The New York judge presiding over Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump has strictly limited the information a key witness for the Republican’s defense can testify about in court.
Bragg claims Trump violated the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) when his former attorney Michael Cohen paid pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair. According to Bragg, because the cash changed hands ahead of the 2016 election, it should have been publicly reported as a campaign expenditure.
Judge Juan Merchan, a financial supporter of Trump’s campaign opponent with a “rabid pro-Democrat bias,” has gone along with this plan by entertaining Bragg’s weak case and gagging Trump. Merchan further hindered Trump’s legal efforts by declaring former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith is only allowed to testify about limited aspects of his job.
Smith professionally enforced campaign finance laws including the one Bragg has chosen to target Trump over. He has long asserted that “almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to “influence an election” but “not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.”
In an April 15 article for The Federalist, Smith reiterated that almost all purchases by politicians could be construed as meeting the “for the purpose of influencing an election” clause in the FECA but are not scrutinized because they are classified as “personal use.”
He noted that even if Trump met the threshold for “misreporting
