Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's evidence against former President Donald Trump in his criminal hush money trial is "truly insane," according to legal analyst Jonathan Turley on Saturday.
Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, became the first former president in U.S. history to stand trial in a criminal case earlier this month. Following an investigation by Bragg's office, Trump was indicted in March 2023 on charges of falsifying business records relating to hush money paid to adult-film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels alleges that she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which he has denied. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and said the case against him is politically motivated.
On Saturday, Turley, an attorney and law professor at George Washington University, took to X, formerly Twitter, to share his opinion column titled, "On Alvin Bragg and the art of not taking the law too seriously" published by The Hill, which discusses Trump's criminal hush money trial.
"The Hill is out with my column on the first week of testimony in the Trump trial. The premise of the prosecution always had that Rube Goldberg feel, but the actual evidence used to propel this ball through the machine is truly insane," Turley wrote on X.
The Hill is out with my column on the first week of testimony in the Trump trial. The premise of the prosecution always had that Rube Goldberg feel, but the actual evidence used to propel this ball through the machine is truly insane... https://t.co/mOhGuM6iwr
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) April 27, 2024See AlsoEx-publisher details ‘catch and kill’ at Trump’s hush money trialTrump targets Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor in his criminal case, while visiting site of fatal bodega stabbing | CNN Politics11 Incredible Things To Do In Charming Alvin, TexasAlvin Bragg, Manhattan's district attorney, draws friends close and critics closer
In the column, Turley compares Bragg to Rube Goldberg, an inventor of a chain reaction–type machine that was intentionally designed to perform a simple task through dozens of mechanical steps, as he describes Bragg's indictment as "vague" and compares the basis of the prosecution's arguments in the case as having a "Goldberg feel."
"The premise of the prosecution always had that Rube Goldberg feel. It was so implausible as to be impossible. After all, the base charge is a simple misdemeanor under a New York law against falsifying business records...Bragg is vague as to what should have been noted on the ledgers for the payments," Turley wrote in his opinion column.
Newsweek has reached out to Bragg's office via email for comment.
Turley, pointing towards David Pecker's testimony, also wrote that "the actual evidence used to propel this ball through the machine is even wackier."
"Bragg decided to start with a witness to discuss an affair that is not part of the indictment. David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, had supposedly been paid to kill a story of a Trump affair with a different woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model," Turley wrote.
Pecker, a longtime friend of the former president and former chairman, president and CEO of American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer, took the stand throughout the week. Pecker confirmed that he had met with Trump and Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen at the Trump Tower in August 2015 and agreed that he would publish positive stories about Trump and publish negative stories about his political opponents.
Prosecutors had argued that the three men "orchestrated a coverup to interfere" with the 2016 presidential election by concealing negative information about Trump.
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Pecker had then laid out the details of the three hush money payments that were made ahead of the 2016 presidential election as he testified that his company made two of those payments, one to Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin and one to former Playboy model Karen McDougal who also claimed to have had an affair with Trump during his marriage to Melania Trump. The third, which was made to Daniels, was paid by Cohen.
Pecker testified that in the fall of 2015, then-editor in chief of the National Enquirer Dylan Howard flagged a tip from Sajudin who wanted to sell a story alleging that Trump fathered an illegitimate child. Sajudin received $30,000 while McDougal received $130,000. Pecker said that neither he nor AMI were reimbursed for those payments.
However, according to Turley in his opinion column, "Pecker proceeded to make the prosecution case even more convoluted," as Turley noted Pecker also took aim at the prosecution's expected star witness, Cohen.
"Pecker added that Bragg's star witness, Michael Cohen, commonly exaggerated and often became loud and argumentative. Cohen will effectively ask the jury to send his former client to jail for following his own legal advice," he wrote.
Turley added that "Bragg has created the perfect Rube Goldberg attraction. The artist himself explained his unlikely success by saying, 'It just happened that the public happened to appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things.' In New York, that appreciation has moved from the satirical to the legal."
Uncommon Knowledge
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