Written before Trump’s indictment, but key points remain relevant

The dominant rumor on the internet over the weekend was that Donald Trump will soon be indicted, possibly even handcuffed, on camera. Is that true? We can't say. 

We do know that Trump is the subject of a grand jury investigation in Manhattan. That's a city that voted against Donald Trump by almost 80% in the last presidential election. We also know that the grand jury was impaneled by a Soros funded D.A. called Alvin Bragg, who looks and acts like a Tawana Brawley-era Al Sharpton. So, we would assume, on the basis of that evidence, that it's pretty likely Trump does get charged with something at some point.

But charged with what? That's the question that should matter in a free country. Laws or universal laws apply to all citizens equally, precisely because all citizens are considered equal. For generations, this was very obvious to American liberals. In fact, it was the basis of their worldview. That was back when liberals opposed Jim Crow, and we're not trying to reinstate it as something called equity. We're not liberals, but we retain the traditional American view, which is that laws must be applied equally, or else they're not laws at all. Justice must be blind, or else it is tyranny. 

So, we spent the day with help of a lawyer on our staff, trying to assess the likely charges against Donald Trump and here's what we found. Eight years ago, as he was running for president, Trump paid a porn actress called Stormy Daniels $130,000. Daniels alleged that she and Trump had at one point had sex. Trump denied that. He still denies it. But in exchange for promising not to repeat that claim in public, Trump, through his then attorney, Michael Cohen, sent Stormy Daniels a check.  

Was that legal? Well, we can answer that question. Because there was a campaign in progress at the time, officials at the Federal Election Commission later examined the transaction between Trump and Stormy Daniels. Federal investigators concluded that nothing criminal had taken place and in fact, settlements like this, whatever you think of them, are common both among famous people, celebrities and in corporate America. The result is usually known as an NDA, a nondisclosure agreement. 

In this case, you can believe whatever side you want to believe, but paying people not to talk about things, hush money, is ordinary in modern America. According to the FEC, there was no need for Donald Trump to report his payments to Stormy Daniels. Nor was the money that he sent or through his attorney subject to campaign finance limitations. The FEC determined the entire thing was a personal expenditure. It clearly was. 

So, what is the crime here? Well, the media don't seem very interested in finding out. This is Donald Trump. He's a criminal. Everything he does is a crime. Watch.  

JENNIFER RUBIN, MSNBC: Simply because he may have committed worse crimes, you don't let him off of lesser crimes. If you are, for example, seeking a prosecution for murder, if the guy gets caught drunk driving in another context before that, you don't just let him go because you have bigger fish to fry. 

PAUL BUTLER, MSNBC: Nobody is above the law, including Donald Trump. It doesn't matter that this is kind of a minor crime compared to some of the other allegations.  

MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MSNBC: A crime is a crime is a crime is a crime. That's what anybody prosecuting or a judge would say.  

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC: A crime is a crime is a crime, as Mika said. An indictment is an indictment is an indictment. When I hear people saying this is much ado about nothing, I think about all the members of Congress I served with and understanding every single one of them would have been charged and sent to jail had they done this. 

AL SHARPTON, MSNBC: I was reading the Bible which said that which a man sows, that he may also reap.  

Joe Scarborough, ladies and gentlemen, telling us what a crime is, a crime with a woman. Look, there's Al Sharpton lecturing us about the Bible. It's hilarious. Oh, the hypocrisy, but it didn't really answer the question: Why are we handcuffing Donald Trump? Liberals don't seem to care at all as long as it happens, as long as Trump gets handcuffed, but in fact, there's plenty of evidence that Trump committed no crime in sending money to stormy deals. We don't have to guess.  

Consider the case of former North Carolina Senator John Edwards. Edwards was often described as a fiery liberal, but in fact, he was a populist. He ran for president twice and in the process infuriated the leaders of the Democratic Party by talking way too much about income inequality. They really hated him for that. Long after Edwards left office, Barack Obama's DOJ charged him with federal finance violations. The premise of the case against John Edwards was that he had received $1,000,000 in gifts and that he spent that money in hush money payments to his mistress, with whom he later had a child.  

