Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump may already be on life support, according to one conservative legal analyst.
Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University, shared on Monday that the judge presiding over the trial may already have committed a “reversible error” in the case by allowing prosecutors to make certain arguments, according to the Daily Caller. By doing so, prosecutors may have been allowed to impermissibly argue that President Trump violated federal election laws. Since the trial kicked off last week, Bragg’s team has leaned into arguments that Trump’s six-figure settlement with an adult film star was an unreported benefit to his 2016 campaign.
“I got to tell you, I think this judge may have already committed reversible error,” Turley told “Fox and Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt. “He could try to amend it, he could try to change it in his instructions, but that jury has now been told repeatedly that there are federal election crimes here, strongly suggesting that the payment to Stormy Daniels did violate federal election laws. That’s just not true.”
Turley’s assertion is backed up by precedent. That same conclusion was reached by the Federal Election Commission, the watchdog for all federal campaign spending nationwide. On Thursday the New York Court of Appeals ruled that prosecutors in Harvey Weinstein’s rape case “erroneously admitted” arguments about unrelated incidents that may have unfairly influenced his guilty verdict by a jury. Similarly, inadmissible allegations against Trump, including references to other criminal and civil cases unrelated to the hush money trial, have been brought up by prosecutors.
President Trump is facing 34 felony counts alleging he directed former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to pay Daniels $130,000 to settle rumors of an affair in the run-up to the 2016 election. The payment was categorized as a legal business expense and typically runs the risk of misdemeanor charges if the records were falsified. However, Bragg chose to upgrade the charges against Trump to felonies. Cohen returned to court on Tuesday for a second day of testimony where he is expected to side with prosecutors against his former client.
“Michael Cohen is literally going to tell that jury, ‘Please send my client to jail for following my legal advice,’” Turley said in a preview of Tuesday’s proceedings. “All of the stuff that they are talking about, he set up, he structured this and told his client that, ‘we could do this.’ It’s a bizarre moment.”
President Trump and his campaign have frequently credited Turley with making legal arguments discounting many of the criminal cases against him. During last week’s Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s immunity claims, the law professor predicted special counsel Jack Smith would lose his case based on weak arguments about the ambiguous motivations of federal prosecutors to bring charges against a former president. Throughout Bragg’s trial, Turley has emphasized the flimsy nature of the charges against Trump.
“You had this misdemeanor under state law that had run out. This is related, going back to the 2016 election, and they zapped it back into life by alleging there was a campaign finance violation under the federal laws that doesn’t exist,” he said on Fox News last week. “On top of that, you’ve got these tough factual issues that were laid out well by the Trump team, saying someone else designated this as a legal expense,” a reference to the FEC findings.
“Everything about this case is, in my view, legally absurd. This case is basically a state misdemeanor that had run out on the statute of limitations, and Bragg was forced after he declined for a long time to bring this charge to do so. His predecessor rejected it,” he explained.
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