Commentary
On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg presented his bag-of-tricks indictment charging former President Donald Trump with 34 counts of false entries in business records. Bragg managed to slice and dice two payments to former hookers into what sounds like a big deal—34 felonies. Don’t be fooled. As former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, no fan of Trump, said of Bragg’s case, it’s “an abomination” held together “by chicken wire and paper clips and rubber bands.”
The judge in the case, Justice Juan Merchan, set the next court date for Dec. 8, 2023, with a trial likely some time in 2024. That’s smack in the middle of the campaign for the presidency, and will stick Trump in a courtroom with daily press coverage as “the defendant.”…