Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy said Thursday that the prosecution in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s trial was violating former President Donald Trump’s due process right for “blatantly political” purposes.
Bragg’s trial is currently ongoing in New York City regarding the 34-count indictment alleging that Trump and his former legal team falsified business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to former porn actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the trial, did not grant Trump permission to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court regarding his request for presidential immunity in a separate legal case.
McCarthy accused the judge and the prosecution of overreaching legal boundaries for political reasons.
“This is the most patently, obviously politicized prosecution in memory,” McCarthy said Thursday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.” “And I think that it’s so outrageous that sometimes we look at these cases as they come up in tandem, and what we fail to take note of is the cumulative effect of all of this on Trump’s due process rights, which he has, whether these Democratic prosecutors want to acknowledge that or not.”
McCarthy said Trump has a right to attend the oral arguments at the Supreme Court, where deliberations are currently underway on whether Trump can be prosecuted for official actions taken while he was in office. If the nine justices rule in Trump’s favor, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s charges accusing Trump of engaging in conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election will be dropped. (RELATED: ‘This Is Embarrassing’: Turley Says He Is In ‘Utter Disbelief’ Over Bragg Trial Opening Statements)
McCarthy said the cases are strategically being brought against the former president to negatively impact his chances ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“These prosecutors brought these cases tactically. Bragg waited five years to bring this case so it could be teed up for trial in the months before the 2024 election,” he continued. “All this haste to get the immunity issue decided is because they’re saying it’s important that this take place before the election. There is no rule of law reason for that. There is no law enforcement reason for that. It is entirely, blatantly political.”
The prosecution in the Bragg trial is accusing Trump of covering up the hush money payment to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Many legal experts have criticized this approach, including Boston University law professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman, who wrote in a New York Times guest essay that Bragg’s prosecution is an “embarrassment of prosecutorial ethics.”
McCarthy argued that Trump covering up the hush money payment and other “politically embarrassing” aspects was standard practice for a political campaign and accused Bragg of attempting to “spin” that practice into a “criminal conspiracy.”
“What he’s saying is that Trump conspired to steal the 2016 election by suppressing politically damaging information. To commit conspiracy, you need two or more people to agree to commit a crime. It’s not a statutory crime to suppress politically embarrassing information. It’s kind of what political campaigns do,” McCarthy said during a Tuesday appearance on “America Reports.”