The SDNY has fallen

This summer the Feds at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced that they would not be seeking any additional criminal indictments in Donald Trump’s hush money scandal. This was alarming, considering that the SDNY put Michael Cohen in prison for conspiring with others in that scandal, and now suddenly they were all off the hook.

It was a disturbing sign that corrupt Attorney General Bill Barr might have managed to seize control over the SDNY, to the point of dictating what charges it was allowed to bring. Even if the SDNY was going to follow the Justice Department’s nonsensical rule about not indicting a sitting president, there were other people in the Trump Organization (and Trump family) who could have easily been indicted in the hush money scandal. Now we’re seeing proof today that the SDNY has indeed fallen.

The Manhattan District Attorney has a grand jury targeting Donald Trump for criminal indictment on state charges – and that grand jury has subpoenaed Trump’s tax returns. To the surprise of no one, Trump is trying to fight this in court. But now, according to CNN, it turns out the Feds at the SDNY are signing onto the court case in support of Donald Trump. That’s shocking enough in and of itself, before getting to the part where the SDNY is arguing in court that a sitting president can’t even so much as be investigated – by anyone.

This stunt isn’t going to work. New York State is going to indict Donald Trump on numerous charges whether it obtains his tax returns or not. It already has him nailed for a campaign finance felony in the hush money case, for instance, and Cohen has also provided evidence of things like insurance and mortgage fraud. Trump will be arrested on state charges the minute he’s gone from office, and those can’t be pardoned by Trump or any future president. But it’s clear that the SDNY has fallen into Bill Barr’s corrupt hands, and that’s a shame.