Crime Family  will Not Allow Former Federal Elections Commission to Testify In Trump’s Defense

Limits Testimony

By John Livingston

May 8, 2024

Judge Juan Merchan, who has ties to a powerful criminal offense family, is blocking President Trump’s defense by refusing to permit the intro of crucial proof. This deliberate barrier has triggered further concerns about a prospective miscarriage of justice.

 [Bragg’s] theory is that if Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in the fall of 2016 to keep her from going public with her story that she and Trump had a sexual encounter. Then, Trump repaid Cohen in 2017, a project contribution that should have been reported to the FEC. The payments were made “to influence any election,” the theory continues, and the Trump campaign must have submitted a file with the FEC listing amongst its campaign contributions and expenses that it received and invested $130,000 for “hush money.

May 8, 2024

You’re right if you think that sounds a little odd for an FEC disclosure. 

That’s where one of the crucial witnesses to be called by the Trump defense is available. Bradley Smith is a former chairman of the FEC, and on many occasions, consisting of long before Trump, he has argued that there are all sorts of things a candidate can spend cash on that are not legally classifiable as “to influence any election.” … Smith, having headed the FEC, has numerous examples from the commission’s enforcement of federal election law that show his point. He understands what he is talking about, and it seems clear that his specialist viewpoint is that settling Daniels, no matter what one may think about it, is not a project expense or donation that FECA requires a candidate to reveal. The Trump defense prepares to call Smith as a witness. Not due to the fact that he has any individual understanding of the Trump deal but because he understands and has enforced the project law that Bragg’s prosecutors seem planning to use versus Trump. However, Merchan has prohibited Smith from testifying about most of the concerns involved in the case.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with falsifying accounting records of a nondisclosure payment to dedicate or hide another criminal offense. Bragg still hasn’t revealed what that other criminal activity is. It’s truly the secret to the whole case. Without the other criminal offense, there would be no charges against Trump in this matter.

Let’s stop briefly here for a moment. Bragg is trying to make the case that the supposedly falsified or mischaracterized records make up a felony in the context of being performed in service of FEC violations– despite the fact that, once again, the feds currently analyzed all of this and didn’t submit any associated charges. Trump’s defense team wishes to engage a skilled witness who ran the FEC to explain why Bragg is wrong. But the Biden donor judge will not let that happen:

Smith might offer statement concerning the uniqueness of the existing prosecution of Trump, however Merchan is restricting it. Merchan is not permitting Smith to talk about the lack of precedent for a conviction of a federal campaign finance law offense related to ‘hush money payments’ like Cohen’s payment to Daniels. Smith may also be questioned about the trial of John Edwards, including his acquittal and the criticism of the case. Furthermore, Smith may have understood the FEC’s dismissal of a complaint versus Trump and the Justice Department’s choice not to prosecute similar actions. Still, Merchan has barred any conversation on these topics as “irrelevant.” They are relevant, but the crime family has labeled them “irrelevant” for this prosecution. 

The Biden donor judge– who is threatening to put Trump in jail for talking about the case, while letting Trump’s disgraced and discredited ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen mouth off about it at will– figured out that the mechanics of the sexual intercourse between Trump and Daniels has, um, probative value for the jury. But they can not hear the previous head of the FEC challenge the lynchpin of Bragg’s untested bank-shot theory. These judgments, nearly all of which go against the accused, have been music to the ears of the prosecution group, including this male:

Yes, the man prosecuting Trump on behalf of Democrat Alvin Bragg is somebody the Democratic National Committee paid $12,000 throughout Trump’s presidency and who gave up one of the highest-ranking positions in Democratic President Biden’s Justice Department to go to New York and prosecute Trump. And he’s been given nearly every benefit of the doubt by the judge in the event– who contributed to Biden (Trump’s current challenger, for crying out loud), whose child is a fundraiser for famously anti-Trump Democrats who have raised tens of millions off of the case, and who refused to recuse himself from this case despite these facts.

A Manhattan district attorney heading up the “hush money” case versus former President Donald Trump was a political expert for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2018– and when donated to Barack Obama. The DNC paid Matthew Colangelo $12,000 in January 2018 for “political consulting,” Federal Election Commission filings show, and the prosecutor donated $400 to Obama’s first governmental campaign in 2008. Colangelo, formerly the third-ranking authority in President Biden’s Justice Department, joined Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s workplace in December 2022 as senior counsel in the criminal case against Trump.