Obama's DOJ argues that the money that Edwards sent to his girlfriend amounted to campaign contributions. Edwards never reported that money, so Obama's DOJ tried to send him to prison. Well, in the end, the case fell apart under the weight of its own incoherence. Obama's lawyers argued that any payment that could conceivably help a political candidate politically is by definition a campaign expenditure. There's no law that says that, by the way, they just made it up. But if you think about it for a second, it doesn't make sense. If that were true, flip it around. It would mean that candidates could use donor money and also taxpayer money in the form of federal matching funds to pay for any personal expense, as long as that expense could conceivably benefit them politically. 

Candidates could take federal matching funds, tax dollars to buy Ferraris as long as they argued those Ferraris would appear in campaign ads, etc., etc. It's nonsensical.  

So, not surprisingly, John Edwards was acquitted in that case. It was a humiliating defeat for the Obama administration, but it also sent a clear message and set a precedent, which Alvin Bragg apparently is ignoring. 

We don't know that an indictment is coming, as noted and if it does come, we're not sure what it's going to say. We haven't seen it. But if Trump is indicted for sending money to Stormy Daniels, well, you'll be watching the abuse of law enforcement power.

But you can't complain about it because as Congresswoman Maxine Waters has explained, political protests staged on behalf of Donald Trump are not constitutionally protected. They're domestic terrorism. Watch.  

MAXINE WATERS: This is Donald Trump sending messages out to domestic terrorists that he's worked with and he helped to organize for the invasion of the Capitol on January 5th. He's sending out a message to them to get ready to protest any arrests, indictments, etc., that he may have. So, he's basically talking to the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, QAnon and the KKK.  

Though January 6, the only really organized group on January 6 was the FBI, of course, but consider the idea and where it's coming from. This is Maxine Waters. This is the lady who cheered on the L.A. race riots three decades ago. This is the very same person just a few years ago said, "If you see anybody from the Trump cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store at a gasoline station. (she's very old) "Get out and create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they're not welcome anymore anywhere." Basically, necklace them. Oh, yeah Maxine Waters? But she's a Democrat. So, this is just a civil rights exercise. She's protected from domestic terrorism charges and Alvin Bragg is, too. 

He's a Democrat and you should know we don't want to impugn his character or anything. We don't want to suggest that there's a connection between politics and the indictment of Donald Trump, but Alvin Bragg did run for office, promising as a campaign promise to indict Donald Trump. We're not guessing. He gave televised interviews about it. Watch. 

REPORTER: All right. So, newspaper reports today say we could expect to see an indictment to be handed down against Donald Trump soon. Any thoughts on how you would handle such a high-profile case?  

ALVIN BRAGG: Certainly throughout my career, I've gone wherever the facts have taken me and the types of allegations that have been reported publicly, valuation of assets, perhaps the use of shell companies, tax fraud. I did. I've done all these sort of cases. I've tried a mortgage fraud case. I've tried one of the most significant money laundering cases in the New York region. So, of all the candidates, I sort of stand at the ready with all the tools and a tool kit.  

Yeah, we're going to go after Trump and by the way, he listed some real crimes there, and they have spent years trying to pin those crimes on Trump, even get his tax returns illegally, and they found none of them. Not a defense of Trump, just true. So, we wind up with this, which is piddling.

But what's interesting is, even as Bragg has been single-mindedly focused (Bragg is a graduate of Harvard College) on Donald Trump and his crimes – sending money to a porn star – he has been not only ignoring real crimes, but downgrading felonies to misdemeanors and letting actual violent criminals out of jail as quickly as possible. 

On his first day in office, first day, Bragg consistent with the ideas of the man who paid for his campaign George Soros, issued a memo explaining his office will "not seek a cursory sentence except in cases involving homicides, economic crimes and a small number of felonies." 

That was great news for people who commit violent felonies, including rapists like Justin Washington. Washington struck a deal with Bragg that allowed him to serve just 30 days in jail under the theory that his rape was really just second-degree coercion. So. he got out quickly and when he did, police say this same man sexually attacked five other people in the Bronx, even tried to rape a homeless woman at ten in the morning.  

In another case, a career criminal who was arrested three times in four months for serious crimes, including assault and aggravated harassment, skipped court and when police finally found him and hauled him to court, Bragg's office let him go in January of last year. Guess what he did when he got out? He murdered a woman.  

