Prosecutors in Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's office have finally revealed the underlying crime they allege Donald Trump was committing when he allegedly falsified business records.
According to Fox News, "New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass on Tuesday said the other crime was a violation of a New York law called 'conspiracy to promote or prevent election.'"
That law, New York Law 17-152, reads:
Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
Speaking of Michael Cohen, former National Enquirer owner David Pecker, and Donald Trump, Steinglass' co-counsel Michael Colangelo argued that in 2015:
"Those three men formed a conspiracy to influence the election."
However, none of the allegedly falsified business records were dated in 2015; every alleged instance was in 2017. The falsified payments are transactions in which Trump's business paid Cohen; Trump says the payments were for legal services and not reimbursement for any monies Cohen might have paid to Stormy Daniels.
Speaking of Daniels, she still owes Trump $300,000 plus interest after pursuing a frivolous lawsuit against him.
According to Colangelo, the mechanics of the "catch and kill" conspiracy were that Cohen would notify Pecker about stories that Trump wanted buried, Pecker would buy the information and the rights to the story so that the story wouldn't be published anywhere. The ultimate source of the funds used to purchase the rights to the stories, according to prosecutors, was Trump, through his payments to Cohen.
In addition to the alleged payoff to Stormy Daniels, Colangelo said there were two other instances in which the practice was used:
One was to block a story that a former Trump Tower doorman was trying to sell about an alleged out-of-wedlock child. Colangelo said the payment was $30,000. The doorman’s story was eventually proven to be untrue.
The next payment was to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed a romantic and sexual relationship with Trump. Colangelo alleged that Cohen asked AMI to buy the story. Colangelo said AMI paid McDougal $150,000 in exchange for "unlimited life rights" to her story.
There are a few legal problems with the prosecution's theory. First, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are not illegal, and the underlying statute says that there has to be a conspiracy "to promote or prevent the election...by unlawful means."
Second, as Andrew McCarthy pointed out, there is nothing in the indictment about a scheme or conspiracy:
The grand jury did not accuse Trump of a 'scheme' — much less a conspiracy — in its indictment. This is a matter of Bragg using a 'Statement of Facts' he wrote in order to spin the grand jury’s indictment into a grand election-theft conspiracy that the grand jury did not actually charge.
I’ll repeat that because it bears noting: The grand jury did not accuse Trump of a “scheme” — much less a conspiracy — in its indictment. This is a matter of Bragg using a “Statement of Facts” he wrote in order to spin the grand jury’s indictment into a grand election-theft conspiracy that the grand jury did not actually charge.
Bragg cannot use the word conspiracy because a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime. It is not a crime to suppress damaging information — that is something politicians do all the time. Withholding information is only a crime when there is a legal obligation to divulge the information. Politicians, of course, are not legally required to divulge extramarital affairs in political campaigns.
Also, the statute of limitations on all misdemeanors in New York State is two years. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't play one on TV either, so I'm not entirely sure that the underlying crime for the falsification of business records charge has to be within the statute of limitations.
If this silly legal fairy tale somehow results in a conviction, all of the people involved in "catch-and-kill" related to the 2020 election, including the 51 former intelligence officials who lied about the origins of the Hunter Biden laptop story, those who arranged for the New York Post's story to be censored, and people who conspired to deplatform those who said anything negative about Joe Biden, better watch out.