Retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz stated last week that he believes the prosecutor who brought the New York criminal case against former President Donald Trump should instead be investigated, The Epoch Times reported.
In a social media post late last week, Dershowitz highlighted a “major issue” in the case: prosecutors must prove to the jury that payments President Trump sent to former associate and lawyer Michael Cohen were illegal. Prosecutors allege that Trump initiated a reimbursement plan for Cohen to pay an adult film performer to remain silent about an alleged affair, which Trump has denied.
“The only justification for paying the money is to avoid a lawsuit,” the retired professor said, adding that if he made those payments to “avoid exposure” and “publicity,” it’s “extortion, and he’s then the victim of a serious crime.” He added: “The only way it’s not extortion is if the money was paid to avoid a lawsuit, and if the money was paid to avoid a lawsuit, it’s a legal expense.”
Describing the case as a “fabrication of a crime” against the former president, the legal expert added on social media that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “made up a crime” and used a “witness” who he knew “could not tell the truth,” a reference to Cohen. “There are so many ethical violations” at play, he added, suggesting that Bragg himself ought to be the subject of an investigation.
Last week, both prosecutors and defense attorneys rested their cases in the trial, which has lasted over six weeks. Judge Juan Merchan then instructed the jury to return on Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day, to hear closing arguments.
Merchan has made a series of decisions in the hush money trial of former President Donald Trump that have reportedly helped prosecutors, according to legal experts. The most significant decision was allowing “the trial of the century” to proceed.
There is broad agreement that initiating a trial over business records fraud, a state misdemeanor elevated to a felony for allegedly covering up an unidentified federal campaign finance violation or other crime, is beyond Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s jurisdiction. According to John Yoo, a University of California, Berkeley professor and former Justice Department official, a federal campaign finance crime, if warranted, should be prosecuted by federal authorities, not a local prosecutor, the Washington Times reported.
“The most important decision that Judge Merchan made was his failure to reject the D.A.’s backdoor effort to enforce federal election law, which is unconstitutional,” he said. “If Merchan had reached the proper conclusion, he would have dismissed the entire indictment and the case would never have gone to trial.”
Former federal prosecutor Joseph Moreno agreed with Yoo, the Times reported. “Every significant legal and evidentiary ruling that Judge Merchan made in this case was to the advantage of the prosecution, starting with the very premise of the case,” he said.
He said Bragg’s “bare-bones indictment” listed 34 felony charges but did not specify the crime Trump was allegedly concealing. Bragg only presented a “vague theory” that Trump’s accounting entries were made to hide federal and state crimes.
“But without any specifics as to how these laws were supposedly violated (or intended to be violated), this case should have failed as deficient under the Fifth Amendment’s due process right of an accused to be adequately informed so that a defense may be prepared,” Moreno said in an emailed statement to the Times.