REPORTER: A growing makeshift memorial in front of a New York City apartment building honoring Christina Yuna Lee after police say a man followed her home and attacked her, stabbing her to death. This security video obtained by NBC News appears to show Lee being followed by the suspect. When they arrived, the door was barricaded. When cops went into the apartment, investigators say they found the body of a 35-year-old woman later identified as Lee in her bathroom and the suspect covered in blood. Police say Assamad Nash was arrested and charged with Lee's murder. This was his eighth arrest since May of 2021.  

What's interesting is that no one cares. Where's Joe Scarborough on that? Is he upset about it? Is his wife upset? Power to women? Right. All the arch feminists who should be out there defending women, they don't care at all. 

Here you have a D.A. who treats violent felonies like they're misdemeanors, even when it gets people killed, who's unleashing criminals on the population, but then spending all of his time trying to destroy his political opponents, in this case, elevating a misdemeanor charge to a felony for the purpose of taking down Trump.

Now, here's what we think, if there is an indictment, will form the core of the charge. Bragg seems to be alleging that Trump violated New York's Business Record Act by falsely reporting the payout to Stormy Daniels as "legal fees." Now, if this were true, it would constitute a misdemeanor, and the statute of limitations has already run out for that for the bookkeeping error, assuming it even happened. But Bragg apparently is thinking about charging Trump under a felony version of the Business Records Law, one that punishes businesses for falsifying records as a way to commit another separate crime. 

That would be the campaign finance violation, which, as we mentioned, was not a campaign finance violation, and we know that from the FEC, which polices campaign finance violations, by the way, if it were, then that would be a federal crime, not something that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan D.A., would be prosecuting. The whole thing doesn't make any sense at all on a legal level. On a political level, it does because Trump is running for president. 

So, what's behind this? Is he acting alone? We may soon find out. Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio sits in the House Judiciary Committee, is calling on Bragg to testify before the Congress. He wants to hear Bragg explain whether or not he's had any contact with the White House or the Biden DOJ, and if he has, maybe that will explain these charges. He also wants to know whether this prosecution will use any federal funds. Let's hope Alvin Bragg was committed to the rule of law, complies or is forced to comply very soon.

But no matter what happens if this indictment arrives, no matter who you voted for, I plan on voting for it. Make no mistake, this is a turning point for the country.  

Now, the headline here is not that they're being unfair to Donald Trump again, though. Of course, they are. Or even that Trump is the former president of the United States. Who cares? I mean, though, as long as we are indicting retired presidents, where are the charges against George W Bush for invading Iraq under false pretenses and giving permanent normal trade relations to China, which completely wrecked our economy? Where are those charges? 

Don't hold your breath.In Washington, wrecking your own country is not considered a crime and of course, George W Bush knows that well, which is why he doesn't seem worried at all. Criticizing the ruling class, that's what they indict you for. But either way, Donald Trump's former job as president of the United States is not really the point here.  

Yes, of course, you can indict former presidents if they've done something wrong. That's not what this is about. The headline here is that there is, as noted, a presidential race in progress right now, and if you check the polls, you will find that Trump is leading the Republican field. That's the unprecedented thing, taking out your opponent, using the justice system. 

If the Democratic Party is allowed to do this, allowed to crush the presidential front-runner, the main threat to their power, with a bogus criminal case, where does that leave us? We're done because that precedent will live forever and voters will never again determine the outcome of a presidential election. It's remarkable when you think about it. 

After all the yelling from permanent Washington about January 6 and how it was a threat to our democratic norms and the peaceful transfer of power, they've decided to completely short circuit our democratic norms, not to mention the peaceful transfer of power using the courts and prosecutors. What happens if they get away with this? No one seems to be thinking this through. Everyone's all spun up, but what happens if they get away with this? 

If they use the Justice Department in full view of everyone to settle a political score and to keep the White House just to take a guy out of the race who seems to be doing fairly well. We’ll destroy the justice system and that's not a small thing. A functioning justice system has kept this country peaceful for hundreds of years. The purpose of a justice system is to administer justice so that citizens don't have to do it themselves. You outsource that duty to the government. But what happens when you take that away, when there is no justice system? 

What happens when the Department of Justice decides that its goal is not justice, but protecting the ruling class at all costs? Think about that. People are still going to demand justice. The desire for justice is an inherent human desire. We are born with it. But if there's no neutral place to do it, some people will decide they're going to have to do it themselves. Now, we don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but we can say for certain it's going to be really ugly. 

So, they hate Donald Trump. Fine, but they don't get to destroy America's justice system because they do. We would never recover from that.  

** Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.