Andy McCarthy, a conservative legal commentator for Fox News and National Review as well as a former federal prosecutor, condemned the impending indictment of Donald Trump as a “classic abuse of power” on Friday, drawing special attention to the fact that it would include 34 counts.
During a morning appearance on America’s Newsroom, McCarthy told hosts Bill Hemmer and Shannon Bream that he believed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was bringing a “nonsense case” against the former president:
I think another thing that we haven’t focused too much on is they’re saying there are 34 charges here? Now, this doesn’t apply to New York, but in the Justice Department, we have guidance that tells prosecutors to limit the number of charges to the things that are really serious.
Because what you are always worried about for due process purposes is the prosecutor tries to kind of bowl over the jury with quantity when the case doesn’t have quality. So to make this thing — which looks like really a nonsense case — turn it into 34 counts, which are now 34 felony counts, which in theory each carries a four-year potential prison statute. What is this guy, Nicky Barnes, are you kidding?
“If reporting is accurate – and note that the reporting is based on information from Trump lawyers after Bragg’s office advised them of the indictment – then the district attorney has charged a whopping 34 counts against Trump. Thirty-four counts … in a case, again, that federal prosecutors decided wasn’t worth charging at all,” wrote McCarthy. “This is a classic abuse of power. Unscrupulous prosecutors will sometimes camouflage with quantity their case’s lack of quality.”
He went on to argue that by “loading up an indictment with dozens of charges, they can try to signal to the eventual trial jury that the defendant must be guilty of something,” and to concluded that if Bragg is indeed indicting Trump over 34 counts, “it’s because he doesn’t have one count he would be indicting if he were doing his job right.”
