OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is apparently aiming to have former President Donald Trump in a New York courtroom as voting in the 2024 Republican presidential primary gets underway.
A report from NBC notes that Bragg wants to go to trial in January 2024, which has fueled speculation that the entire investigation is politically aimed at hurting Trump’s presidential campaign.
“On Tuesday, Judge Juan Merchan set a Dec. 4 date for the next hearing in the Manhattan district attorney’s case against Trump. The former president pleaded not guilty to the indictment accusing him of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to shield the electorate from information about past alleged affairs,” NBC reported.
“If the prosecution gets its way, the country would get a split screen of Trump fighting to prove his innocence in New York while campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold their nominating contests on Feb. 5 and Feb. 13. On one hand, a trial could greatly limit how much campaigning Trump might be able to do in the closing weeks of those races. On the other, it might offer him a substantial megaphone and media attention that would greatly overshadow the campaigning of his chief rivals,” the outlet added.
Trump appeared in lower Manhattan, New York, on Tuesday for his arraignment in the case brought against him by 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.
“This entire primary is now guaranteed to be completely dominated by Trump earned-media-wise,” a Republican strategist supportive of Trump said. “Probably the best-case scenario for him, timing-wise.”
“It was already extremely tough to effectively attack Trump from the right, and now I think it just became basically impossible,” this person added. “How can you effectively land a shot in a way that the base will accept as Democrats are literally trying to put this guy in jail over BS charges?”
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.”
