Dershowitz: Manhattan DA Using ‘Made-Up Laws’ in Trump Case

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By Epoch Times - Gary BaiMarch 19, 2023Updated: March 20, 2023

But even so, Dershowitz said he thinks that Trump would unlikely receive a fair trial in a city that leans heavily blue.

The expert was responding to reports that Trump may soon be indicted on charges surrounding hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. That would make Trump the first former president to be criminally charged.

Days before the 2016 presidential election, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her silence on claims that she had an affair with Trump years earlier, which the former president denies.

Cohen pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance laws in 2018 for arranging payment to Daniels and another woman claiming to have had an affair with Trump. Cohen claims to have done so at Trump’s direction and was reimbursed by the Trump Organization through routine legal expenses.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, claiming that he’s a victim of extortion.

Bragg’s criminal case appears to be centered on whether Trump falsified business records—a state offense—to cover up Cohen’s campaign finance violations of federal law.

“Nobody should ever be arrested based on made-up laws or combining a federal and state statute,” Dershowitz told The Epoch Times in an interview on March 18. “I taught criminal law for 50 years at Harvard, and the one rule was, no creativity is permitted by prosecutors. The law has to be clear.”

He queried Bragg’s apparent attempt to elevate a falsifying-records case to a felony from a misdemeanor by tying it to an alleged violation of federal campaign finance law.

“In order to turn the state statute into a felony, you have to borrow a federal statute,” Dershowitz told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview, on March 16. He said that this combining of laws “seems to raise real serious legal questions.”

“In Bragg’s case, what they’re trying to do is add one and one, and come up with 11,” Dershowitz said. “No rational person would look at these two statutes and say that Trump violated them.”

“Thomas Jefferson once put it very nicely: For a criminal statute to be constitutional, the average person has to be able to understand it if he reads it while running.”

The case pursued by Bragg, a Democrat, is politically motivated, Dershowitz says.

“It’s not a righteous prosecution. It’s not a just prosecution. And I think every libertarian, whether you’re conservative, or liberal, should be opposed to it,” he said.

“I can’t imagine that an appellate court would ever hold this, but I don’t think Bragg cares about this. He wants the publicity of a perp walk and an arrest.”

Dershowitz said that the theme of Bragg’s reported prosecution is consistent with a book the legal scholar published on March 14 titled “Get Trump,” in which he warned that the ongoing efforts targeting Trump and his allies are harming Americans’ basic liberties.

“History teaches that ends, even if believed to be noble, do not justify ignoble means that are inconsistent with democracy and the rule of law,” Dershowitz wrote in his book, saying that Trump’s political enemies are willing to “weaponize and distort” the U.S. criminal justice system to “get” Trump—at any cost.

Conviction?

If an indictment does materialize, Dershowitz said he believes that Trump would “likely” end up with a criminal conviction.

“Because I don’t think that Trump can get a fair trial in New York,” the legal expert said, pointing to the predominantly Democrat population in the city.

A criminal conviction, he said, is thus the “most likely outcome.”

“Then, it will be reversed on appeal, but by that time, will be deep into the election cycle,” Dershowitz said, referring to the 2024 presidential election.

“They’re searching for crimes to get him. They’re just rummaging through the law books and doing everything they can to get him, but I don’t think they’ve succeeded,” he said.

“He’s not going to get prison, but nonetheless, he can run as a convicted defendant.”

A Trump spokesperson, in a statement to The Epoch Times, described the case as another instance of “the weaponization of our injustice system.”

“The George Soros-funded Radical Left Democrat prosecutor in Manhattan has decided to take his Witch-Hunt to the next level,” the spokesperson wrote.

Trump, for his part, has maintained that he would stay in the race if he’s criminally charged.

“Oh, absolutely, I won’t even think about leaving,” Trump told reporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 4, in response to a question on the matter. “Probably, it’ll enhance my numbers, but it’s a very bad thing for America. It’s very bad for the country.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

        Epoch Times - Journalist Gary BaiMarch

Trump is to be Indicted Wednesday, Will be Asked to Surrender for Arraignment Next Week

By Gateway Pundit - Cassandra MacDonald Mar. 21, 2023

Former President Donald Trump will be indicted on Wednesday and asked to surrender for arraignment in New York next week, according to a new report.

“There will be no arraignment this week,” an unnamed source, said to be familiar with the proceeding, told the Daily Mail on Tuesday.

The Mail reports that “the former president, who is currently in Florida, is expected to be formally charged tomorrow, after which the Manhattan District Attorney’s office will reach out to Trump and his Secret Service detail to make arrangements for his surrender.”

After being flown to New York, he will be fingerprinted, arrested, and a mug shot will be taken.

On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office responded to a letter sent by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan demanding that he testify before Congress about his “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.” The prosecutor’s office said that they will not be “intimidated” out of filing charges.

“We will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process, nor will we let baseless accusations deter us from fairly applying the law,” a spokesperson for Bragg’s office told Fox News on Tuesday.

“In every prosecution, we follow the law without fear or favor to uncover the truth. Our skilled, honest, and dedicated lawyers remain hard at work,” the spokesperson added.

On Monday, Jordan had sent a letter to Bragg’s office saying, “in light of the serious consequences of your actions, we expect that you will testify about what plainly appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision.”

“Dear Mr. Bragg,” the letter began. “You are about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former President of the United States and current declared candidate for that office. This indictment comes after years of your office searching for a basis — any basis — on which to bring charges, ultimately settling on a novel legal theory untested anywhere in the country and one that federal authorities declined to pursue. If these reports are accurate, your actions will erode confidence in the evenhanded application of justice and unalterably interfere in the court of the 2024 presidential election.”

The possible indictment stems from an alleged $130,000 hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 over an alleged sexual encounter that the two had in 2006. His former attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to charges over the payment in 2018 and was sentenced to three years in prison.

Jordan noted that by July 2019, federal prosecutors determined that no additional people would be charged alongside Cohen.

“Now, in the words of one legal scholar, you are attempting to ‘shoehorn’ the same case with identical facts into a new prosecution, resurrecting a so-called ‘zombie’ case against President Trump,” the letter said. “Even the Washington Post quoted ‘legal experts’ as calling your actions ‘unusual’ because ‘prosecutors have repeatedly examined the long-established details but decided not to pursue charges.”

Trump has called for protests in the event of his arrest.