a now-expired two-year statute of limitation. To be able to file such a charge, Bragg would need to kick it up to a felony by alleging it was committed to conceal or further another crime — in this case, a federal campaign violation.

The problem is that the Justice Department declined to bring such charges. The reason was likely due to a tiny problem: There is no campaign finance violation in Trump paying women to hush up alleged affairs. Moreover, even if there were a violation, Bragg is not a federal prosecutor. In other words, his case is as implausible as Wood’s cardboard tombstones.

When asked by reporters what crime was being referenced 34 times, Bragg simply stated that he was not required to state the crime in the indictment. Despite becoming the first prosecutor to charge a former president, Bragg felt no compulsion to explain the claim that kicked the misdemeanor up to a felony and allowed a longer statute of limitations.

Bragg undoubtedly knew that New Yorkers would likely suspend disbelief when the name on the indictment was “Donald Trump.” After all, when Bragg ran for office, he was no more specific; he merely promised to bag Trump on some criminal charge. The actual crime would be named at a later date.

Med det in mente, er det Turleys opfattelse, at en eventuel retssag ikke skal foregå i det Manhattan, der i første omgang, stemte på Bragg (85% stemte imod Trump ved valget 2020), for at få retsforfulgt Trump for noget, bare noget, og i anden omgang udgjorde dens storjury, der tillod farcen at fortsætte videre i systemet. Og måske skulle man også se lidt mere på dommeren, hvis datter er en ganske aktiv Demokrat, der har arbejdet for Biden-Harris kampagnen. Præsident Joe Biden havde svært ved at skjule sin glæde over, at en politisk modstander, blev politisk retsforfulgt.

Og til dette Beria-princip, med at få fat i manden og for siden at finde forbrydelsen, udbrød den tidligere FBI direktør, som Trump fyrede, James Comey “It’s been a good day”. Hans bog om tiden som den øverste chef for FBI kaldte han “I en højere sags tjeneste”, for når man er så moralsk som ham, skal loven ikke stå i vejen.

Margot Cleveland giver i The Federalist lidt flere detaljer om det samme, som Turley

When finally unsealed, the indictment prompted a figurative flipping of the pages, with Americans looking front to back for something real there. But there was none to find.

Rather, for 16 pages, the grand jury indictment merely regurgitated the same statutory buzzwords, alleging Trump violated §175.10 of the New York Penal Law: “in the County of New York and elsewhere,” Trump, “on or about” a specific date, “with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof, made and caused a false entry in the business records.”

The template was then repeated in each count, specifying a different date or business record — sometimes an invoice from Michael Cohen, sometimes an entry in the general ledger of the Donald Trump Trust, and sometimes the issuance of a check. There were three or four criminal counts alleged against Trump for each payment made to Cohen from February through December of 2017, which together stacked up to 34 counts. 

Along with the indictment, Bragg also released a 13-page “Statement of the Facts,” but the additional details failed to bolster the charges. On the contrary, the summary made it seem as if Trump’s alleged crime was participating in, what Bragg called, a “catch and kill scheme to suppress negative information.” 

“From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects,” the statement began. “In order to execute the unlawful scheme,” the summary continued, “the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York.”

But there is nothing unlawful about purchasing negative information to suppress its publication. Yet Bragg called that an “unlawful scheme.” And while the statement noted that the “other participants in the scheme admitted that the payoffs were unlawful,” Braggs did not say why the payments were illegal, or why it would be illegal for Trump to agree to the supposed “scheme.” 

In fact, nowhere in either the Statement of the Facts nor the underlying indictment does Bragg identify the other crime Trump supposedly intended to commit. That omission is shocking because for Trump’s alleged falsifications of business records to qualify as felonies, as the indictment charged, the D.A. must prove Trump intended to commit (or conceal) another crime.

Bragg fortæller heller ikke, at sagen er forældet. Cleveland forudser, at Braggs exeptionelt svage sag, kan få politiske venner til at vende sig imod ham, for ikke at blive sat i forbindelse med renskuret politisk forfølgelse.

Medierne vil nok ikke slippe Bragg så hurtigt. Turley kaldte det “…an indictment with the substance of a legal Slurpee: it was immediately satisfying for many with virtually no legal substance.”

ABC slørede Trumps “TEXT TRUMP TO 88022” og MSNBCs Rachel Maddow mente ikke at hendes seere skulle høre den tidligere præsidents kommentarer til sigtelsen, da det bare var “flere af hans løgne”. Ligeledes på MSNBC fortsatte den omvandrende fortaler for racekrig Al Sharpton med det poetisk hævngerrige

“I’m always looking for the spiritual interpretation of something. And I think it’s very ironic that on… the 55th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, that the president that tried to turn back a lot of what King did is going to be arraigned in Manhattan Supreme Court by a Black D.A.,” Sharpton said, according to The Washington Times.

“I’m thinking of Dr. King as the first Black Manhattan D.A. will deliver us justice and bring criminal charges against President Trump,” Sharpton said.

Andre har noteret sig ironien i de falske anklager mod Trump kom i Påskeugen. Samme dag, som Stormy Daniels blev beordret til at betale 120.000 dollars for advokatomkostninger til Donald Trump oveni de godt 500.000 hun allerede skylder. Anyways, et gennemgående mantra for Trumps kritikere, har været at ingen er over loven. Men, som David Harsanyi minder om, så er Demokrater over loven

Plenty of people are “above the law.” James Clapper, who lied under oath to Congress about spying on the American people, is above the law. John Brennan, who lied about a domestic spying operation on Senate staffers, is above the law. Unlike Trump advisor Peter Navarro, Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder was never going to be handcuffed and thrown in prison for ignoring a congressional subpoena. He is above the law.

Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, is also above the law. The then-Secretary of State set up a private server in her home to circumvent transparency surrounding her slush-fund foundation. She sent 110 emails containing marked classified information, and 36 of those emails contained secret information. Eight of the email chains contained “top secret” information. Every one of those instances was a potential felony punishable with up to ten years in prison.

We learned all of this from James Comey, then FBI director, who noted that Hillary had been “extremely careless” in conducting her business. Comey didn’t recommend charges because, he claimed, the state couldn’t prove Clinton’s intent — even though “gross negligence,” not intent, was the only standard he needed. Gross negligence and extreme carelessness are synonyms. Comey concocted a new standard to protect Clinton because she is above the law.

When Hillary’s husband, also above the law, perjured himself under oath, Democrats argued that puritanical conservatives were only pursuing Bill because of some trumped-up charge over “sex.” Using that logic, Trump’s campaign finance charges related to Stormy Daniels’ “hush money” are also about sex. This is different because Trump is the boogeyman, and everyone knows he’s guilty of something. The important thing is getting that mug shot.

Don’t worry, though; former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, “Everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence.” By “everyone,” she means Republicans. And if you think this authoritarian formulation is an accident, you haven’t been paying attention. When Democrats were smearing Brett Kavanaugh as a (gang) rapist a few years back, Mazie Hirono was asked whether the then-nominee deserved the “same presumption of innocence as anyone else in America?” After all, this wasn’t about any judicial disagreement but about alleged criminal behavior. The Hawaii senator responded, “I put his denial in the context of everything that I know about him in terms of how he approaches his cases.”

Og så videre.