OPINION:
After holding a major-party presidential candidate hostage in a downtown New York courtroom for the past several weeks, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg still hasn’t explained in detail how former President Donald Trump committed a crime.
As implied thus far, the first nefarious act was an accounting misdemeanor. The Trump Organization paid an invoice submitted by Michael Cohen, the president’s attorney at the time, and the accounting team logged the payment as a legal expense. Somehow, that’s a crime.
Then — and this is where the Rube Goldberg conviction machine kicks in — the purported misdemeanor transforms into a felony because the misclassification was intended to alter the result of the 2016 election. It’s not clear how the average voter would have access to Mr. Trump’s financial statements and be swayed by a ledger entry, but we know this was the motivation for the “crime” because Mr. Cohen says so.
As the prosecution’s star witness, Mr. Cohen took the stand and insisted Mr. Trump devised this grand bookkeeping conspiracy to guarantee his triumph over Hillary Clinton. When cornered by the defense Monday, Mr. Cohen acknowledged that the phone call on which Mr. Trump allegedly outlined this villainous plot lasted a mere 90 seconds — and covered other topics as well.
The prosecution’s fairy tale lost more credibility after Mr. Cohen confessed Monday to embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from Mr. Trump’s business. The only other major witness in the case, a performer in lewd films, claimed that she — a professional courtesan — blacked out during an alleged dalliance with the former president.
The tabloid testimony of Stormy Daniels shed no light on a case about ledger entries, but it did reveal Judge Juan Merchan’s inability to serve as a fair arbiter. He permits the testimony of an irrelevant temptress while refusing to allow former Federal Election Commission Chairman Brad Smith to explain what is and what isn’t legal when it comes to presidential campaign expenses.
His honor insisted discussion from a subject-matter expert would “confuse” the jury and limited Mr. Smith’s testimony to basic definitions. Had the judge ruled otherwise, the jurors might realize allegations of campaign impropriety in a presidential race belong in federal court, not state court.
Judge Merchan also tipped his hand when Robert Costello took the stand. Mr. Costello is a former assistant U.S. attorney from Manhattan who gave Mr. Cohen legal advice about dealing with prosecutors who were aiming to take Mr. Trump down. Released from his attorney-client relationship, Mr. Costello revealed Mr. Cohen told him he had no dirt on former Mr. Trump to trade for lenient treatment.
“Michael Cohen said numerous times that President Trump knew nothing about those payments,” Mr. Costello said.
When Mr. Costello rolled his eyes at the judge’s rapid-fire upholding of defense objections, the agitated magistrate thundered at the defense team: “I will strike his entire testimony. Do you understand me?”
A calm and rational judge would have tossed the case since the prosecution failed to establish the existence of any crime beyond a reasonable doubt — aside from Mr. Cohen’s pilfering $60,000 from his employer. But Mr. Bragg and fellow prosecutor Matthew Colangelo aren’t interested in that.
Closing arguments are set to begin after Memorial Day in a case that will surely become the poster child for the urgent need to reform our judicial system.
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