Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Donald Trump for 34 felonies that are exactly one misdemeanor on which the statute of limitations has run is not just an unethical case, it’s a revealing one. It should let the objective members of the public know, if they have the opportunity and inclination to pay attention, just how undemocratic and trustworthy the 21st Century mutation of the Democratic Party has become.

“Dangerous” is also an adjective that belongs in that sentence.

I’ve been beginning mornings lately jumping back and forth between the coverage of the trial on CNN and MSNBC—you know, the Pravda channels—and Fox News, which would be claiming that Trump was as innocent as the driven snow even if he were as guilty as O.J. It is astounding how completely divergent the impressions one is given from the Left and Right sources are—that, and horrifying. The public has no reliable way to get the information it needs to figure out “What’s going on here?” because all of the coverage is agenda-driven. Very few members of the public have the time (or education) to puzzle it out either.

Interestingly, Abe’s observation—the one that begins, “You can fool some of the people…“—again seems to be holding true, and God Bless America for that. A recent poll suggests that a majority of the the public regard Democrats and the Biden administration as the true existential peril to American liberties and freedom, and not Donald Trump. Might it be that the spectacle of four dubious prosecutions in Democratic Party strongholds by Democratic prosecutors all taking place in an election year and aimed at putting the likely GOP nominee and former President behind bars before an election the Democratic resident of the White House looks poised to lose suggests a slight totalitarian bent, mayhap? Perhaps? Ya think?

The coverage of the Manhattan trial has been so incompetent, biased and misleading that it has even confused me. Calling it a “hush-money trial” is more misleading than calling Florida’s sex education statute the “Don’t Say Gay” law. Contracts imposing non-disclosure conditions are not illegal, and proving such a contract was part of an election law violation is nearly impossible. Yet all of the coverage by 95% of the news media is focused upon the salacious allegations of Stormy Daniels, which are entirely irrelevant.

To their credit, hard as it is for me to say, both MSNBC and CNN have been shocked by some of their own house legal analysts trying to explain that there is no crime here, it is not being proved by the prosecution, and that the judge probably shouldn’t even let the case go to the jury. On the Fox News side, Jonathan Turley in particular appears to be offended by the entire proceeding, writing more blog posts excoriating the judge, prosecution and witnesses than he has on any other legal proceeding in memory. Introducing today’s post, for example, Turley writes,

“With the government resting after Cohen’s cross examination, I believe that an honest judge would have no alternative but to grant a motion for a directed verdict and end the case before it goes to the jury. Judge Juan Merchan will now have to give the full measure of his commitment to the rule of law. Given the failure to support the elements of any crime or even to establish the falsity of recording payments as legal expenses, this trial seemed to stumble through the motions of a trial. Michael Cohen was only the final proof of a raw political exercise. For critics, some of Cohen’s answers appear clearly false or misleading. Like their star witness, the prosecutors have shown that they simply do not take the law very seriously when there is an advantage to be taken. Cohen has truly found a home with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.”

Everything I have seen and read suggests that if Trump is convicted, a reversal is guaranteed. The prosecution (that is, the Democrats) know this, but are gambling that the combination of being “the first former President/major party Presidential candidate convicted of a crime” will be enough to flip sufficient votes and re-elect Biden. That is how our major parties win elections now, because the ends justify the means.

I expect Jefferson, Adams and Madison to rise from their graves and go on a furious brain-eating rampage any day now.

In the New York Post, which is one of those few non-Democratic propaganda news sources—you will recall that it broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, which Big Tech and the mainstream media then conspired to block as “Russian disinformation” (Trump’s claim that the election was stolen, however, is “completely baseless”)—former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, like Turley a fair, learned and unbiased analyst and hardly a Trump-booster, issued a tough essay condemning the trial. He details a particularly egregious prosecutorial ethics violation by DA Alvin Bragg, and concludes, “Regardless of how one feels about Donald Trump, New Yorkers should be outraged at the mockery Bragg is making of the state’s legal system — as the entire country looks on.”

I believe that it is impossible for a jury to convict Trump on a beyond a reasonable doubt standard as a matter of law, because both Daniels and especially Cohen are intrinsically unbelievable. Yet they are crucial witnesses for the prosecution. Cohen is a disbarred lawyer and a convicted perjurer; he has publicized his animus against his former client on social media in the most inflammatory terms; he has stated under oath that he is not seeking revenge, even as his book, “Revenge,” sits on defense table in court. As the trial has proceeded Cohan has been promoting a potential TV reality show starring him as “The Fixer.” Yet to hear MSNBC and CNN tell it, as well as various leftist blogs, Cohen was a model witness, and devastating to Trump’s defense.

Talk about “bias makes you stupid”: the reason the Trump-Deranged propagandists think both Stormy and Cohen were persuasive is that they said bad things about Donald Trump. Has there ever been a high profile trail in which so much of the news media were openly rooting for a conviction? If there has , the previous example had to have been based at least partially on the evidence relevant to the charge. This isn’t; it’s based on pure hate.

On CNN, for example, the “journalists” are regaling their Trump-Deranged viewers with dramatic readings from the transcript as the talking heads giggle and whoop it up. From last night’s CNN News Night with Abby Phillip:

ELLIOT WILLIAMS (AS Trump attorney TODD BLANCHE): “You referred to President Trump as a “Dictator Douche Bag”, didn’t you?” 

MARCUS CHILDRESS (AS MICHAEL COHEN): “Sounds like something I said.”

WILLIAMS: “And on that same TikTok, so again on April 23rd, you referred to President Trump when he left the courtroom, you said that he goes right into that little cage, which is where he belongs in an effing cage like an animal. Do you recall saying that?” 

CHILDRESS: “I recall saying that.”

LAURA COATES: “Mmm. That’s a dramatic reading, Abby!”

ABBY PHILLIP: “Yeah. I mean, that’s kinda how it went down, intonation and all, Marcus. Thank you for that. Also with us…” 

COATES: “No New York accent, though!”

PHILLIP: “No New York accent, but…”

COATES: “Where are the New York accents? What are you doin’?!”

WILLIAMS: “You guys know I can’t do that.”

COATES: “All right.”

ALL: “HAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!”

…because a political party trying to jail an opponent using contrived criminal charges and partisan juries is hilarious. This is what journalism has become. We are supposed to rely on malign hacks to inform us so we can competently decide who we can trust to run our government.