The “2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck” isn’t the longest running Ethics Alarms ethics train wreck or even the most disastrous, perhaps (The Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck is older and arguably worse, since it encompasses the Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck and the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck too), But it has been disastrous enough. Fredo is up there again because, dammit, I was right about how sinister and dangerous the Democrats’ response to Trump’s shock defeat of Hillary. If anything, I underestimated how bad it would be, but for my correct analysis this blog was abandoned by all of the Trump haters who were sure I was their ally, since I had been pointing out the new President’s myriad flaws for two years.

Well, bias made them stupid, and I was punished for it. “You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid!” declared a previously esteemed visitor here when I (again, correctly) called the Mueller investigation what it was, a set-up to cripple Trump’s Presidency by Clinton allies in law enforcement, Congress and the media. “Banned Bob,” as the appropriately exiled commenter Bob Ghery will be known as henceforth, wrote in a recent comment that he had followed EA for years but noticed a while back that it had become “political and angry.” I hate the “angry” cheap shot; it’s a popular way to discredit my considered analysis as emotional, which it is not. I was and am emphatic that what the Democratic Party has done since the 2016 election has created a looming existential threat to American institutions, values and democracy. I’m not “angry” about it. And I have been forced to spend more time on political ethics because this epic breach of political ethics in America is the most important ethics story by far since Ethics Alarms started in 2009, indeed since Watergate.

I’m obligated to write about it. I will stop when the Axis stops using totalitarian tactics to undermine the Constitution, our culture, our communities, and our political discourse.

Thus I was thrilled to read the latest post in The Federalist titled, “Democrats’ 2016 Election Trutherism Lurks Behind Trump’s Show Trial Conviction.” An excerpt:

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleged that Trump reimbursed his then-lawyer Michael Cohen for payments Cohen made to pornographer Stormy Daniels to suppress negative publicity about an affair Daniels claimed to have had with Trump. The alleged wrongdoing, according to Bragg, is that the payments to his lawyer should have been classified as campaign expenses rather than legal expenses. There is nothing illegal about nondisclosure agreements or purchasing negative press. But Bragg claims Trump “orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects.”

In order to make the payment sound more sinister — and to twist an alleged bookkeeping offense into 34 felonies — prosecutors suggested the payment to Daniels was part of a murky plot to steal the 2016 election. Biden’s Department of Justice’s former No. 3, Matthew Colangelo, said during opening statements of the trial that “this was a planned, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior.”

“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Colangelo continued, according to PBS News. “The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election. Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

To add insult to injury, the original “evidence” used by Bragg’s team to wage a lawfare campaign against the former president “came from an FBI raid conducted after Special Counsel Robert Mueller referred the matter to the Southern District of New York,” as independent journalist Matt Taibbi pointed out. “Mueller’s investigation, remember, grew out of the FBI’s dubious Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Taibbi added.

In 2016, Clinton campaign lawyers enlisted the help of oppo research firm Fusion GPS to get dirt on Trump. Fusion GPS then used the funding to hire British spy Christopher Steele, who put his name on the so-called “Steele dossier” which had uncorroborated allegations that Trump was a Russian asset. The primary source for the dossier was Igor Danchenko, who was actually tied to Russian intelligence and was later indicted for lying to the FBI…

But the connection between the Russia collusion hoax and the Manhattan trial goes deeper than the origins of the evidence. Democrats have been reeling for eight years that Americans preferred Trump over Clinton, who has called Trump’s presidency “illegitimate” ever since her defeat. President Joe Biden likewise spread the claim, telling a woman in 2019 who referred to Trump as an “illegitimate president” that he “absolutely” agreed with her.

Democrats’ inability to accept the results of the 2016 election culminated in the invention of the latest hoax — that Trump “stole” the election by paying for a non-disclosure agreement.

Bingo. Meanwhile, former U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy completed the circle, writing (Pointer: Michael Ejercito),

Trump says Democrats “rigged” the 2020 election against him by, for example, suppressing unsavory information about Biden-family influence-peddling. That’s exactly Bragg’s theory of how Trump supposedly stole 2016 — information suppression. Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election is fairly highlighted by Democrats as making him singularly unfit for the presidency; Bragg’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2016 election has made him a Democratic hero. And if we’re going to talk 2016 election, Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, actually was found by the FEC to have violated federal campaign law. In stoking the fraudulent claim that Trump was a clandestine agent of the Kremlin, Clinton’s campaign paid its law firm, Perkins Coie, to hire Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to concoct the story; then it booked the payment as legal expenses rather than opposition research. As a result, the FEC fined the Clinton campaign.

Since Bragg theorizes that Trump, in the same campaign, falsely booked payments as legal expenses rather than reimbursement for a nondisclosure deal, why hasn’t Bragg indicted Clinton? Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t really have a case against Clinton, either — but at least Clinton, unlike Trump, was found by an authorized federal agency to have committed an actionable disclosure violation.

Of course, the question answers itself: Clinton is a Democrat. Bragg sees his job not as enforcing the law evenhandedly but as getting Trump.
But understand: What Bragg is accusing Trump of is stealing the 2016 election.

Andy McCarthy is no more a Donald Trump admirer than I am, but he can still interpret facts. Ethics Alarms had this right from the start. In my career of largely failed projects and wasted abilities that should have led to more influence and impact than they did, entirely due to my own proclivities, I’m taking credit for this one. I gave my readers what they needed, early on and before many others figured it out. I don’t get to take many bows, but I’ll take this one.

And the Ethics Alarms fugitives and exiles can bite me.