The right to a fair trial and free speech were dealt serious blows by Judge Juan Merchan as part of the prosecution of presidential candidate Donald Trump initiated by New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat. Bragg ran on a platform of being the best candidate to get Trump.
Merchan allowed the prosecution to introduce hour after hour of irrelevant and lurid testimony May 7 and 9 from pornography film actress and director Stephanie Clifford. She described an alleged 2006 tryst she had with the former president. The charges Trump faces — falsifying business records — have nothing to do with her testimony.
Merchan has imposed a gag order on Trump that bars him from responding publicly to Clifford.
Clifford insisted in court that she be identified as “Stormy Daniels,” her stage name. Under cross-examination she admitted to a long history of using her short-lived relationship with Trump to gouge out as much self-serving publicity and income as possible.
Clifford was put on the stand for one reason only, to prejudice the jury and boost Democrats’ efforts to get their main rival for the White House thrown in jail.
Seeking to make good on his campaign promises, Bragg cooked up the charges based on Trump recording reimbursements to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, as legal payments. Cohen paid Clifford as part of a nondisclosure agreement that she had requested and signed. She earned $130,000 for staying quiet about the sexual encounter she says she had with Trump. Trump says the hookup never happened and he arranged the payoff to protect the privacy of his family.
Bragg charges that Trump’s recording of the payments to Cohen as a legal cost is somehow illegal, claiming they were made to influence the 2016 election.
Trump lawyer Susan Necheles asked Merchan to prevent Clifford’s testimony about the sex as “unduly prejudicial.” Merchan overruled Necheles, backing the prosecution’s argument it was needed to establish Clifford’s “credibility.”
But questions about Clifford’s reliability, as well as her explicit story of the alleged encounter, were immaterial. Neither the nondisclosure agreement she signed, nor the payment she sought are being contested in the trial. Nor are Trump’s efforts to try to prevent other gossip about himself from being published during the 2016 election campaign.
When Necheles asked Clifford what she knew about the charges that Trump committed a crime related to his business records, she admitted, “I know nothing about his business records. No, why would I?”
Because of the irrelevant, prejudicial character of the testimony, defense lawyers urged the judge to declare a mistrial. He refused.
Gag order on presidential candidate
The defense also requested that the judge modify a gag order to allow Trump to respond to the liberal media’s use of Clifford’s testimony to imply he assaulted her, which she has admitted is false.
Writing in the New York Times, Jessica Bennett claimed Clifford’s account was “reminiscent of so many of the other stories of women who have come forward to accuse him [Trump] of sexual assault.”
But Clifford says the alleged encounter was consensual and she stayed in touch with Trump afterward, hoping to appear on his TV show.
Merchan rejected the defense request to lift the gag.
Merchan has twice threatened to use the gag order to jail Trump if he says a word about witnesses, including Clifford or Cohen. The porn actress continues to publicly mock Trump, sell merchandise about the trial on her website and call for him to be thrown in prison. But he is barred from saying a word in response.
The attempt to silence a candidate under political attack during a presidential campaign is unprecedented. It is even more outrageous after the judge allowed Clifford’s hit-job testimony. If one of the bosses’ two major parties can get away with doing this to the other, they’ll do the same and far worse to workers, our unions and working-class political parties.
Prosecutors tampered with evidence
Democrats are desperate to get a conviction by any means. They’ve based Biden’s reelection campaign on demonizing Trump and his supporters as a “threat to democracy,” and doing everything possible to put him behind bars. The Bragg case is one of four they’ve got going. But it’s increasingly unlikely that any of the three other cases will go to trial before the election.
In Florida, the Biden administration’s special counsel, Jack Smith, indicted Trump for espionage for his handling of allegedly classified documents after he left office. But Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed the trial after Smith admitted that the main evidence — documents seized from Trump by the FBI — had been rearranged. Defense lawyers say they may have been tampered with.
In August 2022 Biden’s Justice Department ordered the documents seized in a raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago premises by more than 30 FBI and Secret Service agents, trampling on constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The agents arranged the files on the floor of Trump’s premises and took pictures of them that were broadcast worldwide.
The partisan Democratic Party-led assault on Trump’s rights is dangerous for working people. Safeguarding constitutional protections is crucial to keeping open political space that workers need to advance our class interests against the employing class, their political parties and their government.