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Alvin Bragg’s Garbage, PR Stunt of a Case Goes Out With a Whimper

Isaac SchorrJan 10th, 2025, 3:36 pm

Manhattan District AttorneyAlvin Bragg’s(D) case against President-elect Donald Trump went out with a whimper on Friday.

Trump officially earned the title of “convicted felon” when Judge Juan Merchan handed down his sentence of an unconditional discharge, but that sentence comes with no fine, probation, jail time, or other form of punishment.

Merchan explained his decision by citing Trump’s impending inauguration as commander-in-chief.

“It was the citizenry of this nation that recently decided that once again you should have the benefits of those protections which include, among other things, the supremacy clause and presidential immunity. It is through that lens and that reality that this court must determine a lawful sentence,” proclaimed Merchan from the bench. “This court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of judgment of conviction, without encroaching on the highest office of the land is unconditional discharge. Therefore, at this time, I impose that sentence to cover all 34 counts.”

This relatively favorable outcome for Trump elicited grumbles from his enemies in the press.

“Many people are looking at whether there are two systems of justice in America. I got to tell you, Donald Trump, right now is a little in a league of his own,” declared CNN’s Laura Coates.

Her colleague Jim Acosta complained that it was “less than” a slap on the wrist.

“Donald Trump ran for office to avoid punishment for his crimes, and it worked,” lamented The Lincoln Project.

They have it exactly wrong.

Trump didn’t get off easy. Indeed, it’s self-evident that there’s not a single other American who would have been so much as charged under similar circumstances.

Michael Cohen — the disgraced ex-Trump attorney turned star witness against his old client — pled guilty to charges related to the same underlying incident in 2018, but those were more serious counts that were brought before the statute of limitations had elapsed.

By contrast,the statute of limitationson the falsification of business records charges Trump was convicted ofhad expiredprior to Bragg’s announcement of the Trump indictment.

That indictment was only handed down because the DA“pushed his teamto scour the penal code for a workable theory,” settled on a “novel and untested” one, and then applied “a state election law to a federal campaign.”

In other words, he directed taxpayer dollars toward reanimating minor, zombie chargesin a convoluted attempt to “get” Trump.

Or, as Trump asserted in a statement he made before the court on Friday, “It was done to damage my reputation so that I’d lose the election.”

One need not don a MAGA hat to agree— at least in principle — with his point. As CNN’sElie Honigput it in a scathing column, Bragg’s case against Trump was an “ill-conceived, unjustified mess.”

“Sure, victory is the great deodorant, but aguilty verdict doesn’t make it all pure and right. Plenty of prosecutors have won plenty of convictions in cases that shouldn’t have been brought in the first place,” wrote Honig the day after the guilty verdict was handed down last spring.

“‘But they won’ is no defense to a strained, convoluted reachunless the goal is to ‘win,’ now, by any means necessary, and worry about the credibility of the case and the fallout later.”

“The charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else,” concluded Honig. “Here, prosecutors got their man, for now at least — but they alsocontorted the law in an unprecedented manner in their quest to snare their prey.”

Said contortion of the law for partisan ends has beencelebrated by cheerleaders in the presswho have spent the better part of two years etching Bragg’s likeness into the Resistance’s Mount Rushmore.

It’s only fitting that this political PR stuntmasquerading as as a legal proceeding ended on Friday with such a hollow, pyrrhic victory.

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/alvin-braggs-garbage-pr-stunt-of-a-case-goes-out-with-a-whimper/