Lock him up! One law for me but not for thee

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AF Branco: Election Interference

It’s obvious that we have a two-tiered justice system. It’s Stalinesque. It should be that no one is above the law. In America, street thugs are released to reoffend. The Bidens, Clintons, Obamas, and Pelosis all dodge justice. But if you won’t bake a cake for a gay wedding, or if you pray outside a “clinic”, or stand up for children in a school board meeting, or you are not a member of the Swamp’s uniparty like Donald Trump, they will come for you in a hot second. 

Former President Trump is about to spend a lot of time and money trying to convince the New York judicial system that he is innocent of unlawfully attempting to bury illicit details about his behavior before his election in 2016, as alleged Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court.

It’s a shallow case. 

From the ultra-left publication Vox:

There is something painfully anticlimactic about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump. It concerns not Trump’s efforts to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, but his alleged effort to cover up a possible extramarital affair with a porn star.

And there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax. It is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him.

The indictment charges Trump with 34 separate counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a felony. A separate document laying out the factual basis for Bragg’s allegations against Trump points to a complicated web of arrangements between Trump, his former lawyer Michael Cohen (who is identified as “Lawyer A”), and David Pecker, the CEO of American Media, the company that publishes the National Enquirer.

Bragg alleges that these three men worked together to identify two women who allegedly had sex with Trump, and to pay them to remain silent. The women are identified as “Woman 1” and “Woman 2” by Bragg, but the first woman appears to be former Playboy model Karen McDougal, and the second appears to be porn actress Stormy Daniels.

Cohen, who pleaded guilty to a federal campaign finance crime arising out of this scheme in 2018, paid $130,000 to Daniels shortly before the 2016 election, in order to secure her silence. According to Bragg, Trump then paid Cohen a total of $420,000 over the course of 2017, much of which was intended to reimburse Cohen for the payment to Daniels.

The actual felony counts arise out of allegedly false entries that Trump made in various business records in order to make the payment to Daniels appear to be ordinary legal expenses paid to Cohen.

But Bragg built his case on an exceedingly uncertain legal theory. Even if Trump did the things he’s accused of, it’s not clear Bragg can legally charge Trump for them, at least under the felony version of New York’s false records law…

…The felony statute requires Bragg to prove that Trump falsified records to cover up a crime. Bragg has evidence that Trump acted to cover up a federal crime, but it is not clear that Bragg is allowed to point to a federal crime in order to charge Trump under the New York state law. More here

Even Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who twice voted for Trump’s impeachment and says Trump is unfit for office, said in a statement that Bragg “stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda.”

Megyn Kelly has called Donald Trump’s upcoming indictment ‘horrible for the country’ suggesting it’s a double standard compared to ‘acts’ of Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden

She suggested that Clinton has ‘gotten away with so much’ and had been ‘using lawyers to do her dirty work’ for years. She also questioned why Hunter Biden had not been arrested despite numerous allegations of wrongdoing and why it has taken so long to investigate his alleged criminal activities.

Kelly said that she believes such double standards to be frustrating but will not continue to defend Trump if he has committed any crimes. 

‘I’m not defending. If he got a subpoena and he had documents, that’s not OK. As a lawyer, you don’t have to persuade me. You’re supposed to treat subpoenas very respectfully … It’s just so aggravating because she [Hillary Clinton] has gotten away with so much,’ Kelly said.