OPINION

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Context in criminality

"They're gonna misdemeanor the S-O-B back into the White House."--A man who might have been me to another man by text Tuesday afternoon.

All morning long Tuesday, the day Donald Trump would get booked, fingerprinted and arraigned in New York state district court in Manhattan, articles setting the stage for the historic event, or circus, sought to establish an element of context.

It was that, of all Trump's potential criminal problems, and there are four, this one in New York actually was the least serious.

So, by all means, let us take our troubled country to the mat on that one.

The ongoing independent Justice Department investigation of the events of Jan. 6--bigger.

The federal investigation of Trump's having classified documents at his resort home--bigger.

The probe in Georgia of his pressuring state officials to scare up enough votes for him to carry the state--bigger.

But this is what we have--34 misdemeanors of fraudulent business records that the New York prosecutor has couched as felonies on the argument that the misdemeanors were part of a scheme to influence an election.

But it's not a state election under the New York D.A.'s jurisdiction, mind you, but a federal election. That sets up a jurisdictional issue for Trump's legal team to wrangle on for a period that might carry everything out past Trump's return to the White House on a surprise vote fueled by perception that Democrats seemed desperate to prosecute their opponent rather than committed to defeating him politically.

Apparently sensing that, the indictment also contains a line that asserts that Trump and his fixer, Michael Cohen, schemed to pay Cohen a fix-it fee in a way that would escape state taxation. That's better. At least it's a matter of New York jurisdiction.

How so--these misdemeanors becoming felonies?

It's that some of the fraudulent business entries allegedly covered money apparently paid to the National Enquirer, a kind of unindicted co-conspirator, to kill sex-scandal stories that might well have been politically damaging if levied at something other than the sinner Republicans love to love.

Another falsified payment allegedly was to a lucky doorman who supposedly heard that Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock.

And the other--the apparent biggie--was engineered allegedly by Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, to compel porn actress Stormy Daniels not to talk publicly about her night of love, or afternoon of delight, or whatever it was, with Trump.

Hush money is not illegal; otherwise standard non-disclosure agreements would be in trouble. False business entries are, but, remember, misdemeanors in New York. So, how might those misdirected payments in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars be part of a felonious scheme to influence the election?

Apparently, Trump paid the money to purchase silence so that he might better stand a chance of getting elected president in 2016. So, presumably, he should have paid the money from his campaign account and reported the expenditures to the Federal Election Commission, perhaps as "hush money for Stormy night," or something.

I know that I'm making light and shouldn't be. I'm siding with political practicality over justice-beholden nobility. I'm favoring winking at an occasional law over being the steely stickler for the rule of law.

Yes, Trump is a horrible person. But I knew that already. Didn't you?

And I know, as the New York prosecutor put eloquently, that it is important that New York not tolerate criminal fraud in business records. But I also suspect you could find bigger fraud on most any page of Trump's tax returns.

And I suspect--but don't know--that Trump would have gotten more votes in 2016, not fewer, if he'd saved his or his company's money and let reports of his sexual conquests feed his manly legend. In that regard, his wrongdoing was wasteful spending, though--again--not of his own money.

Many Trump voters practice a form of self-claimed Christian conservativism that, without request, forgives fornicating and lying if committed by a politically powerful ally against real sins, meaning the liberal ones God cares about most. The local preacher is at least required to cry from the pulpit.

I also suspect--but can't say that I know--that Trump much prefers a lingering criminal morass involving sex and too-anxious Democratic prosecution over the punishment that would really hurt him. That would be for America to vote him down and pay him no mind ever again.

That's especially so since everyone seems to agree that Trump--as a so-called "first-time offender," which really means "first-time indictee"--won't do time if convicted, but pay a fine and maybe wear an ankle bracelet on the golf course.

He might even pay that fine with money the source of which he'd falsify.

I so wish I wasn't underwhelmed.

Contemporary partisan politics has become so much a matter of personal hate that many seem to prefer the adrenaline explosion of Trump's fingerprinted indignity to a studied deliberation of whether they're being smart.


John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.



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