Former federal prosecutor laments Alvin Bragg's 'vindictive' approach to hush money case

Though many on the left are all too excited to see former President Donald Trump go on trial in New York City next week, at least one former government lawyer believes the case against him is far from perfect.

As the Daily Caller reports, former federal prosecutor Alex Little believes that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg adopted a “vindictive” approach to the so-called “hush money” case.

Bragg's approach questioned

Readers will recall that Bragg obtained a 34-count indictment against Trump in March of last year that stemmed from $130,000 in payments to adult entertainer Stormy Daniels.

According to Bragg, Trump falsified business records surrounding the disbursements, allegedly made to quash media reporting on sexual affair Daniels claimed to have had years prior to his run for the White House.

In Little's estimation, the manner in which Bragg has gone about attempting to secure convictions against Trump is unorthodox, to say the least, given that he is attempting to prosecute the former president for felony counts, when the underlying crimes are, in fact, misdemeanors, the limitations period for which has already expired.

“The fact that the prosecutor is taking misdemeanors, turning them into felonies unfortunately happens in courtrooms across the country,” he said.

Little continued, “The former president is not the only one to face that sort of vindictive action by prosecutors to keep the statute of limitations alive.”

All eyes on Manhattan

Trump's trial in the case is set to commence on Monday, and due to the requirement that he be present in person for the proceedings, he will be forced off the presidential campaign trail for a period likely to last several weeks.

Jury selection will be the first order of business, though it will by no means be an easy task, given Trump's notoriety in the Big Apple – and indeed across the world – and the liberal makeup of the geographic area.

As Little explained, “The jury selection process will take a long time.”

“The judge, I think, will be pretty deliberate about making sure that folks who have made up their mind previously are not on that jury, and that's what [Trump's] lawyers are certainly going to push for,” he said.

Though he acknowledged that the former president is confronting a predicament shared by every criminal defendant in every case, Little mused, “This is a special criminal defendant, one of the most well-known people in the world,” and whether he really can get a fair shake in what some legal observers believe is the weakest of the four criminal cases against him, only time will tell.