Donald Trump reacted with predictable fury to the news of potential criminal charges from Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in Manhattan.
Among other attempts at a defense, Trump once again claimed he’s being targeted in connection to his supposedly dominating lead in the 2024 presidential race, although in reality, polling is mixed. “This is a political Witch-Hunt, trying to take down the leading candidate, by far, in the Republican Party while at the same time also leading all Democrats in the polls, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” he claimed to followers.
Trump kept it up, also raising familiar complaints about supposedly “weaponized” law enforcement and alleging rules around relevant statutes of limitations mean he’s shielded from charges, as though a concept so basic won’t be something the prosecutors consider before bringing any case. He also claimed his supporters to number in the “hundreds of millions,” but he got around 74 million votes in the 2020 election, so… nope, not quite.
“It is appalling that the Democrats would play this card and only means that they are certain that they cannot win at the voter booth, so they have to go to a tool that has never been used in such a way in our country, weaponized law enforcement,” he alleged. “I, and hundreds of millions of the American People who are backing me, because they want to see our nation be great again, are the victims of this corrupt, depraved, and weaponized justice system where Hunter Biden and his father can commit horrendous crimes, all accurately documented on his laptop, and nothing happens.” (He’s inaccurately characterizing the Bidens.)
News reports outlined that Bragg offered Trump a chance to testify before a grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the prosecutor’s investigation into hush money that was provided to the adult film star known as Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election, and observers connected this move to what’s evidently standard practice for dealing with prospective defendants, although available reporting from The New York Times emphasized that Bragg’s rhetorical calculations could shift up until any charges are actually filed.
The potential criminal case against Trump is expected to center on falsified business records that were put together at the Trump company to cover reimbursements for now former longtime Trump ally Michael Cohen, who originated the money that Daniels got. Also figuring in the case could be an alleged violation of election laws in New York.
The secondarily alleged violation would connect to Cohen’s hush money for Daniels constituting an improperly expansive move to support Trump’s campaign. Cohen already faced similarly styled criminal accusations at the federal level over the money, which prosecutors took as subject to limits on campaign donations because it supported Trump’s bid for president by helping with PR. The amount was way beyond those limits. Whether it’s his claim New York Attorney General Letitia James has been targeting him for political reasons or his insistence that classified documents he was harboring were specifically declassified, Trump has a history of saying things in rants like these that were either rejected or not even raised in court.
