Alvin Bragg is attempting to charge President Trump with a Class E felony, which is a crime under New York state law. Felonies are typically crimes punishable by more than a year in prison. We know by now that Bragg’s case is riven with errors – and it remains inexplicable why, to the extent President Trump has violated any criminal statute at all, he is still being charged with a felony, rather than a misdemeanor. Of course, the reality is that President Trump committed no crime. But even the statute that Alvin Bragg has cited to base his alleged theory of liability, Penal Law § 175.10, expressly states “a person is guilty of falsifying business … in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” Bragg must not have the attention span (or intelligence) to read the rest of the statute, which blatantly spells out: “Falsifying business records in the second degree is a class A misdemeanor.” A misdemeanor at most, not a felony. So, why the bloody hell are Bragg and Merchan treating this like a criminal felony?
Part of the reason we still do not know so much of anything about this case is because the presiding judge, Juan Manuel Merchan, has not allowed any discussion whatsoever of Bragg’s criminal theory of liability through expert witnesses. We have so far heard ad nauseam from Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, who were the prosecution’s one-two punch used to assassinate President Trump’s character in the courtroom and deny him the presumption of innocence, about how bad a man Donald Trump supposedly is. But hardly anything from the Defense! Why? Because Merchan would not allow it!
Instead, the Defense has only been allowed to bring in one witness, Robert Costello, a battle-tested defense attorney of the SDNY and former legal adviser of Michael Cohen. For his part, Cohen’s testimony arguably did more to discredit the People’s theory of the case than Donald Trump’s – after all, he admitted to lying on the stand under Congressional oath years ago, stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump Organization, committing perjury, and profiting off the trial, among a litany of other damning revelations. Costello drove the nail in the coffin, corroborating Cohen’s own testimony that his former client is a liar, fraudster, and perjurer – who acted totally independently and without President Trump’s knowledge.
Nevertheless, the Defense has every right to bring in cooperative witnesses of their own – expert witnesses, who can speak to the propriety of the laws being applied, for example, and clarify both to jurors and the press from whom the rest of the world is loath to rely upon to hear about these proceedings (given that no television cameras are allowed in the courtroom), about how a certain law should be interpreted. In fact, not only is a criminal defendant permitted to bring in cooperative witnesses: but he has a constitutional prerogative to do so. Yet, those fundamental rights are being made into mincemeat by Merchan and Bragg, in real time – with impunity.
Thus, Merchan’s decision last week to bar expert testimony from a former FEC commissioner, who was a cooperative witness for the defense, was a blow to the justice system. Already, Merchan’s show trial has repeatedly (and rightly) been called a “sham trial” and “kangaroo court” for his flagrant disregard of judicial norms, professional ethics, due process, and the rule of law.
It is bad enough that the Judge gagged the defendant, hamstringing the presidential frontrunner from using his social media platform, Truth Social, to expose the innumerable conflicts implicating Merchan that would normally disqualify any other sitting judge from being allowed to continue presiding over a criminal trial of this kind. But now, the judge has decided to take things one step further by unilaterally denying the Defendant’s right to bring expert witnesses into the courtroom. Merchan has declared like a tinpot dictator, almost verbatim according to those with intimate knowledge of the proceeding, that “only I can say what the law means!” To hell with longstanding legal precedent, to say nothing of the rules of evidence and criminal procedure that are supposed to regulate a trial of this sort – and which, given the importance of the Defendant, should be rigorously upheld. This, especially considering what devastation a trial involving the next President might wreck on the integrity of the justice system overall.
Merchan has so far run roughshod over the rule of law, making a casualty of the legitimacy of the New York State criminal system in the process. The statute cited above requires two crimes to raise the falsification scheme to a first-degree felony. The fraud must have been done with “an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” Bragg’s prosecutors are now claiming that the second crime is some ill-defined FEC violation, which raises a slew of separate legal questions. But not being able to interrogate an expert on federal election law in court is the ultimate miscarriage of a justice system already loaded with abuses and unprecedented violations.
Especially now with the FEC issue front and center, it raises the separate issue of why this case is being brought in state court altogether, and not federal court? If the case involves a federal issue, the jurisdiction here is all wrong: state courts have no authority over the subject matter. This is a case that would normally get preempted or barred by federal courts – the FEC, a federal agency, has its own intricate rules over election-related questions and thus exclusive jurisdiction over any such matters.
At a bare minimum, an expert witness should be allowed to opine on the issue in state court – and not be prohibited because it hurts the judge’s ego. This is a clear reversible error because the President’s fundamental rights have been so callously violated. This abuse alone should have prompted a mistrial – it is the reason, as well, why so many legal commentators and scholars have said this case will be easily tossed on appeal, because of the widespread, undeniable prejudice that was allowed to take place under these unprecedented conditions.
All of which only further underscores that Judge Merchan is not acting like a reasonable judge taking seriously his constitutional oath to apply the law faithfully and impartially but as a political hack overseeing the weaponization (and corruption) of the rule of law in the once free Republic known as the United States. Merchan has retrofitted his office into another partisan instrument to suppress enemies of the Biden Regime, nothing more. This trial is a witch-hunt, a hatchet job, and a kangaroo court of the highest order. It is a colossal waste of money and time, and an egregious misallocation of precious resources – like NYPD personnel and vehicles – that should be used to patrol the streets of violent crime and illegal migrants.
Every single American should be enraged by the corruption of justice being done in real-time, and no matter the verdict of this trial, it will go down in infamy as a permanent blotch on the justice system, one that will take at least a generation to restore back to the glory it once had prior to Juan Merchan, Alvin Bragg, and Joe Biden taking a battering ram to it with disregard for the rights of every American.
A slightly modified version of this piece was originally published in The Gateway Pundit, and can be found here.
Paul Ingrassia is a Constitutional Scholar; Communications Director of the NCLU; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly posted on Truth Social by President Trump. Follow him on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.