As Attorney General Merrick Garland and Justice Department professionals ponder charging Donald Trump with felony charges for his apparent crimes related to his failed putsch at the Capitol during the electoral vote count as documented in detail by the Jan. 6 committee, the great grifter has no such fears about state charges from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who either chickened out or didn’t care enough to fight.
Despite his predecessor Cy Vance beating Trump at the U.S. Supreme Court twice to win grand jury access to Trump’s bank records, Bragg, who had called for Vance to resign his office, let the prosecution of Trump fritter away. Once again, Trump skates.
Unlike the possible federal charges, the state case had nothing to do with Trump the president, but Trump the crooked real estate promoter who lied to banks about his holdings. Nothing political, just fraud.
Vance brought in white collar crime expert Mark Pomerantz, a lawyer with decades of experience, to work on the case. But when Bragg begged off after taking office in January, Pomerantz resigned, along with Carey Dunne, the man who won the Supreme Court cases.
On their first podcast, Columbia Law professor John Coffee and Manhattan Federal Judge Jed Rakoff talked frankly to Pomerantz for an hour as Pomerantz expressed his absolute certainty that Trump is guilty — and his understandable belief that there was a reasonable chance a Manhattan jury would agree.
“And when it came to the fabrication of Trump’s financial statements, again, without going into the details, we thought we had lots of it,” said Pomerantz. However, were the phony documents tied to Trump personally? Ask Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket if the complaints of King Henry II — “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” — had anything to do with four of Henry’s knights cutting down Becket in the cathedral.
Like in a mob family, nothing happens in Trump World without Trump. It was a case that Bragg should have brought and likely would have won. While Bragg says the probe continues, either indict Trump or drop it.
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