Now that we’ve seen what District Attorney Alvin Bragg has, the old Peggy Lee song comes to mind.
Is that all there is?
Yes, that’s all there is.
The charges against Donald Trump are almost exactly as predicted.
They are weak and, most important, political.
As such, they are shockingly blatant punishment for Trump daring to become president.
In this sordid case, the letters DA stand for Democrat Attorney.
The charges are the crime.
Shame on Bragg for abusing his authority and turning his office into a partisan outpost.
The prosecutor who thinks most violent criminals are simply misunderstood youths just made history on a legal move that is breathtakingly flimsy.
His case is a pig and all the lipstick in the world can’t make it beautiful or even passable.
Manhattan is a 24-hour crime scene where innocent citizens and visitors are assaulted, raped, robbed and killed, but the city’s most famous and arguably most important law enforcement officer has been focused on weaving a fantasy.
Bad enough that Bragg does so little good.
Now he has done something extremely bad, something that will inevitably pit citizen against citizen and further divide a polarized nation.
It is of course no coincidence that his target is the former president and the leading presidential candidate of the opposition party in 2024.
In fact, this isn’t really a criminal case at all.
It’s a case of Trump Derangement Syndrome acting under the authority of law.
Nor is the timing a coincidence.
Consider that a trial, if it were to happen, would fall just as Republican primary voters would be making their choice for the presidential nomination.
That should count as election meddling.
Meanwhile, Bragg apparently aims to relitigate 2016.
By specifically charging that hush-money payments involved falsifying business records and that they become felonies because they were made to improperly “influence the 2016 presidential election,” Bragg aims to slay the Bad Orange Monster and play the role of Hillary Clinton’s avenger.
The implication is that she would have won if only Trump had admitted the truth about supposed flings with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal and if he hadn’t allegedly paid off a doorman.
If Bragg believes that, I’ve got a Russia, Russia, Russia hoax to sell him.
And how about that first impeachment over the Ukraine phone call — is that somehow also a New York crime?
Then there’s Clinton’s private server and classified emails.
And the phony Steele dossier she paid for — is Bragg going to prosecute those cases next?
Of course not, and he wouldn’t be prosecuting this case if Trump had lost to her.
It turns out that Bragg, for all of his elite education and blather about social justice, is just another partisan who can’t accept Trump’s presidency as legitimate.
Take a number, pal.
I am ashamed to admit that I gave him too much credit.
Though I assumed the charges would ultimately be political, given that other prosecutors had passed on them, I did believe Bragg would spring a few surprises.
Given the weight of the moment and the deep waters he was wading into, I expected he would deliver some evidence that nobody saw coming as a way to persuade doubters that this really is a serious matter and that he’s a smart and fearless prosecutor.
After all, even certified Trump haters cautioned that building a case around the well-known hush-money payments was thin gruel and that Bragg would have to put some meat on the bone to avoid looking like a fool.
Technically, he did add a little something by also throwing in the payments to McDougal, and the doorman.
And making all 34 charges felonies also seemed to suggest a new level of nefariousness.
But even then, as Tuesday’s drama stretched on, I kept thinking there had to be more.
Surely he would drop the final room-clearing, sense-making bombshell at his press conference.
Nope, nada, nothing.
Just the ridiculous claim that 2016 voters were cheated, and that both federal and state election laws were violated as a result.
Though Bragg never said so, the implied suggestion was that if only voters had known, America would never have had to suffer through the indignity of a Trump presidency.
The case is so far out there in crazy land that it forces the question: Where are all the supposed moderate Democrats?
Surely they can’t be comfortable having a former president and the Republicans’ leading candidate facing an openly biased prosecutor pushing a weak case.
If they are not comfortable, they’re keeping it a secret.
And unless the Chuck Schumers of the world speak up, they are inviting a tit-for-tat.
As of now, there is no reason in the world why red-state prosecutors shouldn’t start building a case against the Biden family.
They could find some novel way to indict Hunter Biden and Joe’s brother Jim now, and indict Joe the minute he leaves the White House.
I’m not comfortable raising that idea, but I see no alternative.
There is far more evidence against the Bidens than there is in this Trump case, so what’s the argument against this?
There’s only one — it’s that Donald Trump is different.
That he and he alone is not deserving of the customary norms and respect given to all other former presidents.
Indeed, we saw that the day he took the oath, with some congressional Dems openly talking about starting impeachment proceedings.
It was not idle talk, as the next four years showed repeatedly.
And so here we are, with the war against him still raging.
Three other cases with him as the target are moving forward, one in Georgia and two in the federal system.
As I noted Sunday, those cases have their own weaknesses, but each already has more credibility than Bragg’s wild stab at fame.
The Georgia case centers on a phone call where Trump was recorded asking the Republican secretary of state to “find” him sufficient votes to overturn the results of the 2020 election and award him Georgia’s 16 electoral votes instead of Joe Biden.
The federal cases, being carried out by an aggressive special prosecutor named Jack Smith, stand in contrast to how Biden is being treated by the same Department of Justice and a separate special prosecutor.
Both Trump and Biden are being probed over possible mishandling of classified documents, but only Trump suffered a raid by FBI agents executing a search warrant. Biden’s lawyers were permitted to search for some of his missing documents.
There is no escaping the clear impression of partisan overreach and a double standard.
Even more egregiously is the way Attorney General Merrick Garland has tried to run out the clock on the Hunter Biden case.
If people actually believe Garland is actively investigating a case that is nearly five years old, they aren’t paying attention.
While it’s too early to say how much real jeopardy Trump is in, the immediate fact is that Bragg has made a huge contribution to Trump 2024.
By making the former president look like a victim of a crooked prosecutor and a partisan system, the DA confirms for millions of Americans that Trump is all that stands between them and the authoritarian left that will stop at nothing to get and hold power.
I want them to be wrong, but on days like this, I fear they are right.
