Alvin Bragg’s Jenga Theory Slithers into Court

I finally got to look at the Trump indictment, and it is both encouraging and discouraging. It’s encouraging because it looks like something which is highly likely to disappear after a motion to dismiss, and it’s discouraging because it appears to show that Alvin Bragg has no understanding of legal ethics or the purpose of our courts.

It’s unethical to file a lawsuit you don’t believe in. You should have a solid basis for believing it will make it to trial. It’s also unethical to charge people selectively. It looks like Bragg falls short with regard to both standards.

Leftists kept saying it wasn’t about the hush money. They said there would be tax evasion, for example. Well, the indictment appears to be about hush money and nothing else. I may have misread it, but it looks like Trump is accused of falsifying business records in order to cover up illegal (under federal, not state law) use of campaign funds to shut up a strumpet.

In New York, falsifying a business record is a misdemeanor with a limitation period of 2 years. It becomes a felony if you do it to cover up another crime. Then the period is 5 years. Bragg appears to be saying Trump illegally used campaign funds to pay the trollop, and then he covered it up by falsifying records, characterizing the payments in ways that were false.

Every record in question was created more than 5 years before Trump was indicted.

New York’s limitations period can be tolled when a defendant is out of state, but the state has to show there was no statutory means of obtaining personal jurisdiction over him. Alan Dershowitz says the period can’t be tolled for Trump, and I assume he has researched it, because he is extremely capable and not likely to ruin his own reputation by making bad guesses. I’m not going to research it, but I will say I once served a person in Italy, so I am reasonably certain a New York court can serve someone in Washington DC or Palm Beach, especially when every adult in America knows the defendant’s mailing address and sees him on television every day.

Could be wrong. I’m not going to do legal research for nothing, though.

Let’s see if I can put together a sort of flow chart. What does Bragg have to prove?

First, he has to prove the statute of limitations must be tolled. Second, he has to prove Trump personally and knowingly committed federal election-law crimes. Third, he has to prove federal election-law crimes ground local prosecution and enhancement under state statutes. Fourth, he has to show Trump personally and knowingly falsified records. Fifth, he has to show Trump’s intention was to cover up the crimes he had committed earlier.

It reminds me of Ulysses, coming home to Ithaca to shoot an arrow through the holes in 12 axeheads. If Bragg hits one axehead, he’s done.

I guess you could also call it a Jenga prosecution. Trump’s attorneys can pull a lot of pieces out, and if they pull the right one, the whole thing topples.

The limitations thing looks really bad for Bragg. Does he know something Dershowitz doesn’t? It’s hard to believe an attorney–even a government attorney who was elected by ignorant voters–would file a suit without properly researching a threshold question like this, but then attorneys do a lot of stupid things. I had someone serve me three days after a limitation period expired. .

George Zimmerman’s prosecutors committed blatant perjury when they wrote and swore his probable cause affidavit. That’s another thing Dershowitz and I agree on. I saw this problem, and then I saw Dershowitz saying the same thing. Then Zimmerman’s attorneys were too dim to attack it. Strange. Maybe they thought the affidavit could be rehabilitated and they didn’t want to waste time, but I would have gone after them to discredit them. Ordinarily, defense attorneys love wasting time.

Then there was the O.J. travesty. Marcia Clarke handed a defendant a bloody glove and asked him to tell a jury whether it fit. That was dumb. “Oh, it fits great. Like it was made for me.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen famous lawyers do things that seemed really stupid and then tried to tell myself there had to be something more to the story, only to find out there was not. I remember thinking Alec Baldwin’s prosecutors had to have a good reason to spend 15 months investigating a simple case, and then finding out they didn’t. And they charged him with a crime that was not on the books when he shot his victim.

I said Bragg has to prove Trump committed election-law crimes. I believe that’s correct. I don’t think it’s enough to show Trump THOUGHT or SUSPECTED he had committed crimes. Falsifying a record in order to hide a legal action doesn’t sound like a felony to me.

No one has proven that Trump violated federal election laws, and federal prosecutors gave up on trying, so I doubt Bragg can do it. It seems to me that if Trump didn’t violate election laws, then falsifying the records can’t constitute felonies. If there is no crime, how can you get in trouble for trying to cover up a crime, even if you thought you committed a crime?

Think of murder. Attempted murder isn’t murder.

I haven’t seen the applicable case law, though.

Trump is not a lawyer, and Michael Cohen, who represented him in the hush money affair, is–was–an unbelievably bad lawyer from the single worst law school in America. Layman Trump was never competent to determine whether his actions involving obscure campaign-finance laws were criminal. That’s what Cohen was there for. I very much doubt Bragg can show that Cohen told Trump the payments were illegal.

Cohen was incompetent, but an attorney would have to be both incompetent and insane to advise a client that an act was illegal AND that the client should do it. That’s not how attorneys work. Even attorneys who are shady don’t say, “This is clearly illegal, but do it anyway.”

So far, we have heard that Cohen handled Stormy Daniels without informing Trump of exactly what he was doing. That makes sense. His job was to be a fixer, not to drag Trump into criminal conspiracies. A good fixer keeps his client from committing crimes, even if the fixer commits them on his behalf. No good fixer calls his client and says, “Remember that speeding ticket? I bribed the judge, just like you said.”

Cohen went to the Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. It may not be the lowest-ranked school right now, but it has certainly been called the worst law school in America. I remember my aunt proudly telling me her son had been admitted to the University of Michigan school, which has a top-notch program. It’s currently number 10 in the nation. I started saying congratulatory things. I was so happy for him. Then I found out it was really Western Michigan.

My mother always told the truth about me, except when she claimed I was a Merit Scholar. Generally, we told my relatives the good and the bad.

Trump probably didn’t commit crimes. If his lawyer committed crimes, he probably didn’t know it. He hires people to insulate him from such questions, just as any intelligent layman would. We know he is smart enough to put layers of accountability between himself and actions of questionable legality.

Michael Cohen appears to be Bragg’s lynchpin witness (emphasis on “lynch”), and he already got disbarred and imprisoned for dishonesty. His personal hatred for Trump is also well known. Not a great pillar to build a case on. Does Bragg have someone else? If so, we don’t know who that is yet. Why would Bragg hide a blockbuster witness? He’ll have to produce him shortly anyway.

The truly bothersome part of this case is that Democrats have done far worse without any repercussions. Hillary Clinton comes to mind. She falsified records, put classified material on a home computer, wiped hard drives before handing them over to the FBI, and used an illegal private email address for the purpose of frustrating government and public efforts to find out what she did while in office. Then there was Bill Clinton’s perjury, which cost him his law license. And Democrats busted their rear ends trying to find something to pin on Trump. They don’t do that to each other.

Bragg campaigned on a promise to “get Trump.” That was unethical and a clear declaration of intent to violate the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. Prosecutors are supposed to target crimes, not individuals. No one on the left is bothered by these things.

The trivial nature of the offenses is disturbing. Trump must be surprisingly clean if this is the best the left can come up with.

I don’t think this case will go anywhere, even in New York. It may get past a trial judge and a New York jury, but surely the appellate court will shoot it down. I may be mistaken, however. I have seen appellate courts do stupid things.

I should not focus so much on the natural abilities and biases of human beings. The whole thing is based on supernatural conflict. Trump helped Christians, Israel, the Jews, and the unborn. For these reasons, Satan has it in for him, no matter how many times he commits adultery or how many casinos he runs. TDS is demonic, not natural. What happens to Trump will depend mainly on the outcome of a battle in the unseen world.