OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump appeared in lower Manhattan, New York, on Tuesday for his arraignment in the case brought against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 charges regarding allegations that he falsified business records related to adult film star Stormy Daniels’ hush-money case. Trump was indicted late last week by a Manhattan grand jury in a case involving his purported role in hush money payments to Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, allegedly to keep Daniels quiet about an affair the two of them had in 2006.
However, Bragg’s case against Trump is so weak that several liberal outlets are even pointing it out.
Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox, wrote: “There is something painfully anticlimactic about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump. It concerns not Trump’s efforts to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, but his alleged effort to cover up a possible extramarital affair with a porn star. And there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax. It is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him.”
Mark Stern, a writer for the liberal outlet Slate, published a story titled, “The Trump Indictment Is Not the Slam-Dunk Case Democrats Wanted.”
John Bolton — who served as a national security adviser in the Trump administration and has since come out against Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign — appeared on CNN and blasted the charges filed against his ex-boss, former President Trump, saying the indictment was “even weaker than I feared it would be.”
“Speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, I’m extraordinarily distressed by this document,” Bolton said on CNN. “I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be.”
Notorious anti-Trump GOP Sen. Mitt Romney issued a statement saying: “I believe President Trump’s character and conduct make him unfit for office. Even so, I believe the New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda. No one is above the law, not even former presidents, but everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law. The prosecutor’s overreach sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages the public’s faith in our justice system.”
On Monday night, Trump’s attorney Alina Habba spoke on Fox News about Trump being indicted and what’s likely to happen next.
“You know, we have Letitia James, that’s probably the most prominent one that I want to discuss because that is, again, a corrupt system. They’re going after the Trump Organization, poor Allen Weisselberg is sitting in Rikers Island right now over what, valuations? This is a real estate company that has done extremely well, is successful, and they’re trying to take them and all of their individuals that lead that company down for nothing. You know, they got three years of special proceeding investigations. They interviewed almost 60 people. We have five weeks. We have a complaint filed many November, it’s going to trial in October,” Habba began.
“This shows exactly how corrupt New York’s judicial system has become. The D.A.s and the A.G.s, Jim Jordan, I hope he brings in each and every one of them and asks them where the funding came from and how they think it’s appropriate to take funding away from the city that is now falling apart, which I used to love. They are taking funding away while people are dying and there is crime rampant in the streets to go after the leading GOP Republican candidate. It is unacceptable,” she added.
“That is, for me, the most important case I have. Other than that, you know, a lot of them are cases where we have to defend against things like election fraud, things like — I have a case in Pennsylvania, you know, somebody tweeted something and they sue Donald Trump. You know, I have a case against Mary Trump and The New York Times. I’m defending the case against E. Jean Carroll In three weeks on trial in New York. Again, the same thing, rapid, rapid trials,” she concluded.
WATCH:
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has also come out swinging in defense of Trump and is threatening to defund any government agencies that engage in election interference.
During an interview on Fox News, Jordan sounded off on government agencies politically targeting Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“The key is to get the facts on the table. We’re doing that with all kinds of issues where we think agencies have been turned against the very American people they’re supposed to serve. So you get the facts on the table, and then you look at legislation. Our job is we’re legislators. Our job is to pass legislation, write laws and pass legislation. So we’ll look at that. We control the power of the purse, and that’s — we’re going to have to look at the appropriations process and limit funds going to some of these agencies, particularly the ones engaged in the most egregious behavior,” Jordan declared.
“So the DOJ and the FBI?” host Maria Bartiromo asked.
“Yeah. And what I’d really like, frankly, I’d like for the government just to stay out of the election process. 2016, they spied on his campaign. 2018, the Mueller investigation. 2020 they suppressed the Hunter Biden story. 2022, they raid his home 91 days before an election, and now 2024 election, the leading candidate for the presidential nomination, they indict the former president and top candidate who’s leading in every poll,” Jordan pointed out.
“Just let ‘We, The People’ decide who we want to elect and stay out of the election process, for goodness sake,” Jordan urged.
Jordan emphasized that this is bigger than Trump, noting “This involves all of us. I don’t think it’s an accident that the same week we learned that the IRS knocked on Matt Taibbi’s door while he was testifying in Congress. That same week is when we learned a district attorney, a left-wing district attorney, a Soros-backed district attorney is going to go after the former President of the United States.”
