Donald Trump deserves the legal scrutiny he’s getting — which has come from many corners on many counts. Yet of the long list of alleged violations, the likely charges on which a grand jury in New York state voted to indict him are perhaps the least compelling. There’s cause for concern, and caution, ahead.
Thursday’s events are the result of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s decision early in his tenure to abandon a probe centered on the former president’s business practices in favor of what had come to be known as the “zombie” case: the matter of a $130,000 payment made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an affair she claims she had with Mr. Trump about a decade earlier. (Mr. Trump denies the affair.) Check-writer Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty to crimes related to the payment in 2018. Though the precise charges are not yet known, it’s expected that prosecutors are now going after his boss for supposedly covering up his reimbursements for the favor. Falsifying records in this way is usually a misdemeanor in New York, but if it was done to cover up another crime, it can turn into a felony. The idea here is that the hush-money payment constituted an improper political donation because it benefited Mr. Trump so close to the election.
Pyramiding two transgressions of state rules to go after a federal candidate is legally plausible. But the strategy is also novel, and courts may regard it with skepticism. What’s more, the potential campaign finance charge itself is shaky. When federal prosecutors charged former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) with a similar crime following his 2008 presidential run, he rebutted the accusation by arguing he was trying to disguise his faithlessness from his wife rather than from the voting public. The trial ended in acquittal on one count and a hung jury on others — at which point the Justice Department dropped the charges.
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End of carousel- D.C. Council reverses itself on school resource officers. Good.
- Virginia makes a mistake by pulling out of an election fraud detection group.
- Vietnam sentences another democracy activist.
- Biden has a new border plan.
The D.C. Council voted on Tuesday to stop pulling police officers out of schools, a big win for student safety. Parents and principals overwhelmingly support keeping school resource officers around because they help de-escalate violent situations. D.C. joins a growing number of jurisdictions, from Montgomery County, Md., to Denver, in reversing course after withdrawing officers from school grounds following George Floyd’s murder. Read our recent editorial on why D.C. needs SROs.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) just withdrew Virginia from a data-sharing consortium, ERIC, that made the commonwealth’s elections more secure, following Republicans in seven other states in falling prey to disinformation peddled by election deniers. Former GOP governor Robert F. McDonnell made Virginia a founding member of ERIC in 2012, and until recently conservatives touted the group as a tool to combat voter fraud. D.C. and Maryland plan to remain. Read our recent editorial on ERIC.
In Vietnam, a one-party state, democracy activist Tran Van Bang was sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison and three years probation for writing 39 Facebook posts. The court claimed he had defamed the state in his writings, according to Radio Free Asia. In the past six years, at least 60 bloggers and activists have been sentenced to between 4 and 15 years in prison under the law, Human Rights Watch found. Read more of the Editorial Board’s coverage on autocracy and Vietnam.
The Department of Homeland Security has provided details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent editorial on the U.S. asylum system.
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Breaches of campaign finance law undermine democracy and deserve to be taken seriously. Yet the potential downsides of indicting Mr. Trump ought to be taken seriously, too. This prosecution is now bound to be the test case for any future former president, as well as, of course, proceedings against this former president in particular — of which there are plenty. Other investigations underway include Justice Department examinations of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago, where the possibility of obstruction of justice is particularly grave. These are straightforward cases compared with the one proceeding in Manhattan. A failed prosecution over the hush-money payment could put them all in jeopardy, as well as provide Mr. Trump ammunition for his accusations of “witch hunt” — in light of which House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was right to urge supporters to refrain from protesting.
Public perception and political strategy shouldn’t dissuade a district attorney from bringing a solid case, but neither should they persuade him to bring a shaky one. This prosecution needs to be airtight. Otherwise, it’s not worth continuing.