The Manhattan District Attorney's office is playing a very dangerous game in Donald Trump's trial
Democratic prosecutors are saying the quiet part out loud to a Democratic jury: Convict Trump for winning the 2016 election. If he wins again this year, they (and all of us) will reap the whirlwind.
“A criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.”
That’s the crime prosecutor Matthew Colangelo - a top official in Joe Biden’s Justice Department until he joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office to prosecute Donald Trump - claimed last week Trump had committed.
That “scheme” is why Trump faces 34 New York state felony charges for “falsifying business records,” a crime that is normally a misdemeanor, Colangelo said in his opening statement to the Manhattan jury that will decide if Trump is guilty.
In mid-April, a Richard L. Hasen, a left-leaning expert on election law, wrote in the Los Angeles Times the New York charges “are so minor I don’t expect they will shake up the presidential race.”
Hasen was half-right. The charges are minor. But the way prosecutors are framing the case is not. Local Democratic prosecutors want to send Trump, a Republican, to prison, for a “crime” that comes down to beating Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Win or lose, their effort may destabilize the American legal system for decades.
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