There are more levels of hypocrisy than one could count here.
Predictably echoing one of the emerging lines of attack on Republicans denouncing the indictment of Donald Trump, the New York Times today has an article written by Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, and Chris Cameron that complains that Republicans (and Joe Manchin) should say nothing because we have not yet read the indictment:
Two senators who voted to convict former President Donald J. Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — one a Republican and one a Democrat — have raised concerns that Mr. Trump has been improperly targeted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, even before they have learned the details of the indictment . . .
The charges have not yet been revealed, as the indictment is under seal and is expected to remain sealed until Mr. Trump is arraigned in a Manhattan court, leaving both Mr. Trump and those supporting him commenting on what is not known. The expectation has been that some of the charges Mr. Bragg will bring relate to falsifying business records. People with knowledge of the document say it includes more than two dozen criminal counts. “Just a reminder that there is no rule that you have to express your opinion before reading the indictment,” Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a Democrat, said sarcastically in a tweet on Thursday evening after the news broke.
Progressive activist Greg Sargent of the Washington Post joins the fun: “Many [Republicans] are taking the position that any charges against Trump (who has denied wrongdoing) should be seen as presumptively illegitimate no matter the counts against Trump or the facts that underlie them . . . If the charges are weak, it might be reasonable to question the wisdom of the decision to bring them. On the other hand, there are reportedly more than 30 counts against Trump, so there may be grave charges we don’t know about.”
There are more levels of hypocrisy than one could count here. Democrats and their media cheerleaders have hardly been silent about the investigation or the indictment, or about other Trump investigations long before they yielded charges that never arrived. Have we forgotten Russiagate, or Senate Democrats such as Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren arguing against Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court simply because Trump was under investigation? Have we forgotten how Democrats poured a public barrage on Kenneth Starr for months before anybody saw the Starr Report?
But the funniest thing is hearing this from the Times, whose saturation coverage of the investigation has been a major source of the information that just about everyone in politics and the political press has used to form their opinions. There’s a whole bar at the top of many of these columns:
Trump Indicted in New York
- What We Know
- After Trump Is Arrested
- Timeline to Indictment
- Understand the Case
- The Trump Investigations
Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess, and William K. Rashbaum reported on March 31:
The charges against Mr. Trump are not yet known, though two people with knowledge of the matter said that there are more than two dozen counts in the indictment.
The charges are expected to stem from a payment that was made to Ms. Daniels, who in October 2016, during the final weeks of the presidential campaign, was trying to sell her story of an affair with Mr. Trump . . . In New York, falsifying business records can amount to a crime, albeit a misdemeanor. To elevate the crime to a felony charge, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime. In this case, that second crime could be a violation of election law. While hush money is not inherently illegal, the prosecutors could argue that the $130,000 payout effectively became an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, under the theory that it benefited his candidacy because it silenced Ms. Daniels . . .
The case against Mr. Trump might also hinge on an untested legal theory. According to legal experts, New York prosecutors have never before combined the falsifying business records charge with a violation of state election law in a case involving a presidential election, or any federal campaign. Because this is uncharted territory, it is possible that a judge could throw it out or reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor.
Protess, Alan Feuer, and Danny Hakim reported on March 31:
Mr. Trump faces more than two dozen counts related to his role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, according to two people familiar with the matter. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, brought the case over Mr. Trump’s role, when he was running for president, in a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who then agreed to keep quiet about her story of an affair with him….Prosecutors will likely argue that Mr. Trump had some role in the payoff — which came in the last days of the 2016 presidential campaign and may have functioned as an illegal donation to his candidacy — and sought to conceal it…last summer, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors returned to the hush-money case, seeking to jump-start the inquiry after the departures of the senior prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne . . .
The first visible sign of progress in the case for Mr. Bragg came in January, when Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, met with prosecutors at the district attorney’s Lower Manhattan office — the first such meeting in nearly a year. Mr. Cohen returned for several additional interviews with the prosecutors and testified before the grand jury. After Mr. Bragg impaneled the grand jury in January, it heard testimony from Mr. Cohen, as well as two former National Enquirer executives, who had helped broker the hush-money deal. Ms. Daniels’s former lawyer also testified, as did two senior officials from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway. The grand jury has also heard testimony from two employees of the Trump Organization, Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff.
