THE VULGARITY OF IT ALL:  Former President Trump says he expects to be arrested on Tuesday. Whether you like Trump or not, there is something vulgar about the whole affair. 

We've never had a president arrested.  I think most people believe that it should be done in only the most extreme circumstances, and for the gravest of crimes.  This case doesn't come close.  The fact that the presumed arrest will come so soon after Mr. Trump announced that he was running again for the presidency suggests that justice is not the motive, but that driving the former president out of the race might be closer to the mark.  From Fox: 

Prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney's office won't have much of a legal leg to stand on if they indict former President Donald Trump on violating campaign finance law, according to a legal expert and former member of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
"If the state charges are based on a supposed violation of federal campaign finance law, then the Manhattan DA is way off base," Hans von Spakovsky told Fox News Digital.
Von Spakovsky's comments came shortly after Trump said Saturday that he expects to be arrested Tuesday amid reports saying the Manhattan district attorney's office is preparing to issue an indictment for alleged hush money payments that Trump made as a presidential candidate in 2016.

"NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!, [sic]" Trump posted to his Truth Social account.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office will reportedly meet with law enforcement officials to discuss logistics for some time next week regarding a potential indictment, which stems from a years-long investigation into Trump's alleged hush money scandal involving porn star Stormy Daniels.

In the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump's then-lawyer Michael Cohen sent $130,000 to Daniels to prevent her from disclosing her alleged 2006 affair with Trump, who has denied the affair. Trump subsequently reimbursed Cohen.

It's been widely speculated that Trump could be charged with overseeing the false recording of the reimbursements in his company's internal records as "legal expenses."

Prosecutors are also expected to charge Trump with violating campaign finance laws by arranging the payments to buy Daniels's silence weeks before the 2016 election. However, experts have questioned the legal reasoning behind such a charge.

"A settlement payment of a nuisance claim is not a federal campaign expense," said von Spakovsky, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. "The state DA has no authority to prosecute a federal campaign finance violation in any event."

Such cases, he argues, are within the province of the FEC, where he served as a commissioner, or the U.S. Justice Department, explaining that both agencies have known about the facts for years but have chosen not to prosecute Trump.

"So, the federal agencies with jurisdiction did not consider it a violation," said von Spakovsky, who's been following this case for years.

In 2018, von Spakovsky wrote that the payment to Daniels seemed to be a "nuisance settlement," which celebrities often make, especially when faced with the threat of a false or salacious claim.

"Critics of the president claim this not only was a campaign expense that should have been reported but a potentially illegal loan by Cohen. But the settlement was ultimately paid out of Trump's personal funds and had nothing to do with the campaign since their alleged one-night stand occurred 10 years before the campaign," wrote von Spakovsky. "No reasonable member of a jury would consider this to be a campaign-related expense that needed to be reported, or to which any other campaign finance rules in the Federal Election Campaign Act apply."

COMMENT:  Other legal commentators have made similar points.  And Trump's claim that the district attorney of Manhattan is highly political is underestimating the reality.  He seems at times to be all about politics.  His predecessor reportedly turned this case down cold.  But Bragg is in the Soros army, a select group of soft-on-real-crime prosecutors.  We know him well in New York.  He is protected by the hard left of the Democratic Party, which wields a mighty sword in our once-great state. 

We will always consider facts, of course, but this really does look like a political hit job.  If it is, and Trump survives, he may well come out an unstoppable hero.

March 18, 2023