The trial of Donald Trump began in New York on Monday with jury selection. The former president is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records, stemming from alleged payments of $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. This marks the first time in history that a president has faced criminal charges in a U.S. courtroom.
The trial is not without its controversies. First, the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, made political contributions to the Democratic Party and Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, a potential conflict of interest.
It’s funny, in a mordant way, that Alvin Bragg upgraded Trump’s charges to felonies. He downgraded 60% of felony cases to lesser charges in 2023.
Second, the judge’s adult daughter, Loren Merchan, is president of a company called Authentic Campaigns, a Chicago-based political consulting firm whose clients include U.S. Representative Adam Shiff (D-Calif.), of Russia collusion hoax fame, and the Senate Majority PAC, a major Democratic Party fundraiser.
Merchan’s clients and her firm have raised over $90 million in campaign donations, highlighting Trump’s trial in their fundraising emails. That’s another major conflict of interest.
New York law is fairly unambiguous on this point:
A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to instances where: the judge knows that the judge or the judge’s spouse, or a person known by the judge to be within the sixth degree of relationship to either of them … has an interest that could be substantially affected by the proceeding.
Well, the judge donated to Biden, whose Justice Department is bringing another case against Trump. The judge’s daughter has raised millions on behalf of Schiff, one of the prosecutors in Trump’s impeachment and among the worst instigators of the Russia collusion hoax. This is two and three degrees of separation.
Yet the judge has refused to recuse himself from presiding over the trial.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg campaigned for office in 2021 on prosecuting Trump, thanks in large part to more than $1 million in campaign contributions from organizations linked to George Soros. In an interview ahead of the election, Bragg called the case “charge ready.” Once elected, he made superhuman efforts to indict Trump on spurious charges stemming in part from unnamed crimes.
Bragg upgraded the charges of falsifying business records with the intent to defraud, a misdemeanor under New York law, to felony charges. Bragg alleges that Trump can be charged with felonies because he had the intent to defraud in order to commit or conceal another crime, thus circumventing the expiration of the statute of limitations.
This is a suspect legal theory at best. Bragg arguably lacks the authority to bring in federal charges, specifically campaign finance charges. Not even the U.S. Justice Department found that Trump broke campaign finance laws.
It’s funny, in a mordant way, that Bragg upgraded Trump’s charges to felonies. It’s quite a break from old habits. Bragg downgraded 60% of felony cases to lesser charges in 2023. He reduced 938 of the most serious felonies, 834 of which were changed to misdemeanors.
Upon taking office in 2022, Bragg told his prosecutors that they should seek jail or prison time for the most serious offenses, including murder, sexual assault, and economic crimes involving vast sums of money. Trump is facing jail time in this trial.
Crimes should be prosecuted. Criminals should go to jail, by all means. But the selective prosecution of the former president by Manhattan’s district attorney and other progressive prosecutors should frighten all Americans. They are actively engaging in political interference, trying to deny Americans the opportunity to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice, and keeping that candidate off the campaign trail at a critical point in the presidential race.
This Soviet-style show trial also shows the dangers of one foreign-born billionaire, with a distinct anti-American, globalist view of the world, choosing our nation’s prosecutors via political contributions.
Love Trump or hate Trump, the political assassination of the former president should frighten all Americans.
The words of Lavrentiy Beria, Joseph Stalin’s head of the Soviet secret police, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime,” apply not only to Donald Trump but to all of us. Who will be next?