Several members of the media and former government officials seemed worried over a “flimsy” and “underwhelming” indictment against former president Donald Trump on Tuesday.
CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero told Jake Tapper on Tuesday that the case was “underwhelming,” and that “there’s not more to it.”
“In terms of a case that’s being brought against a former president, it’s a little underwhelming. There’s not more to it. There’s not more violations, tax violations. There’s not an incredible new set of facts that we didn’t know about publicly. It’s really the facts of this case, as they have existed for basically almost seven years,” she said.
Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus wrote Tuesday that the indictment was “disturbingly unilluminating”
“On that front, the indictment unsealed on Tuesday is disturbingly unilluminating, and the theory on which it rests is debatable at best, unnervingly flimsy at worst,” she wrote. “The fears I had in the weeks leading up to the indictment about the strength of the case against Trump were in no way allayed by Tuesday’s developments.”
The Nation’s Elie Mystal lamented that this case was just a “slap on the wrist” but said it needed to start somewhere.
“This might all be a slap on the wrist, but maybe if someone had slapped Trump on the wrist when he committed crimes in his 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s, we might not be sitting here with 76-year-old Donald Trump trying to organize a junta to bring down democracy. A slap on the wrist at any earlier point would have given Trump prior convictions, such that he might actually go to jail for the felony counts he now faces,” he wrote. “Accountability has to start somewhere. Bragg is the first person to arrest Donald Trump. He shouldn’t be the last.”
Ian Milhisser, a senior correspondent at Vox, wrote that the indictment was “painfully anticlimactic” because the charges because it didn’t concern “efforts to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States.”
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“And there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax. It is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him,” he wrote. “But Bragg built his case on an exceedingly uncertain legal theory. Even if Trump did the things he’s accused of, it’s not clear Bragg can legally charge Trump for them, at least under the felony version of New York’s false records law.”
“The View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin argued during Wednesday’s episode that the case was not going to bring Trump down.
“There was no conspiracy charge, which a lot of people were looking to sense. The felony charges, the max sentence is four years but this is a first time offender, it’s a non-violent crime. It’s a class E felony, every legal expert I talked to saying most likely a fine and probation,” she said. “He’s not going to jail for this.”
Former national security adviser John Bolton said the case was even weaker than he thought.
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“Speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, I’m extraordinarily distressed by this document,” Bolton told CNN. “I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be.”
Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe said the indictment was a “disappointment.”
“I if I had to characterize it, it’s disappointment. I think everyone was hoping we would see more about the direction that they intend to take this prosecution. What is the legal theory that ties that very solid misdemeanor case 34 counts of misdemeanors to the intent to conceal another crime, which is what makes it a felony?” McCabe said.
“I worry. I mean, look, if this is the only pebble that gets thrown at Donald Trump, it’s a very small pebble,” CNN’s Van Jones told a CNN panel on Tuesday.
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Some legal analysts suggested that the indictment seemed incomplete.
Palm Beach state attorney Dave Aronberg told MSNBC on Wednesday that he was expecting more and offered an “incomplete” rating of the indictment.
“I was a little surprised that there were no surprises in this indictment,” he said. “I thought perhaps that there would be some financial fraud allegations here that would be more serious, didn’t happen. This is all about the hush money payments and that’s why I rank this 4 out of 4 out of the potential cases against Donald Trump.”
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Others argued that the case against him here was “strong.”
“With the release of the indictment and accompanying statement of facts, we can now say that there’s nothing novel or weak about this case. The charge of creating false financial records is constantly brought by Mr. Bragg and other New York D.A.s. In particular, the creation of phony documentation to cover up campaign finance violations has been repeatedly prosecuted in New York. That is exactly what Mr. Trump stands accused of,” A New York Times op-ed written by Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former Manhattan chief assistant district attorney, and Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Fox News Digital’s Kristine Parks and Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report
