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Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls out the possible indictment of former President Trump over alleged hush money sent to Stormy Daniels on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
The dominant rumor on the internet over the weekend was that Donald Trumpwill 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.
TRUMP LAWYERS DEMAND NARA RECORDS TO EXPOSE 'HIGHLY-POLITICIZED' DOCUMENTS PROBE OF FORMER PRESIDENT
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.
VideoIn 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.
TRUMP LAWYERS DEMAND NARA RECORDS TO EXPOSE 'HIGHLY-POLITICIZED' DOCUMENTS PROBE OF FORMER PRESIDENT
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Hilton Anatole on August 06, 2022 in Dallas, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
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.
VideoObama'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.
MANHATTAN DA GETS PUMMELED FOR POSSIBLE TRUMP INDICTMENT: 'IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE MR. BRAGG’S BAD JUDGMENT'
VideoSo, 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.
MANHATTAN DA'S OFFICE 'ASKED FOR A MEETING' WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT AHEAD OF POSSIBLE TRUMP INDICTMENT
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks at a press conference after the sentencing hearing of the Trump Organization at the New York Supreme Court on January 13, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
