{"id":18154,"date":"2023-04-05T20:19:01","date_gmt":"2023-04-06T00:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=18154"},"modified":"2023-04-05T20:19:01","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T00:19:01","slug":"n-y-post-braggs-fairy-tale-indictment-pretends-politicians-never-suppress-embarrassing-info","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/05\/n-y-post-braggs-fairy-tale-indictment-pretends-politicians-never-suppress-embarrassing-info\/","title":{"rendered":"N.Y. Post: Bragg\u2019s fairy-tale indictment pretends politicians never suppress embarrassing info"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Post, April 6, 2023<\/h2>\n

Bragg\u2019s fairy-tale indictment pretends politicians never suppress embarrassing info<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n

Does Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg believe political campaigns are governed by the Boy Scout oath and every candidate must be honest, trustworthy, clean and maybe reverent, too?<\/p>\n

Bragg said he\u2019s charging Donald Trump with 34 felonies because Trump sought to \u201csuppress negative information\u201d to boost his chances in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

Trump allegedly pulled strings and paid off two women who could have embarrassed him.<\/p>\n

In his press conference Tuesday, Bragg refused to explain the legal basis for his indictment of a former president.<\/p>\n

The district attorney will not make his charges legally intelligible<\/a> because the entire case is a morality play.<\/p>\n

The goal is to portray Bragg as an angel rescuing Americans from the deceit that perpetually permeates politics.<\/p>\n

Reading Bragg\u2019s pompous comments, one would presume Trump was a sordid character who ran against someone as pure as Joan of Arc.<\/p>\n

In reality, the 2016 presidential campaign was a train wreck, and Americans recognized they had a choice of scoundrels.<\/p>\n

A September 2016 Gallup poll found that only 33% of voters<\/a> believed Hillary Clinton was honest and trustworthy, and only 35% trusted Trump.<\/p>\n

Gallup noted, \u201cAmericans rate the two candidates lowest on honesty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The combined chicanery of Clinton and Trump made \u201cpost-truth\u201d the Oxford English Dictionary\u2019s 2016 word of the year.<\/p>\n

But according to Bragg, Trump\u2019s alleged payoffs to two women were a greater sin against democracy than Hillary Clinton deleting 30,000 emails from her time as secretary of state that a congressional committee subpoenaed in 2015 and her lying to FBI<\/a> agents in July 2016.<\/p>\n

Bragg\u2019s case relies on a theory of democracy that\u2019s a parody of how government actually works.<\/p>\n

If Bragg is going to target candidates for suppressing \u201cnegative\u201d information, will he file posthumous charges against presidents?<\/p>\n

Lyndon Johnson won in 1964 because he deceived Americans about the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and his plans to plunge into war in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Richard Nixon won in 1972 in part because Americans had not heard his Oval Office tapes exposing the coverup of the Watergate break-in.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012 in part because Americans did not know about the vast illegal National Security Agency spying operation that Edward Snowden exposed the next year.<\/p>\n

Does anyone expect President Joe Biden to open federal files to expose his debacles during his re-election campaign?<\/p>\n

\u201cSuppressing negative information\u201d is standard operating procedure in Washington.<\/p>\n

Federal agencies create trillions of pages of new secrets each year to shroud failures and abuses.<\/p>\n

The Freedom of Information Act has become a sham as agencies delay for years responding to routine inquiries.<\/p>\n

The Presidential Records Act has degenerated into the Presidential Damn-Near-Perpetual-Secrecy<\/a> Act that shrouds the documents that reveal how badly Americans have been misgoverned.<\/p>\n