‘BE CAREFUL’: CNN Panel Warns Alvin Bragg Of HUGE Mistake

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is in for a world of hurt if he tries to sink former President Donald Trump based heavily on his partnership with the National Enquirer, a CNN panel agreed on Tuesday.

Deliberations by network analyst Elie Honig, former Trump attorney Tim Panatore, and others came in the hours following a second day of arguments in President Trump’s hush money trial. After first petitioning Judge Juan Merchan to fine Trump for allegedly breaking a gag order, prosecutors then introduced former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker who testified about a “catch and kill” strategy he employed during the 2016 election to neutralize stories that would be damaging to Trump’s campaign. Some of theses stories involved rumors of extramarital affairs and other salacious matters that might play well in the supermarket tabloids, but not in court, the panel agreed.

“There’s a risk for the prosecution because … a lot of this stuff is not criminal, and I disagree that some of this would be an in-kind campaign contribution because the Supreme Court’s holding in Citizens United did kind of move this outside of that,” former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore said according to the Daily Caller.

“And so if they spend too much time on this, especially right at the beginning, and an appellate court looks at it and say[s], ‘you’ve prejudiced this jury by presenting all this information that is salacious, amoral, but not criminal,’ then that is the type of thing that can improperly sway the jury to the other side.”

Other panelists on Tuesday’s edition of “Inside Politics with Dana Bash” predicted that Bragg and his team will lose their case, which centers on fraudulent business records, if they attempt to sway a jury with scintillating, but distantly related, gossip stories.

“To me, this may actually turn out to be a misstep by the prosecution, by spending so much time on this when really this case is about the business record entries of the payments to Michael Cohen, which have nothing to do with any of this,” Parlatore added.

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“They have to be careful as they‘re putting up their fourth and fifth headline,” CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said. “They better put the brakes on that.”

Honig goes on to note that the Southern District of New York declined to bring charges against Trump after previously reviewing the case, as did Bragg when he first took office.

President Trump is facing 34 felony charges related to misreporting business records to hide a campaign donation in the form of a six-figure settlement paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump maintains the money was paid to former attorney Michael Cohen and properly categorized as a legal expense, a conclusion also reached by the Federal Election Commission. Supporters of the president have noted that Democrats who previously rejected a decision by the FEC to recategorize Hillary Clinton’s payment for the Steele dossier as a campaign donation are now hypocritical by claiming that Trump is guilty.