OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump appeared in lower Manhattan, New York, on Tuesday for his arraignment in the case brought against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 charges regarding allegations that he falsified business records related to adult film star Stormy Daniels’ hush-money case. Trump was indicted late last week by a Manhattan grand jury in a case involving his purported role in hush money payments to Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, allegedly to keep Daniels quiet about an affair the two of them had in 2006.
However, Bragg’s case against Trump is so weak that several liberal outlets are even pointing it out.
During a segment on CNN, network legal analyst Carrie Cordero told host Jake Tapper that the case against Trump was flat-out weak.
Tapper asked: “And, Carrie Cordero, I mean, you heard Jim Trusty there talking about what he called the frailties of the case. What I’ve heard other people, including you talk about, how strong this case may be or may not be. Your reaction now that you’ve had a chance to go through it. Is it what you thought it was going to be? And are you unimpressed?”
“In terms of a case that’s being brought against a former president, it’s a little underwhelming. There’s not more to it. There’s not more violations tax violations. There’s not an incredible new set of facts that we didn’t know about publicly. It’s really the facts of this case, as they have existed for basically almost seven years,” she said.
“So the facts are almost seven years long, and the facts are pretty stale. And what the D.A.’s office has done is put that together in a theory of the fact that the former president falsified his business records, enable to — in order to enable those that payment to be made to her. To the extent that the documents appear to Link that to the effect that it would have theoretically had on the 2016 election brings into the picture, then whether or not the D.A.’s office is really arguing that this was campaign finance violations, which is something that the U.S. Justice Department never charged with respect to the former president himself. He was not charged with campaign finance violations. So that is probably the basis upon which the former president’s defense attorneys are going to make a number of motions and legal arguments,” she added.
WATCH:
Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox, wrote: “There is something painfully anticlimactic about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump. It concerns not Trump’s efforts to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, but his alleged effort to cover up a possible extramarital affair with a porn star. And there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax. It is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him.”
Mark Stern, a writer for the liberal outlet Slate, published a story titled, “The Trump Indictment Is Not the Slam-Dunk Case Democrats Wanted.”
John Bolton — who served as a national security adviser in the Trump administration and has since come out against Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign — appeared on CNN and blasted the charges filed against his ex-boss, former President Trump, saying the indictment was “even weaker than I feared it would be.”
Notorious anti-Trump GOP Sen. Mitt Romney issued a statement saying: “I believe President Trump’s character and conduct make him unfit for office. Even so, I believe the New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda. No one is above the law, not even former presidents, but everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law. The prosecutor’s overreach sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages the public’s faith in our justice system.”
