If Manhattan’s district attorney wanted to start prosecuting federal election offenses, he should have consulted with the appropriate authority.
Then, DA Alvin Bragg would have learned why the Federal Election Commission decided there was no case worth pursuing against former President Donald Trump over payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
According to FEC member James “Trey” Trainor, a Trump appointee who served as the commission’s head in 2020, the outcome was not even close.
“It’s not a campaign finance violation. It’s not a reporting violation of any kind,” Trainor told the Washington Examiner in an article published Wednesday, a day after the legal and media circus of Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City.
Bragg, Trainor said, is “really trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole.”
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Bragg has been manipulating the law to fit his political objectives pretty much since he entered office in January 2022. He sent a legendary “Day One Letter” shortly after being sworn in, declaring that the DA’s office will henceforth lower felony charges to misdemeanors in many cases.
In an armed robbery case, for example, if a weapon was brandished during the robbery but did not “create a genuine risk of physical harm,” the felony would be reduced to a misdemeanor.
Not to digress, but actual victims of armed robbery — handing over their money and possessions to a man with a knife or a gun on a street corner late at night — may have a different perception of what constitutes “genuine risk” than an Alvin Bragg minion in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office reading police reports during business hours.
To indict Trump on bogus felony charges, Bragg had to twist the law the other way — from a misdemeanor to a felony. And that, according to Trainor, was a too-far twist.
On Tuesday, Trainor published a Twitter post with a photo of the FEC hearing room. “This is where campaign violations are tried,” he wrote.
This is the @FEC hearing room. This is where campaign finance violations are tried. pic.twitter.com/OJFxVMiiUl
— Trey Trainor (@TXElectionLaw) April 4, 2023
The illustration made two points. The first is that the FEC, not a local district attorney, has authority over charges of federal campaign finance law infractions. The second is the emptiness of the room, which represents how empty Bragg’s case is.
Trainor presented his concerns more precisely to the Examiner, deconstructing the DA’s indictment with a combination of law and logic that appears to be lacking in the Manhattan DA’s office lately. (not to mention the Democratic Party in general).
The grand jury process that resulted in the probe was mainly reliant on Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney who became a stooge for the prosecution.
As part of a plea agreement, Cohen pleaded guilty to his participation in making the payments to Daniels.
For many liberals, Cohen’s guilty plea strengthens his position as a witness against Trump, but as veteran federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy pointed out in an essential post on Monday, it does nothing of the like.
Trainor stated that Cohen’s plea effectively resolved the matter in the eyes of the FEC.
He also said that the link between the payments to Daniels — stemming from an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 — and the 2016 election is unclear. The payments were paid in October 2016, during the height of the campaign season, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were tied to the election.
“It has to be something that anybody on the street can look at and say the only reason you did that was to influence the campaign,” Trainor told the Examiner.
“There’s a lot of reasons that he could have done it that aren’t related to him being a candidate for president, and so therefore, it wouldn’t have met the standard as campaign expenditure under federal law.”
That is most likely the weakest link in the argument that Bragg is incorrect. An average person on the street may say, “Obviously, it’s election-related,” based on the timing in October 2016. The average individual, on the other hand, would have to recall the 2016 election and what Trump has already been through as a result of Democratic mudslinging.
No Trump fans thought the thrice-married billionaire was a choirboy when they voted for him to defeat the corrupt-to-the-bones, Hillary Clinton. By that point, it’s unlikely that any people choosing Trump over Clinton would change their minds because of a Stormy Daniels article.
Would a porn star’s allegation about a decade-old tryst have meant as much to Trump as his wife finding out about it?
Furthermore, Trainor told the Examiner that the Daniels payments were technically immaterial to campaign finance reporting since they would not have had to be reported until months after the 2016 election.
In other words, they could have stamped “HUSH MONEY PAYMENT TO XXX PORN STAR FOR 2006 FLING” in big red letters and it wouldn’t have affected a single vote that had already been cast.
Finally, Trainor informed the Examiner that the statute of limitations was about to expire. That effectively rendered the entire situation moot.
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It’s important to note that these aren’t fresh arguments concocted to coincide with the development of the Bragg indictment. Trainor had already written them down with fellow FEC member Sean J. Cooksey (another Trump appointee) in an April 2021 summary of why the FEC will not pursue the accusations.
Of course, the FEC isn’t the only entity with responsibility over federal campaign finance law enforcement that has opted out of the Trump-Stormy Daniels issue.
As McCarthy emphasized in his National Review column, the Justice Department has done so as well, both during Trump’s administration and in the 27 months since under President Joe Biden.
The Bragg case is a dead end for Trainor.
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