Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg  took the smart and appropriate action by backing away from prosecuting Donald Trump on the  local issue of manipulating his business records.

By Nathan Riley

Remember these are not consumer fraud cases. Lenders to Trump are not John Q Public. They have lawyers and appraisers. They possess specialized knowledge that suggests what looks like fraud is probably  standard business practice understood by the lenders and the borrowers. This would have been a very difficult case to prove, and would have focused media attention on a much less consequential matter. Taxes are minor league stuff relative to treason and insurrection. 

Trump’s business practices are small potatoes comparted to fears that Trump tried to use the attack on the Capitol to prevent Biden’s from taking office.

In the weeks after the mob forced members of Congress out  of their offices a political interpretation circulated. The Republicans wished to “sow doubt in our elections in order to justify voter suppression efforts in the future.”

But that interpretation is being replaced. The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol is asking did the former President wanted to stop the certification of the electoral college vote and force the election into the House of Representatives. 

This alternative procedure does not rely on the votes of individual members of Congress-each state casts a single vote. There are 27 states where Republicans are the majority in the state delegation. 27 state where a poll of Representatives would back Trump. 27 is a majority of the 50 states and Donald Trump would emerge the winner if the House rather than the electoral college picked the winner.

An active member of the House Investigating Committee has concluded: “This was not a coup directed at the president,” Rep. Jamie Raskin said of the insurrection, according to NBC News. “It was a coup directed by the president against the vice president and against the Congress.”

Others have reached this conclusion. The Coup D’etat Project at the University of Illinois’ Cline Center for Advanced Social Research called it an attempted coup on Jan 27, 2021. They study the history of coups all over the world.

The Select Committee and the Justice Department are the appropriate bodies to investigate the federal crime of insurrection. Mr. Bragg wisely stepped aside.

Politics is a blood sport, and the right wingers slamming Bragg were going for the jugular. They denounced Bragg for being a liberal and then added he was incompetent. They claimed dropping the case against Trump was proof that the new DA was not up to the job.

But the  latest news surrounding Trump continues to raise serious questions. Was this an insurrection? Was there a plan to stop Congress from certifying the electoral college votes? Did Trump want to stop the electoral college count so the House could poll its members and make Trump a winner? The facts are not all in, but the suspicions seem well-founded. Federal investigators are the appropriate  people to sift these accusations, not the Manhattan District Attorney. Alvin Bragg acted correctly.