Does the DA Have a Case?

A prosecutor with a reputation for being soft on crime in New York City has convinced a Grand Jury to bring an indictment against Donald Trump, ostensibly for misusing campaign funds in 2016 to buy the silence of a woman with whom he had had a sexual tryst years earlier.

Trump is charged with using $30,000 to purchase the woman's silence and designating the money as a legal expense. This sort of thing is generally a misdemeanor that's rarely prosecuted, but the District Attorney managing the case sees the chance to realize the dream of Democrats everywhere to ruin Trump so he's doing all he can to have Trump hauled into the dock.

The statute of limitations for the sort of malfeasance with which Trump has been charged is five years which would've elapsed in 2021, but somehow the DA has convinced the Grand Jury that the former president should still stand trial. It could be that the DA has much more on Trump than people think and that his case is much stronger than even his fellow Democrats think it is, but if not, he has set a terrible precedent by indicting for the first time in our history a former president and current presidential candidate for seemingly partisan political reasons.

Trump is doubtless an odious man, and as Jim Geraghty notes, he's a demagogue. Geraghty writes:

Merriam-Webster defines a demagogue as “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.” I would expand that a bit to define it as a leader who presses the emotional buttons of fear and anger in an excessive or unjustifiable manner, appealing to those base, irrational emotions to stir up the public into a frenzy, getting people to choose a path they would otherwise never choose and act in manners they otherwise never would embrace.

Trump certainly fits this description, but even so, every person delighting in Trump's troubles should ask themselves whether they would support prosecuting Bill or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama had any of them misused campaign funds (Hillary actually did).

If the answer they give to themselves is "no," which, if they're honest with themselves, it probably would be, then neither should they want Donald Trump prosecuted. A country that has two standards of justice, one for Republicans and one for Democrats, is essentially a banana republic. We need to be better than that.

The particulars of the charges against Trump will be revealed at his arraignment which is scheduled for Tuesday. We'll know then whether Trump is being charged with something serious or whether the DA is just trying to smear him in the eyes of the American people.

For the sake of the country, he better have something more against the former president than the criminal equivalent of jaywalking.