The Washington Post’s editorial board today called the District Attorney of New York Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump “shaky” and a “poor test case” for indicting a former president, Breitbart reports. “Public perception and political strategy shouldn’t dissuade a district attorney from bringing a solid case, but neither should they persuade him to bring a shaky one,” the editorial board wrote.
Bragg is expected to argue that Trump falsified business records by mislabeling a reimbursement to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen as legal expenses. Bragg is then expected to argue that Trump’s campaign did not report the payment as a campaign expense, in violation of federal campaign rules.
Legal scholars on the right and left have also cast doubt over whether Bragg’s gambit will work, since it has never been proven that there was any campaign finance violation, and there is doubt he can use a state criminal charge that is normally a misdemeanor and upgrade it to a felony by claiming it was done to hide another crime — in this case, the alleged campaign finance violation.
The Post‘s editorial board joined those scholars with its recent piece. “Pyramiding two transgressions of state rules to go after a federal candidate is legally plausible. But the strategy is also novel, and courts may regard it with skepticism. What’s more, the potential campaign finance charge itself is shaky,” it wrote.
