Why the Trump hush money trial verdict is peak ‘lawfare’

The Democrats finally got their ounce of Donald Trump’s flesh in a Manhattan courtroom last week but like Shakespeare’s Antonio in “The Merchant of Venice,” the bloodlust may be their own undoing. 

The guilty verdict should be reversed by the New York appellate or federal courts and likely will be at some point — but perhaps only after the clear election interference objective of the Democrats has been met. 

Never before have state prosecutors charged a defendant with federal election reporting violations (state courts don’t have jurisdiction) and never have non-disclosure agreements been found by a jury in any criminal trial to be a reportable federal campaign expenditure.  

In a game of legal hide the ball, Trump was denied the time-honored constitutional right to notice of the charges against him and to a unanimous jury verdict on those charges. 

Instead, the jury was allowed to cherry-pick non-unanimously from a menu of “additional charges” — unproven federal campaign, tax and other bookkeeping charges — that Alvin Bragg needed in order to manufacture a felony out of an expired misdemeanor bookkeeping violation.   

When independent counsel Ken Starr pursued President Clinton criminally for covering up an affair, Democrats cried foul, arguing that prosecutors were using the law highly selectively to go after a political opponent — the classic definition of lawfare.