MEGHAN MCCAIN: Liberals insist on corrupting the system to get Trump…it will make him president again

As of Saturday morning, former President Donald Trump was exactly where he wanted to be – trending at the top of websites, on TV screens and on Twitter.

He plays the victim best.

After more than a week of leaks from the Manhattan Attorney’s Office and other anonymous sources, New York prosecutors appear to be planning to indict Trump for allegedly paying $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump denies having an affair with Daniels, but their story nonetheless made for dramatic gossip throughout the 2016 presidential campaign and beyond.

In fact, Trump’s one-time fixer-turned-MSNBC guest Michael Cohen went to jail for financial crimes related to his coordinating the payment. And Daniel’s own attorney, the once-ubiquitous media sycophant Michael Avenatti, went to prison for his own unrelated misdeeds.

As always, Trump, the public relations master, was ahead of the news to twist it to his advantage.

He tore up the prosecution, thundering in capital letters on Truth Social that the case was “based on an old and completely debunked (by numerous other prosecutors!) fairy tale.”

And like any good producer would, he teased the actual drama. His possible arrest!

“THE LEADING REPUBLIC CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE ARRESTED TUESDAY NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE BACK OUR NATION!” he wrote.

Now it’s highly unlikely that the former president would be sauntered into a Manhattan precinct in front of cameras in leg irons. Left-wing prosecutor Alvin Bragg isn’t that stupid either. And he’s pretty stupid.

As always, Trump, the public relations master, was ahead of the news to twist it to his advantage.

And like any good producer would, he teased the actual drama. His possible arrest! “THE LEADING REPUBLIC CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE ARRESTED TUESDAY NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE BACK OUR NATION!” he wrote.

Because you know what? Trump is mostly right!

This apparent charge is a joke. Not only does it face a massive climb to a conviction, but it also undermines the American legal system and will likely aid Trump in his presidential campaign.

Now don’t get me wrong, I despise Trump. His divisions are tearing apart the social fabric of America, and as a supreme narcissist, he puts his own interests ahead of those of the nation.

I am also friends with Mrs. Daniels. I interviewed her for The View a few years ago and she wrote about her experiences in her book.

Daniels said she has “crazy respect” for me because I didn’t believe her story unconditionally like the rest of the mainstream media. But I kept an open mind and now believe that she had an affair with Trump, which he paid her to keep quiet about.

But here’s the thing — my hatred of Trump doesn’t blind me to the reality that paying hush money isn’t a crime.

Read the opinions of today’s most influential legal commentators and you will see that these pending indictments would be a farce of justice.

George Washington University law professor and legal scholar Jonathan Turley points out that while the indictment may be “politically popular” with Trump’s critics, it is “legally pathetic.”

As Turley explains, the case faces massive hurdles. First, if prosecutors have any hope of convicting Trump, they must prove that his payment to Daniels was a campaign expense and thus a violation of campaign finance. They must convince a jury that Trump wrote the check to benefit his 2016 political campaign, and not to avoid public humiliation, salvage his marriage, or protect his children from embarrassing revelations about their father.

It resembles a case federal prosecutors brought — and lost — against former Democratic presidential nominee John Edwards.

Second, the Manhattan District Attorney probably doesn’t even have jurisdiction to bring this case.

As the Edwards prosecutor has made clear, campaign finance violations are federal crimes. Bragg’s predecessors refused to pursue this case for precisely these reasons.

Another legal heavyweight, Alan Dershowitz, also got involved. He writes: “After spending months searching the Criminal Code for a law Mr. Trump may have violated, Mr. Bragg has apparently landed on a highly questionable campaign donation provision that has never before been used in a comparable situation .’

But both legal scholars have one thing that’s in short supply in America these days – integrity.

They know that regardless of one’s private feelings, manipulating the criminal justice system to target one’s political opponents is wrong.

I am friends with Mrs. Daniels. I interviewed her for The View a few years ago and she wrote about her experiences in her book.

Now it’s highly unlikely that the former president would be sauntered into a Manhattan precinct in front of cameras in leg irons. Left-wing prosecutor Alvin Bragg isn’t that stupid either. And he’s pretty stupid.

Guess who else misused campaign funds in the 2016 presidential election – Hillary Clinton. There is no doubt that Clinton’s campaign used middlemen to pay former British spy Christopher Steele to put together the fake, debunked Russia dossier that plunged the country into years of needless and divisive confusion. But I don’t hear the outcry to accuse her?

Maybe I would if she ran for president again. Believe me – I don’t trust the Republicans either.

It’s not hard to see a society caught up in retaliation, selective prosecution, and revenge ending in disaster. Democrats who claim to be so concerned about the future of democracy might want to think twice about corrupting the legal system.

No, this case is not about justice. It’s about getting Trump by any means necessary – and it will backfire.

Trump posted again on Truth Social on Saturday afternoon. Certainly don’t miss an opportunity to capitalize.

“We just can’t let that happen anymore. They’re killing our nation while we sit back and watch. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!’

Trump is responsible for his own words. But why give him this opportunity?

Just as I wrote after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago last summer, if they don’t have the goods on Trump, his detractors will encourage him, and his supporters will, as evidence of a corrupt, partisan legal system.

Trump’s grassroots voters believe – and not without reason – that a holed-up, irresponsible elite in Washington is after him. You’re justified in that belief, and honestly, I’m getting more sympathetic to that feeling every day.

Months after the Mar-a-Lago raid, we still don’t know what Trump had that necessitated an unprecedented operation into a former president’s home. However, we have reason to believe that President Joe Biden (not to mention Vice President Mike Pence) is guilty of similar acts. Biden was treated with kid gloves while Trump felt the FBI’s heavy hand.

Now we’re supposed to believe that Trump’s payoff to Daniels is so deeply criminal that prosecutors are entitled to invent a new precedent to indict a former president for the first time in history. Don’t you realize how ridiculous that sounds?

The left failed to pin it down as a Russian work. They couldn’t accuse him no matter how many times they tried. They haven’t been able to prove he led a riot, though he rightly bears the dishonor of the January 6 riots, so it’s on to the next attempt.

Trump’s one-time fixer-turned-MSNBC guest Michael Cohen went to jail for financial crimes related to his coordinating the payment.

The irony of this is that even if Trump is convicted (which I wouldn’t hold back from NYC’s politicized judges and jury), it won’t prevent him from being elected.

Believe it or not, even a convicted felon can become President of the United States.

“Oh, absolutely, I’m not even going to think about leaving,” Trump told CPAC reporters in early March when they asked him about a possible charge.

“It will probably increase my number, but it’s a very bad thing for America. It’s very bad for the country,” he said.

He’s absolutely right. This false prosecution only fuels distrust in institutions, creates sympathy for Trump, and undermines the mainstream media when they cheer them on.

The only way America can deal with Trump is to defeat him at the ballot box — over and over again.

And actually, America does pretty well at that. Trump lost in the 2018 midterms, the 2020 election, and the 2022 midterms.

If those faithless liberals would just get out of the way, we can take him down in 2024. But they keep throwing him a lifeline. You just can’t leave Trump.

Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk