Democrats desperately hope the outcome of the frame-up trial of Donald Trump they have engineered in New York will be successful and advance their seven-year-long drive to bring him down.
Over that time they’ve fabricated claims he colluded with Moscow, initiated two failed impeachment trials, carried out an armed FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate and drummed up three additional legal cases brought by either White House-appointed special prosecutors or local Democratic district attorneys, like Alvin Bragg in New York.
All of these have so far failed. And Bragg’s case has a hitch too — they’ve yet to say what Trump is actually charged with that would send him to prison. Trial testimony ended with tumult on May 21, with final arguments due May 28.
Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election; then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records,” claimed Matthew Colangelo in the prosecution’s opening statement April 22.
Trump “disguised his payments” to former lawyer Michael Cohen as “legal services,” Colangelo said, to pay him back “for an illegal payment to Stormy Daniels on the eve of the election.” The so-called illegal payment the prosecution claims Trump ordered was to cover a nondisclosure agreement sought by Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. She signed up for $130,000 to stay silent about an affair she claims she had with Trump that he denies.
Pointing out how outrageous Bragg’s charges are, civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz asked, “Why would anyone pay hush money if they were required to disclose it?”
The prosecution is stacked with long-time political opponents of Trump. Lead prosecutor Colangelo was previously a top lawyer in President Joseph Biden’s Justice Department. Judge Juan Merchan donated to Biden’s 2020 campaign, for which he received a “caution” in 2023 from the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. And Bragg, the prosecutor who brought the charges, ran for office as the best candidate to find a crime to pin on Trump.
Cohen admits he’s a thief and a liar
Democrats are increasingly concerned Biden will lose to Trump in November. They’ve become more frantic to find a way to keep him tied up in court, preventing him from campaigning, and to smear him with hours of irrelevant and lurid testimony from porn actress Clifford, hoping to prejudice the jury and undermine the presumption of innocence. Merchan has blocked Trump from responding to attacks by Clifford, and Bragg’s other star witness, Michael Cohen, by threatening to jail Trump for violating a gag order.
Above all, Democrats are desperate to see Trump imprisoned, to prevent tens of millions from being able to vote for the candidate of their choice. In their factional frenzy, they deal blows to constitutional protections workers need. Free speech, the right to a fair trial and other protections won in blood are crucial to workers, unions and working-class parties like the Socialist Workers Party.
“All suppression of political rights and freedom, no matter whom they are directed against in the beginning, in the end inevitably bear down upon the working class,” explained Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky. “That is a law of history.”
The prosecution’s only real witness in Bragg’s contrived case is disbarred lawyer and fanatical Trump-hater Cohen. He worked for Trump for 13 years, ending abruptly in 2018. On the stand prosecutors were unable to get Cohen to produce anything that should help win a conviction.
Under defense cross-examination, Cohen admitted he has lied repeatedly under oath about other matters, and has been convicted on felony charges. He secretly recorded a discussion with his boss in September 2016, an egregious breach of legal ethics, as well as covertly recording 94 others on his phone.
He also said he lied in 2018 in order to strike a plea bargain with prosecutors who were pressing him to finger Trump. In a further damning admission, Cohen admitted he stole $30,000 from Trump as a form of “self-help.” He also admitted he felt free to say so because the statute of limitations on the theft had passed.
Cohen was the last prosecution witness and the only one who testified Trump had personal knowledge of the supposed false business records scheme.
Defense witness Brad Smith, an expert on campaign finance law, was not called after Merchan restricted what he could say. The defense called only two witnesses.
The main one was Robert Costello, a short-term adviser to Cohen and former deputy chief of the Criminal Division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York. The heart of his testimony was that he knew Cohen lied on the stand about Trump’s involvement in the payoffs to Clifford from conversations he had with Cohen.
Judge threatens defense witness
At one point, the judge flew off the handle, yelling at Costello and threatening to excise his testimony. Merchan had been upholding a series of prosecution objections preventing the witness from responding to defense questions. Costello muttered under his breath “Geez,” and looked at the judge.
Merchan ordered both the jury and press out of the courtroom. Then he lit into Costello, lecturing him for “improper decorum.” “You don’t give me a side eye,” he told the witness, “You don’t roll your eyes.”
Then he demanded, “Are you staring me down?”
Throughout the trial the judge has disparaged Trump’s behavior, insulted his lawyers, refused to object to the prosecution’s enticement of irrelevant, lurid and clearly prejudicial testimony from Clifford, and let his disdain for the defense show.
The judge, not any evidence pointing to Trump’s “guilt,” is the biggest problem Trump faces. Merchan is making a mockery of constitutional rights.