No one knows what the sealed indictment says, and no one knows what evidence Alvin Bragg has to support whatever the charges may be. So everyone making wild claims is full of shit.
Like everyone, I don’t know what the indictment says or what evidence supports the charges. But I stopped by to attack one particular argument being made by both serious and unserious people alike: the tawdry facts of the Stormy Daniels hush money payments are too trivial to warrant prosecution of Trump.
In particular, we don’t have to wonder what would happen to someone not named Donald Trump on these facts, because we already know what actually did happen to Michael Cohen on these facts.
Trump’s DOJ prosecuted Cohen for the Stormy Daniels hush money payments, and as a result Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison. In fairness, Trump regarded Cohen as a snitch and a traitor, so there well may have been political topspin on Cohen’s prosecution. Still, having heard the evidence, a federal judge decided that what Cohen did was reprehensible enough to warrant three years in prison.
Here’s the thing though: according to the indictment, Cohen committed every criminal act at the behest of, under the direction and control of, and for the benefit of Cohen’s client and unindicted co-conspirator, whom the indictment referred to as Individual 1. And Individual 1 is Trump.
So according to publicly available information, Trump was the cat, and Cohen was the cat’s paw. The Cat’s Justice Department put The Cat’s Paw in prison for three years on the same facts that some now say are too trivial to warrant punishment of The Cat. This is a stupid argument.
I haven’t delved into either the federal or NY state law, but pundits say it’ll be harder to get a felony conviction on these facts under NY law than it was under federal law. That may be so. But this is a criticism of Merrick Garland — whose DOJ secured Cohen’s guilty plea — and not Alvin Bragg, who’s cleaning up the mess.
Finally, to a handful of people I won’t defame by naming: I hope you’re doing well.