A splashy Bromwich, Protess, and Rashbaum profile on March 31 detailed (quoting Michael Cohen and his lawyers, but also plainly based upon unstated sources close to Bragg) how the indictment came about:
The remaining members of the team split up into small groups to focus on different topics, including the financial statements and the eye-catching payoff that was the original impetus for Mr. Vance to open an investigation into Mr. Trump in 2018: the hush-money deal . . .
Mr. Bragg warmed to the idea of charging Mr. Trump for his role in the hush-money payment. Unlike the net worth case, Mr. Cohen was directly involved: He had made the $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels, for which Mr. Trump reimbursed him. If the sequence of events that led to the payment were to be illustrated, the former fixer would be the line connecting all the dots. Ms. Hoffinger contacted Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, to reassure him that the investigation into Mr. Trump was very much alive.
James C. McKinley Jr. and Bromwich wrote on March 31: “The former president is expected to be arraigned in Manhattan criminal court on charges related to payments made just before the 2016 presidential election to buy the silence of a porn star who said she had an extramarital affair with him.”
Protess, Bromwich, Rashbaum, and Kate Christobek wrote in an article published March 21 and updated March 30:
It is the kind of case that emboldens prosecutors and mesmerizes juries: a celebrity defendant authorizing a secret payoff to cover up a tryst with a porn star. With the Manhattan district attorney’s office now charging Donald J. Trump in just such a case, the former president is facing a daunting set of facts. His onetime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, will testify that Mr. Trump directed him to pay off the porn star, Stormy Daniels, and that the former president reimbursed Mr. Cohen and helped cover the whole thing up. But salacious details alone do not make a case. Prosecutors must also work within the law. And the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, may have to pull off a difficult maneuver, connecting the hush-money cover-up — a potential violation of state law — to a federal election . . .
A New York Times review and interviews with election law experts strongly suggest that New York state prosecutors have never before filed an election law case involving a federal campaign. Bringing an untested case against anyone, let alone a former president of the United States, carries the risk that a court could throw out or narrow the case. The case could hinge on the way Mr. Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, handled reimbursing Mr. Cohen for the payment of $130,000 to Ms. Daniels. Internal Trump Organization records falsely classified the reimbursements as legal expenses, which helped conceal the purpose of the payments, according to Mr. Cohen, who said Mr. Trump knew about the misleading records . . .
Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors appear to have taken a more favorable view of using a state election law violation, according to people with knowledge of their thinking. The laws governing elections in New York are unusual in that they explicitly apply to federal elections, not just state elections.
Rashbaum, Protess, and Bromwich kicked off a good deal of the past few weeks’ circus atmosphere by reporting on March 9, in an article updated March 31:
The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter . . . The Manhattan inquiry, which has spanned nearly five years, centers on a $130,000 payment to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The payment was made in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign by Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, who was later reimbursed by Mr. Trump from the White House . . . Mr. Trump, in a long and rambling statement posted on Truth Social, said, “I did absolutely nothing wrong.” He again denied having had an affair with Ms. Daniels, and insulted her appearance . . .
In New York, falsifying business records can amount to a crime, albeit a misdemeanor. To elevate the crime to a felony charge, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime.
Bromwich wrote on March 30, in an article entitled, “Here are the key events that led to the indictment,” that “the investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into Donald J. Trump’s hush-money payments to a pornographic film star, which led to the indictment of the former president, has spanned nearly five years.”
Jonathan Weisman wrote on March 25: “The payoff to Stormy Daniels . . . has a Manhattan grand jury weighing criminal charges against Mr. Trump . . . The potential criminal charges against Mr. Trump for his role in the passing of hush money to Ms. Daniels — falsifying business records to cover up the payment and a possible election law violation — may seem trivial when compared to the prior efforts to fend off a history-altering October surprise.”
So, where, I wonder, did all those Republicans get the idea that this investigation and indictment are about falsifying business records to cover up the hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels? The Times is very upset that anybody believed its own reporting.