Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, egged on by corporate media activists who think this moment should have come years ago, is apparently prepping to make his office the first in history to prosecute and potentially arrest a U.S. president. If muddled questions of personal or campaign payments are truly criminal matters, as Bragg suggests by rallying a grand jury, campaign finance offenders such as failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama should have felt the wrath of the legal system years ago.
In a move heavily denounced by Republicans such as Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, Bragg has devoted the time he should spend keeping violent criminals off of the city’s streets to instead go after former President Donald Trump for using his personal lawyer at the time to pay $130,000 to pornographer Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
A potential federal case against Trump about this payment was previously put to bed by the Department of Justice, and both Bragg’s predecessor and Bragg himself had previously decided not to pursue the case. Even then-chairman of the Federal Election Commission Bradley Smith agreed that while the payments to Daniels were “unseemly,” they were not necessarily criminal.
The decision to not charge Trump with violations angered Democrats and their allies in the FEC, who wanted nothing more than to lead the partisan persecution of the former president.
Now, Bragg is expected to resurrect arguments that the money Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen apparently used
