Former GOP Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who made waves for being the youngest challenger to Donald Trump in the race and perhaps the most likable, came out with a statement on Monday condemning Soros-funded Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s lawfare against President Trump.
Vivek always stood up for President Trump in the ongoing attempts by Democrats to take him out by other means, like sham indictments and challenges to remove him from the ballot, and destroyed GOP primary opponents who refused to condemn the Biden Regime’s fascism. He frequently aimed at and destroyed neocon Nikki Haley for being a member of the RINO establishment who was happy to let the deep state destroy American civil rights and the leading Presidential candidate, Donald Trump.
After Vivek Ramaswamy departed from the race, President Trump invited him on the stage at a campaign event in Atkinson, New Hampshire, where Vivek declared, “We need a commander-in-chief who will lead us to victory in this war.”
Vivek, in his statement on Bragg’s ridiculous and legally flawed indictment, cited Bradley Smith, Institute for Free Speech Chairman, Capital University law professor, and former Federal Election Commission Chairman. Smith noted earlier in an op-ed for The Federalist that the made-up felony charges against Trump are completely baseless, setting aside the clear conflicts of interest with the prosecution and the judge.
DA Alvin Bragg argues that Trump falsified business records in order to “conceal crimes that hid information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election” and “boost his electoral prospects.” Under this theory, Bragg claims that Trump violated campaign finance laws by not publicly reporting so-called campaign expenditures to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
“That’s bunk,” says Vivek Ramaswamy.
As Smith writes,
Misreporting business expenses is normally, at most, a misdemeanor. Bragg seeks to ratchet it up to a felony here by arguing that the misreporting was done to cover up a crime. That alleged crime is a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). The theory is that Trump’s payments to Daniels were campaign expenditures and thus needed to be publicly reported as such. By not reporting the expenditure, the theory goes, Trump prevented the public from knowing information that might have influenced their votes.
But let’s think about this for a minute. Political candidates do things all the time that are “for the purpose of influencing an election,” but that, nonetheless, are not considered campaign expenditures. For example, a candidate cannot buy a new suit, get his teeth whitened, or pay for cosmetic surgery with campaign funds, even if he does so for the purpose of looking good on the campaign trail.
That’s because, in campaign finance law, these types of expenditures are known as “personal use.” FECA specifically prohibits the conversion of campaign funds to personal use, defined as any expenditure “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.”
Does anyone really think a candidate should be able to use campaign funds to settle lawsuits, or threatened lawsuits, arising from activities that occurred long before his candidacy? It’s stressful being a candidate, and a little relaxation may make the candidate more effective on the stump. Does that mean your campaign contribution should pay for a candidate massage? How about a country club membership, or tickets to the Super Bowl (after all, the candidate might take along a potential donor)?
Herein lies the most frightening part of this prosecution: Had Trump made these payments with campaign funds, it seems a near certainty he would now be facing criminal charges for a knowing and willful diversion of campaign funds to pay personal obligations. If Bragg’s prosecution is successful, it will mean a candidate can use campaign funds to pay almost any obligation that, the candidate might argue, would benefit his candidacy. Perhaps worse, zealous prosecutors could get a candidate coming or going — falsification of records if campaign funds are not used, and illegal personal use if campaign funds are used.
According to Smith, Trump “has a defense on the merits, and his supporters should use it.”
Trump shared Smith’s piece earlier on Truth Social:
Regardless of the facts, they don’t even have a case against Trump. As Vivek put it, “The complete absence of a legal argument even to bring this case against Trump isn’t just embarrassing to Alvin Bragg, it’s embarrassing to our country.”
The Gateway Pundit reported earlier that prosecutors requested earlier during jury selection that the court hold President Trump in contempt for ‘violating’ his gag order and asked the court to impose sanctions while threatening Trump with jail time if he continues to speak out against this political witch hunt. They are trying everything possible to nail Trump with a fake crime and take away his right to a fair trial.
Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said to a crowd of protesters outside the Manhattan courthouse, “The facts–think about this–are so weak in this case that Joe Biden would not even bring this case. That’s how bad this is. It took a Soros-funded District Attorney in order to bring this case. There’s no underlying felony.”
“Alvin Bragg‘s case against Trump rests on the ludicrous legal premise that a candidate must use *campaign* funds to make personal hush money payments. Yet if Trump had done that, they’d undoubtedly be going after him for that. This isn’t the pursuit of justice, it’s a political persecution that is tearing our country apart,” commented Vivek with a video statement attached.
Watch below:
Ramaswamy: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Donald Trump and its trial begins today. What a joke. I’m against these prosecutions on principle. I think they’re destructive to our country. But let’s just examine the facts and the law here. Alvin Bragg, effectively, is prosecuting Donald Trump for making hush-money payments—allegedly—to stormy Daniels and then paying Michael Cohen in a means that Alvin Bragg thinks is falsifying business records. Well, first of all, falsifying business records in New York is a misdemeanor, not a felony. And it falls outside of the statute of limitations, meaning it happened so far long ago that Alvin Bragg can’t bring the case unless he charges it as a felony, which requires an underlying crime that he’s advancing by falsifying those business records that was also a felony.
Here’s where the legal stretch really begins. That requires Alvin Bragg to say that Donald Trump’s payments should have been made out of a campaign account. That’s his theory of the case, instead of being made personally or else it’s a constructive campaign contribution. That’s bunk. Think about it. Look at smart people like former FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith, who has correctly pointed out that if Donald Trump did use campaign money, campaign contributions, to pay off hush money, that would arguably be an even stronger legal case to bring against him than the case they’re bringing now. So, in that version of the world, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t; they’re gonna get him going, or they’re going to get him coming. It’s almost as though they decided this is the person we’re going to prosecute. And then we’re going to figure out what we’re going to charge them with after the fact.
Well, guess what? That’s exactly what happened. You have Alvin Bragg, a Manhattan DA, who was elected on the promise of going after Donald Trump. For what crime? We had no idea, just the idea that they had to go after Donald Trump. This is a politician keeping his campaign promise. That is a bastardization of our legal system. That’s not how we do things in the United States, and that motivation accounts for why this case is so weak and emblematic of the other prosecutions that have since followed against Donald Trump. I think Trump is going to prevail. But most importantly, I hope we move beyond this phase of our history, where you have one political party that thinks it can use the legal system to prosecute its opponents. The same shoe can fit the other foot, and if we keep going down this direction, we’re not going to have a country left. And the complete absence of a legal argument even to bring this case against Trump isn’t just embarrassing to Alvin Bragg, it’s embarrassing to our country. I hope Donald Trump not only prevails in this trial, but that we prevail as a country to move beyond this phase of our national history. That’s what it’s going to take to reunite and rebuild this nation.
Elon Musk also commented on Vivek’s post:
This case is obviously a corruption of the law.
Lawfare.
This case is obviously a corruption of the law.
Lawfare.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2024
via thegatewaypundit