As many in the mockingbird media are celebrating the conviction of Donald Trump in the Manhattan trial, CNN's senior legal analyst has tossed cold water on their jubilation with a devastating analysis of how the prosecutors captured their political prey.
Honig's analysis appeared on Friday in New York Magazine which was reprinted from the CAFE Brief newsletter. The title alone expresses Honig's highly critical view of the prosecution: "Prosecutors Got Trump — But They Contorted the Law."
First Honig notes the absurd lengths the prosecution went to win by any means necessary:
The jury did its job, and this case was an ill-conceived, unjustified mess. Sure, victory is the great deodorant, but a guilty verdict doesn’t make it all pure and right. Plenty of prosecutors have won plenty of convictions in cases that shouldn’t have been brought in the first place. “But they won” is no defense to a strained, convoluted reach unless the goal is to “win,” now, by any means necessary and worry about the credibility of the case and the fallout later.
And now he lays down the Honig hammer on the more than obvious malfeasance in the case.
The following are all undeniable facts.
The judge donated money — a tiny amount, $35, but in plain violation of a rule prohibiting New York judges from making political donations of any kind — to a pro-Biden, anti-Trump political operation, including funds that the judge earmarked for “resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s radical right-wing legacy.” Would folks have been just fine with the judge staying on the case if he had donated a couple bucks to “Re-elect Donald Trump, MAGA forever!”? Absolutely not.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg ran for office in an overwhelmingly Democratic county by touting his Trump-hunting prowess. He bizarrely (and falsely) boasted on the campaign trail, “It is a fact that I have sued Trump over 100 times.” (Disclosure: Both Bragg and Trump’s lead counsel, Todd Blanche, are friends and former colleagues of mine at the Southern District of New York.)
Most importantly, the DA’s charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process. That’s not on the jury. That’s on the prosecutors who chose to bring the case and the judge who let it play out as it did.
When you charge a former President and current likely presidential nominee with a crime you would want the case to be rock solid. However, as Honig points out, the case was based on an outside the statute of limitations misdemeanors federal case which was converted to a felony state case in which the underlying crimes were not even mentioned:
But when you impose meaningful search parameters, the truth emerges: The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever. Even putting aside the specifics of election law, the Manhattan DA itself almost never brings any case in which falsification of business records is the only charge.
Standing alone, falsification charges would have been mere misdemeanors under New York law, which posed two problems for the DA. First, nobody cares about a misdemeanor, and it would be laughable to bring the first-ever charge against a former president for a trifling offense that falls within the same technical criminal classification as shoplifting a Snapple and a bag of Cheetos from a bodega. Second, the statute of limitations on a misdemeanor — two years — likely has long expired on Trump’s conduct, which dates to 2016 and 2017.
So, to inflate the charges up to the lowest-level felony (Class E, on a scale of Class A through E) — and to electroshock them back to life within the longer felony statute of limitations — the DA alleged that the falsification of business records was committed “with intent to commit another crime.” Here, according to prosecutors, the “another crime” is a New York State election-law violation, which in turn incorporates three separate “unlawful means”: federal campaign crimes, tax crimes, and falsification of still more documents. Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments. So much for the constitutional obligation to provide notice to the defendant of the accusations against him in advance of trial. (This, folks, is what indictments are for.)
In these key respects, the charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else.
Honig also pointed out the absurdity of the prosecution declining to reveal the supposed underlining crimes in this case to a very uncomfortable CNN Panel.
NEW: Alvin Bragg's former colleague and current CNN legal analyst is calling out the rigged Trump case, even accusing Judge Juan Merchan of violating the law.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 1, 2024
Elie Honig says the trial "blew his mind" as he called it an "unjustified mess."
"The judge donated money - a… pic.twitter.com/nCUhMRutxe
