“Which is why the Grand Jury idea needs to be abolished or drastically changed to limit the ambitions of political prosecutors.”
Not abolished ... a GJ is a good filter for determining if a case should be moved forward. The problem with Bragg’s case against PDJT is that most of the charges put forward in the indictment were vague, addressing nothing directly. Also much of the language used was not used in the document used to charge PDJT.
There should be a direct one-for-one correlation of specific charges from the indictment thru to the warrant each of which includes specific language that specify the charges and the statute that is being violated. Bragg’s paperwork is shoddy at best and misleading at best; criminal at the worst.
Bragg, Letitia, Fawni, Mosby, etc are all DEI ghettopotamus’ whose girth is exceed only by their belief in their own self-importance. Fook ‘m all. Hopefully disbarment is coming soon, maybe something even worse.
FJB, FBO
Bragg used a state law to bootstrap the expired misdemeanor book-keeping entries in Manhattan into a felony. Bragg withheld the bootstrapping crime from Trump until the second day of the trial, preventing Trump from preparing a defense against this second charge.
A lawyerly poster said that the language of the legal code in New York doesn't say that the bootstrapping crime has to be tried and convicted, it just has to be "in furtherance of another crime" in order to bootstrap the misdemeanor into a felony. The poster went on to say that Bragg still has to "prove" to the jury that the subsequent crime occurred beyond a reasonable doubt.
He also argued that the text of the law didn't say that the second crime has to be in the same jurisdiction (i.e., a local DA can use a statewide crime in the jurisdiction of the Attorney General that the local DA cannot bring himself).
I've been arguing that if Bragg has to prove the second crime in order to prove the first crime, that's a de facto trial of the second crime. By making Trump put up a defense against the second crime, Trump is essentially on trial for both crimes. There was no grand jury indictment of the second crime, as the Attorney General's office declined to pursue it previously, and the Manhattan District Attorney does not have jurisdiction to bring the statewide crime to a Manhattan grand jury in the first place.
Therefore, I'm arguing that this whole case violates Trump's fifth amendment protection against secret charges by not having a grand jury indictment on the charge that Bragg used to bootstrap the expired misdemeanors into felonies, and withholding that charge from the defendant until after the trial began.
-PJ