Breaking: Trump pleads not guilty; indictment unsealed

CBS News host Norah O’Donnell calls this account “riveting.” True enough, if one finds preplanned Kabuki theater and arraignments a form of high suspense. Otherwise, today’s booking of former president Donald Trump and the first revelation of the grand jury indictment mainly stuck to the script:

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The indictment was unsealed in the arraignment, and while it has yet to be released to the public as a document, reports from the hearing make it clear that there are no big surprises. Thirty-four counts of “falsifying business records in the first degree” paints a broad picture of a narrow case built on two different forms of settlements. As expected, the counts relate to a payment to Stormy Daniels for an NDA in 2016 that came from Trump’s own funds, and a separate “catch and kill” scheme involving the National Enquirer. David Pecker bought the exclusive rights to Karen McDougal’s story about an affair with Trump in order to quash it, and as audio released years ago shows, with Trump’s money and coordination.

Of course, Pecker and the National Enquirer already got a hefty $187,000 fine for that caper from the FEC, or about 20% more than it shelled out to McDougal to flim-flam her into the catch-and-kill scheme. The FEC knew at least as far back as July 2018 that Trump was involved in that scheme; Lanny Davis had provided the audio of the conversation, which included Trump’s participation in the conversation between Pecker, Trump, and Michael Cohen. Neither the FEC nor the Department of Justice bothered to take any action, either during or after Trump’s presidency — and for that matter, neither did the Manhattan DA’s office.

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And the payoff to Daniels didn’t even get any traction at the FEC, either. Why? Because it’s not illegal to pay people to keep silent about potentially embarrassing personal information, that’s why. Even the “catch and kill” scheme isn’t illegal — it’s not an uncommon practice, even if it seems more than a little unethical. Neither involves fraud per se, either. McDougal might have a civil case against the National Enquirer if they promised to publish the story, but since we haven’t seen any such case emerge, it seems more likely that Pecker and his team knew how to give themselves an out. Plus, McDougal got the money, which means a claim of being defrauded would be hard to make stick.

And that, of course, is the crux of the case. If this was a case of business fraud, who got defrauded? Who lost any money or value in these payments, beside Trump? If it was a fraud that resulted in tax violations, then the grand jury would have charged Trump with that, not “falsifying business records in the first degree.” Alvin Bragg is trying to make those into felonies by claiming those falsifications was to avoid campaign-finance fraud investigation, but the FEC already looked into it and didn’t bother to act.

So who got defrauded? If there’s no victim and the FEC and DoJ aren’t interested, why is Bragg pursuing misdemeanors whose statute of limitation expired years ago?

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Anyway, the circus is over in Manhattan now:

It will pick back up at Mar-a-Lago tonight. Be sure to watch Salem News Channel to catch our live coverage of his speech, and we’ll watch for the indictment when it gets published.

Update: The court has now published the indictment, and it’s pretty underwhelming. The grand jury added a count for every ledger entry associated with the two payoffs by noting that they had the intent to defraud, etc etc. Here’s one example:

ELEVENTH COUNT:

AND THE GRAND JURY AFORESAID, by this indictment, further accuses the defendant of the crime of FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS IN THE FIRST DEGREE, in violation of Penal Law §175.10, committed as follows:

The defendant, in the County of New York and elsewhere, on or about May 22, 2017, with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof, made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise, to wit, an invoice from Michael Cohen dated May 22, 2017, marked as a record of Donald J. Trump, and kept and maintained by the Trump Organization.

Again, who was defrauded? What crime was being concealed? It is not a crime to have an affair or a fling. It is not a crime to arrange to keep it silent in exchange for financial considerations. The indictment never even bothers to address those questions, only offering a mindless repetition of this boilerplate language while adjusting for specific invoices, checks, and ledger entries 34 times.

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In other words, this is precisely the case we thought Bragg was bringing. It’s good to have the indictment in hand now, but as it turns out, it was hardly necessary.

Update: Count NRO’s Dan McLaughlin among the underwhelmed, too:

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