Jonathan Turley Gives Trump Great News In NYC Trial
President Donald Trump was vindicated on his claims of political persecution during the opening arguments in his New York trial, according to legal analyst Jonathan Turley.
The conservative commentator and George Washington University professor spelled out the troubles of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Fox News one day after the Democrat’s top deputy unpacked the nature of 34 felony charges before a jury. In doing so, Turley explained, prosecutors have tacitly admitted they have an “embarrassment” of a case on their hands.
“The arguments today did in fact capture all the problems here. You had this misdemeanor under state law that had run out. This is related, going back to the 2016 election, and they zapped it back into life by alleging there was a campaign finance violation under the federal laws that doesn’t exist,” he said.
A key strategy being employed by Bragg appears to be convincing the jury that Trump’s hush money payment to an adult film star amounted to “election interference” based on the belief that jurors will look less favorably on election crimes compared to a sex scandal. However, “the Department of Justice doesn’t view it this way,” Turley added.
“On top of that you’ve got these tough factual issues that were laid out well by the Trump team, saying someone else designated this as a legal expense,” he said, referencing an investigation by the Federal Election Commission that found the six-figure payment did not amount to a campaign donation.
Turley compared the payment to one made by the 2016 presidential campaign for Hillary Clinton when it funded the Steele dossier, which falsely alleged that Trump’s campaign was coordinating with Russia. In that case, the FEC fined the Clinton campaign for concealing a campaign expense, and charges were never filed.
“They put it as a legal expense and then they fought the eventual fine that they received from the federal government, saying ‘but it was a legal expense,’” Turley added. “But now you’ve got some of the same Democrats supporting this bizarre theory” against Trump.
Other conservative critics have pounced on arguments made by Bragg’s top deputy, Assistant DA Matthew Colangelo, who previously worked for the Biden administration. During his opening, Colangelo told the jury, “This case is about a criminal conspiracy,” a characterization divorced from the business fraud charges faced by Trump.
Fox News analyst Gregg Jarrett noted in an op-ed that calling Trump’s crimes part of “an illegal conspiracy to undermine a presidential election” ignores the fact that all 34 charges relate to actions taken after Trump assumed office.
“It’s quite the magic trick to have committed crimes before they allegedly occurred,” he quips.
Now that Bragg has brought the first criminal trial against Trump to court, his success or failure will likely set the tone for future prosecutions, all of which the Republican has labeled a “witch hunt” intended to keep him from defeating President Joe Biden. Delays in two federal trials and mismanagement by prosecutors in a Georgia state trial all have supporters of Trump believing that he will either skate through court in 2024 or see his federal cases remain unresolved past Election Day. If that occurs and Trump wins, he would have the authority to dismiss them.
