Nothing to Bragg About
New York is a Threat to Democracy
In 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for opposition research that has come to be known officially as the “Steele Dossier” and unofficially as the “pee-pee tape hoax.”
Opposition research, sometimes called oppo-research by abbreviation-happy people, is legal and part of the rough-and-tumble American political process. The idea is you try to get dirt on your opponent or, if that fails and you’re a Democrat, make some stuff up.
The Steele dossier was as fabricated as a Danielle Steele novel. Its namesake and author, Christopher Steele, was a British spy who did this kind of thing. But even Christopher Steele likened this document to drunken barroom talk. However, the Steele dossier contained a lot of nasty and highly implausible things about Trump, so the Democrats bought it.
A company called Fusion GPS first put the dossier together. The original dossier started as opposition research funded by Marco Rubio’s campaign to uncover negative information about Trump, but when Rubio’s campaign went bust, he abandoned the oppo-research project. However, getting dirt on Trump seemed of interest to the Democratic National Convention (DNC), so Hillary continued to fund the project through their law firm, Perkins Coie. It was Perkins Coie who got Christopher Steele, the British spook, on the job since he allegedly had some Russian contacts. So what started out as a Fusion GPS oppo-research project eventually got souped up into a spy-authored smear by a spy guy named Christopher Steele who—by his own admission—said it was a bunch of made-up crap.
The dossier has long since been discredited, but it lives on, because Hillary funded part of this boondoggle. Altogether, her campaign shelled out $12.4M to Perkins Coie during the 2016 campaign, that included a $66,500 payment for “research consulting.” Clinton’s campaign paid this to get the alleged oppo-research, and they entered it in their bookkeeping as a legal fee.
Well, it was challenged by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). They thought it was a campaign expense and wrongly accounted for. They levied a fine of $113k on the Clinton campaign for misreporting an expense. That was the end of it. It got next to no news coverage. Clinton was not asked to change out of her muumuu to put on an orange prison jumpsuit.
Hillary’s case sounds familiar, it follows the same pattern of something they hauled Trump into court over. Trump’s campaign allegedly paid Stormy Daniels money to honor a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) and entered these payments as “legal fees.” The FEC says that they were campaign donations and should have been entered as such, since keeping Stormy quiet was a benefit to Trump’s campaign. This seems preposterous, since the payments were made in 2017 and the election was over in 2016. But truth never stopped a Democrat.
Stormy was paid in installments and each installment generated at least two documents: a voucher or request to cut a check and the check itself. Altogether New York District Attorney and friend of donuts, Alvin Bragg, found 34 of these documents. They were all related to the exact same plan to pay Daniels NDA money, but Bragg elevated each one to a felony. That’s why Trump has 34 felonies. One alleged “crime” and 34 counts. Good thing he didn’t pay off Stormy over five years.
Stormy Daniels is often called a porn star, but that’s like saying Hunter Biden is a legal scholar. She was and possibly still is a sex worker who will permit herself to be videotaped. She has said in the past, in writing and verbally, that she never had an affair with Trump and Trump has said the same—but Stormy has recanted this. She’s also reaffirmed this. I can’t remember where we are in the cycle. I just know that in a previous trial, Daniels was found guilty of extorting Trump and owes him hundreds of thousands of dollars. That evidence was not admissible in the Bragg trial.
Trump wanted Daniels to sign an NDA so she wouldn’t try to sell her on-again-off-again story to the tabloid press or mainstream media. That is not illegal. People sign NDAs all of the time, including people in government. I have some NDAs myself, but that is another story for another day. Bragg-of-Donuts angle was that entering these payments into Trump’s bookkeeping system as “legal fees” was wrong. They should have been “campaign donations.” It’s the same “crime” as when Hillary mis-recorded payments for the Steele Dossier as legal fees rather than campaign donations. And you can understand why the error was made—campaigns also make payments for legal fees and these were payments made to lawyers. But while Hillary got caught and quietly fined, Trump got perp-walked into a courthouse. Judge Juan Merchan was presiding and his daughter was making bank running a consulting service for Democrats at the time.
Unlike Trump, who was charged with a felony for violating election laws, Clinton merely had to cough up some money and make some bookkeeping corrections. No one wanted to throw her in prison. No one went on The View shrieking that she was a criminal who needed to be thrown into the slammer for life.
It is doubtful that Hillary (or Trump for that matter) do their own bookkeeping. It is also doubtful they review every single line item in a busy multi-million-dollar presidential campaign. It is understandable to me at least how a charge levied by a law firm (Perkins Coie in the case of Hillary) or a lawyer (Michael Cohen in the case of Trump) could get classified in accounting documents as a legal fee. And it is clear that while Hillary’s mistake was an FEC violation that needed fixing, it is not clear to me how payments rendered in 2017 were election donations to a 2016 campaign (Trump).
The other problem with Bragg’s case against Trump is jurisdiction. Campaign finance laws relating to presidential campaigns are federal matters. That’s why they’re regulated by the FEC and not the state of New York. Federal matters are relegated to federal courts which are presided over by federal judges in federal systems.
Bragg-of-Donuts ain’t all that. Bragg is a New York district attorney and Judge Juan Merchan’s court is a New York court. New York, for all its braggadocio and chutzpah, is not federal. So I do not understand how Bragg has jurisdiction or how 2017 payments relate to an election held in 2016. Nor do I understand why similar mistakes made by a Democrat candidate for more money were not treated as seriously as Trump’s case, where he was threatened with prison.
As Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said, there is no other example—not even one single case—in which a person has been indicted for what Bragg indicted Trump for. And Trump has been put under a gag order, threatened with prison, and it has been implied he will be denied the right to attend his son’s graduation. He has already had to be in court and missed his wife’s birthday. This may sound routine, but Judge Juan Merchan gave the whole case a day off when one juror had a dentist appointment. Dental appointments can be rescheduled, unlike spouse’s birthdays and children’s graduations.
And who is the victim in the Trump case? Stormy Daniels is no victim. In fact, she still hasn’t paid Trump what a court ruled she owes him. Michael Cohen is no victim.
The victim in the Trump case is Trump.
And American voters.