CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig criticized the New York criminal case against Donald Trump as an "unjustified mess" in a scathing analysis piece, saying prosecutors "contorted the law" to ensnare the former president.
"Prosecutors got their man, for now at least — but they also contorted the law in an unprecedented manner in their quest to snare their prey," Honig wrote in New York magazine.
A New York jury found Trump guilty Thursday of 34 felony counts of falsifying business documents brought against him by Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Honig wrote the jury and their verdict "deserve respect" because the 12 New Yorkers are not responsible for the conduct of Bragg and his office, but criticized the "structural infirmity" of the case.
"Both of these things can be true at once: The jury did its job, and this case was an ill-conceived, unjustified mess. Sure, victory is the great deodorant, but a guilty verdict doesn’t make it all pure and right," Honig wrote.
TRUMP RAILS AGAINST 'RIGGED' CONVICTION AS CAMPAIGN RAKES IN DONATIONS AFTER GUILTY VERDICT
"Plenty of prosecutors have won plenty of convictions in cases that shouldn’t have been brought in the first place," he continued. "‘But they won’ is no defense to a strained, convoluted reach unless the goal is to ‘win,’ now, by any means necessary and worry about the credibility of the case and the fallout later."
Honig then laid out "undeniable facts" about NY v. Trump.
"The judge donated money — a tiny amount, $35, but in plain violation of a rule prohibiting New York judges from making political donations of any kind — to a pro-Biden, anti-Trump political operation, including funds that the judge earmarked for ‘resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s radical right-wing legacy,’" Honig wrote. "Would folks have been just fine with the judge staying on the case if he had donated a couple bucks to ‘Re-elect Donald Trump, MAGA forever!’? Absolutely not."
The CNN legal guru then noted that Bragg ran for office by "touting his Trump-hunting prowess" in the deeply blue county. Honig, who noted Bragg and Trump attorney Todd Blanche are both his friends and former colleagues, also said Bragg regularly made false claims about Trump on the campaign trail.
"Most importantly, the DA’s charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process. That’s not on the jury. That’s on the prosecutors who chose to bring the case and the judge who let it play out as it did," Honig wrote.
Honig declared the charges against Trump are "obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented."
"In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever," Honig wrote.
The first issue for the DA, according to Honig, was that "nobody cares about a misdemeanor, and it would be laughable to bring the first-ever charge against a former president for a trifling offense that falls within the same technical criminal classification as shoplifting a Snapple and a bag of Cheetos from a bodega."
The second issue was the statute of limitations on a misdemeanor had long passed, so the DA needed to "inflate the charges" to a low-level felony. To do so, Honig pointed out that Bragg’s office alleged that the falsification of business records was committed "with intent to commit another crime."
"Here, according to prosecutors, the ‘another crime’ is a New York State election-law violation, which in turn incorporates three separate ‘unlawful means’: federal campaign crimes, tax crimes, and falsification of still more documents," Honig wrote.
Honig said the case should be dubbed the "Frankenstein Case" because it was "cobbled together with ill-fitting parts into an ugly, awkward, but more-or-less functioning contraption that just might ultimately turn on its creator."
