The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Michael Cianchette is a Navy reservist who served in Afghanistan. He is in-house counsel to a number of businesses in southern Maine and was a chief counsel to former Gov. Paul LePage.
“The Apprentice.” A branding empire. A New Yorker around 80 years old. A convicted felon.
That’s Martha Stewart’s resume. It’s also Donald Trump’s.
The former president earned that last moniker just over a week ago. Reactions have been varied.
Many on the left have heralded the result. Trump’s supporters decry it as politically motivated persecution. Both sides seem to have ulterior interests at play.
Meanwhile, a more clear-eyed response may be found from “Never Trumpers” who are nevertheless not his active opponents. People like Sen. Susan Collins.
Collins expressed some real concern with the prosecution. She’s right.
You have to put the case in context. The felony charges were based upon a law that made it illegal to make entries in business records in order to conceal another crime.
You can read the actual indictment; they separated everything into a separate charge. So writing a check was a felony charge. Making an accounting entry reflecting the check was a felony charge. Filing the invoice paid by the check was a felony charge. And so on.
What crime were these records alleged to have covered up? A misdemeanor statute about promoting election to an office by unlawful means. As even MSNBC contributors note, no one had ever been prosecuted under this law. Nor was Trump; he was never charged with the underlying crime.
What were the “unlawful means” Trump was alleged to have used to promote his election? “Hush money” payments to women who claimed to have sexual history with him that were booked as “legal fees” because the cash went through a lawyer first.
Which might, possibly, should have been reported as campaign spending under federal election law. Hence, “unlawful.” But he was not charged with violations of that election law.
It is a pretty complex prosecutorial daisy-chain constructed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The legal theory has been called “convoluted” by Vox correspondents and “tangled” by analysts from the Brookings Institution, not exactly MAGA outlets.
That brings us back to Martha Stewart.
Those getting older might remember when the homemaking maven was charged with a wide array of crimes related to securities fraud and insider trading. The gist of the claim was that she used inside information from her stockbroker to sell stock ahead of unflattering news.
Stewart saved about $48,000 by making the trade. At the time, she had an estimated net worth of $650 million. To put that in more relatable terms, it is the equivalent of $19 for someone worth $250,000.
Stewart maintained her innocence. The trial judge threw out the securities fraud charges, but let a variety of obstruction-related charges go to the jury. She was convicted on some and acquitted on others.
Stewart, like Trump, was probably not squeaky clean. Some degree of wrist slap would have been reasonable. But it is not hard to believe that both were prosecuted as felons because of who they are, rather than what they actually did.
Contrast it with Hillary Clinton.
In 2022, Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee admitted to violating federal election laws and paid a fine. What did they do?
They booked invoices paid to a law firm as “legal fees,” even though those funds were then paid forward to an opposition research firm that developed the so-called “Steele dossier.”
That “dossier” was made with the objective of influencing the 2016 presidential election. And since Clinton’s campaign was based in New York, those false bookings of “legal fees” violated the exact same law as Donald Trump. Yet Clinton has never been indicted for it.
Nor should she be.
Trump should have been fined and slapped on the hand, same as Clinton. Chants of “lock him up” for this violation are as nonsensical as were the chants of “lock her up” led by Trump in 2016. We don’t lock people up because of who they are in this country, nor should we selectively prosecute political opponents.
There are some real, legitimate criminal cases faced by Mr. Trump. The classified document case in Florida is a very big deal. And it isn’t political.
But when even Susan Collins — who voted to impeach Trump — recognizes things don’t seem right, people should listen.
