Trump lawfare gasps its last breath

One of the outcomes of November’s election is that Americans can once again trust their own eyes and call out the obvious when they see it.

President Biden long ago lost the mental acuity to serve as the nation’s chief executive. Progressive causes like climate change, diversity hiring and transgender men participating in women’s sports are ridiculous. And highly dubious prosecutions seemingly launched as political weapons are exactly what they appear to be.

In a Friday morning double-header Americans witnessed in real time the crumbling of the last two vestiges of the lawfare campaign against former and future president Donald Trump. What were once touted as a dream of the left to bring down a king will at best be reduced to obscure footnotes in the annals of history.

Up in New York City, a leftwing trial judge finally closed the curtain on a performance that should never have seen an opening act. Despite his constant echoing of the prosecution’s case that Trump effectively stole the 2016 election, Judge Juan Merchan sentenced him to a proverbial slap on the wrist in the form of an unconditional discharge. And Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg — whose office most recently beclowned itself with its prosecution of Daniel Penny that even a New York City jury could not stomach — did his best to put a brave face on the most epic abuse of prosecutorial discretion in American history.

When his fellow Democrat New York attorney general Letitia James brought a headline-grabbing civil action against Trump and the Trump Organization, the George Soros-supported Bragg knew he had to do something to catch up. The problem was that all Bragg had to work with was a set of facts regarding Trump’s out-of-pocket non-disclosure payments to Stormy Daniels in 2016 that federal prosecutors, Bragg’s predecessor district attorney and even Bragg himself had previously concluded lacked a basis for prosecution.

Yet Bragg nonetheless cobbled together a legal theory so convoluted it required every effort of a complicit judge to keep it alive. He concocted a felony law violation by patching together alleged state-law misdemeanor offenses with a purported federal campaign finance violation (which the Federal Election Commission and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York had already reviewed and passed on).

It gets even better. The alleged federal election law violations — which was premised on a completely legal set of payments to Daniels that nonetheless Bragg claimed were undeclared self-contribution campaign donations — were not even reportable until 2017. So even if you buy the argument that these legal payments were illegal campaign contributions — an argument which by the way has never before been advanced — there was no way they would have impacted the 2016 election.

And then there was the allowance of privileged testimony from Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen. Then there was testimony from Hope Hicks about discussions with Trump after he took office, all of which the Supreme Court held to be immune and therefore inadmissible in court.

Despite all these glaring errors Judge Merchan supported the prosecution every step of the way. And despite the fact the case will be reversed on appeal — and it most certainly will — Merchan has made a name for himself far more than any run of the mill Manhattan trial judge ever could.

While all this was happening up north, the Biden Justice Department and outgoing special counsel Jack Smith reached a sympathetic audience with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Despite his federal cases being shut down by Trump’s re-election, Smith has been petitioning to have the contents of his multi-year investigation released publicly. How would a typical American react if he or she were investigated by police, and despite no charges being brought the contents of the investigation were nonetheless made public? This grotesque abuse of due process is Smith’s final card to play, and it will now be up to the Supreme Court to determine if he gets to further besmirch Trump days before he takes office.

There is an upside to all this. While over the past four years the country has witnessed how the legal system can be manipulated for politics, November’s election showed that the voters finally had enough. The legal crusade against the once and future president backfired so spectacularly that instead of landing him in prison it paved Trump’s way right back to Washington, DC. And the next time progressive prosecutors bring ridiculous cases against their political enemies, Americans will see it coming.

Joseph Moreno (@JosephMoreno) is a former federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice in the National Security Division, a former staff member with the FBI’s 9/11 Review Commission, and a U.S. Army combat veteran.