Since BuzzFeed published Steele’s reports in 2017, many of the dossier’s key claims have failed to materialize or have been shown to be false. Steele described his professionalism as an intelligence-gatherer to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and then doubled down on some of the dossier’s most salacious allegations, asserting, among other things, that the infamous “ pee tape” involving Trump may be still out there, just waiting to be found. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer Photos: Getty Images AP/ShutterstockĬhristopher Steele, the former MI6 spy who compiled the notorious dossier during the 2016 campaign alleging ties between Donald Trump and Russia, made a splash a few weeks back when he gave his first interview about it. Left to right, President Trump, Igor Danchenko, and Christopher Steele. “Democrats currently cheering the charges against Trump may feel differently,” warns former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori, “if - or when - a Democrat, perhaps even President Biden, ends up on the receiving end of a similar effort by eager to make a name for themselves by prosecuting a former president of the United States.” You think America’s civil culture has grown toxic and polarized? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Whatever happens, we can be sure of this much: The door Bragg has pushed open is one Republicans will want to walk through too. “When you decide to make history by prosecuting a former president, especially when that former president is seeking that office again by running against an incumbent who is a member of your own party,” remarks Jacob Sullum in Reason magazine, “you had better have a solid case involving serious crimes.” But neither should they be targeted by prosecutors using untested legal theories to go after what amount to victimless offenses. No, former presidents should not automatically be exempted from the legal consequences of their wrongful actions. Even accepting for the sake of argument that the payment was made to benefit his campaign, is it even remotely plausible that Bragg would be pursuing Trump now if he had lost that election to Clinton? Political motivations go to the very heart of this indictment, and reaction to it has divided on sharply partisan lines. The $130,000 payment to Daniels was made seven years ago, when Trump ran for president in 2016. Really? The political motivations in the case are glaring. “While some legal experts have questioned the theory behind Bragg’s case, there is no basis for the accusation that it is politically motivated,” editorialized The New York Times when the indictment was handed down. That is such a limp basis for a prosecution that the US Justice Department, the Federal Election Commission, and Bragg’s predecessor as Manhattan DA all previously declined to bring charges. We will have more details once the indictment is unsealed, but Bragg’s office is reportedly focusing on how a payment to sex performer Stormy Daniels, allegedly to buy her silence about an old affair with Trump, was recorded on Trump’s company records. Yet Bragg appears to be indicting Trump on singularly weak grounds. ![]() But the prosecutor is obliged to show that any such action is compelling, solid, and widely recognized as fair-minded - all the more so when the former president is also an active candidate making yet another bid for the White House. It is certainly true that Trump doesn’t deserve to be exempted from prosecutorial scrutiny merely because he is a former president. ![]() “I’m like a PhD in litigation.”ĭonald Trump waves to the crowd as he arrives at Trump Tower in New York on April 3. “ Does anyone know more about litigation than Trump?” he smirked at one campaign rally. Moreover, Trump has a decades-long history of using litigation as a weapon, having filed at least 2,000 lawsuits, many of them intended to intimidate opponents, to fuel publicity, or to harass vendors or competitors. It was Trump who in 2016 encouraged his supporters to chant “ Lock her up” about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and who directly threatened that he would turn federal prosecutors on her if he were elected. His public career has been a long procession of insults, falsehoods, and shattered democratic norms, and he has frequently called for his foes and critics to be investigated by the government and indicted. At every turn he has demonstrated that he is an unworthy, indecent scoundrel. ![]() His entry onto the national stage turned American politics into an embarrassing freak show. Trump has always been shameless and dishonorable, a vulgar braggart whose first and often only priority has always been his own selfish interests. When it comes to the looming showdown between Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and former president Donald Trump, my reaction is akin to that of Henry Kissinger’s famous remark about the Iran-Iraq War: Both of them deserve to lose.
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