Ex-DOJ Official Has ‘Serious Doubts’ About Manhattan DA’s Case Against Trump

Former Department of Justice official and current UC Berkeley professor John Yoo is seen in Washington on June 26, 2008. (Melissa Golden/Getty Images)

A top law professor said on March 19 that it’s likely that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation against former President Donald Trump will never see a jury and that Trump could easily beat the charges.

“I think this is a seriously flawed prosecution,” University of California–Berkeley law professor John Yoo told Fox News.

Yoo, a Bush-era deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice, noted that the timing of the investigation and reports of Trump’s possible arrest was suspicious, coming just months after the former president announced a 2024 bid for the White House. Going after Trump while he’s in the midst of a presidential campaign appears to be a politically motivated move to damage his chances of reelection, he suggested.

“I have strong doubts whether this will ever get to a jury,” he said. “I have strong doubts whether this will lead to the conviction of President Trump. He could easily get off all these charges and be declared innocent.”

Some critics and Trump have criticized Bragg for carrying out what has been described as soft-on-crime policies in New York. Just days ago, Bragg claimed in an interview with Bloomberg that left-wing state bail reform laws—which law enforcement officials say have led to a rise in violent crime—are working and that his office is focusing on alternatives to incarceration.

Since Trump’s Truth Social post announcing that he may be arrested on March 21, the former president and others have noted that Bragg, a Democrat, received campaign cash from a group linked to controversial Hungarian-born billionaire investor George Soros. Twitter owner Elon Musk wrote that Soros “figured out a clever arbitrage opportunity” and that “many small political contests, such as DAs & judges, have much higher impact per dollar spent than the big races, so it is far easier to sway the outcome.”

“When you have a prosecutor who is not prosecuting serious crimes in New York City and is twisting and stretching the law” to investigate Trump for something that occurred six or seven years ago, it undermines Americans’ faith in the justice system, Yoo said. Trump isn’t being investigated for making a payment to Stormy Daniels but for allegedly misclassifying it during the 2016 campaign.

Historically, the United States has an “important norm” for not targeting current and former presidents because they have to make “some of the toughest, most difficult decisions in the country,” Yoo said. Prosecuting a former president who has broad support will also set a dangerous precedent, he said.

Former President Donald Trump greets guests following an event at the Adler Theatre in Davenport, Iowa, on March 13, 2023. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

“But to bring a case like this ... it’s not important enough” to break the norm of not pursuing a former president, he said of Bragg’s investigation. No current or former president has ever been arrested since the country’s founding nearly 250 years ago.

The Epoch Times has contacted Bragg’s office for comment. Previous requests for comment on the reported Trump indictment haven’t been returned, and his office hasn’t issued a public statement on the matter.

Other Details

Late last week, alleged unnamed court sources told multiple media outlets that Trump could be indicted soon, while those reports alleged that a grand jury in New York has been empaneled and may be seeking his indictment.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor for George Washington University, wrote an opinion article that the case against the former president appears to be “legally pathetic” and is a bid to “twist state laws to effectively prosecute a federal case long ago rejected by the Justice Department against Trump.”

“While we still do not know the specific state charges in the anticipated indictment, the most-discussed would fall under Section 175 for falsifying business records, based on the claim that Trump used legal expenses to conceal the alleged hush-payments that were supposedly used to violate federal election laws,” Turley wrote. “While some legal experts have insisted such concealment is clearly a criminal matter that must be charged, they were conspicuously silent when Hillary Clinton faced a not-dissimilar campaign-finance allegation.”

Regardless of the outcome, if Trump is indicted, it could require the 45th president to travel to the district attorney’s office in downtown New York to surrender. In some white-collar cases, the defendant’s lawyers and prosecutors often agree to a set date and time—instead of arresting the individual at their home or elsewhere.

Trump would get his fingerprints and mugshot taken and would appear for a court arraignment. The former president would likely be released on his own recognizance and would be able to head home, legal analysts told Reuters.