In an indictment filed last year, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accused former President Donald Trump of falsifying business records.

Bragg maintains that Trump broke the law by listing payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels as a legal expense. Yet according to one former federal prosecutor, the facts are fatal to Bragg's claim.  

"NDAs are a staple of civil litigation settlements"

In an op-ed piece published by the New York Post on Monday, Andrew C. McCarthy noted that the money Daniels received was in exchange for her signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) in which she pledged not to discuss an alleged affair.

"What are pejoratively described as 'hush money' deals are actually legal and commonplace," the former United States attorney pointed out.

"They are less promiscuously described as non-disclosure agreements. Far from being unlawful, NDAs are a staple of civil litigation settlements in the United States," he continued.

"That is why Democrats and their journo allies have to say 'hush money' trial. It sounds sinister, and when you don’t have a crime and you’re about to commence a criminal trial, you'd better sound sinister," McCarthy declared.

FEC found no violation of federal law

He then complained that Bragg has put forward "the absurd theory that the way Trump booked NDA payments violated federal campaign laws."

This is despite the fact that "Bragg, a state prosecutor, has no authority to enforce federal law; and even though the NDA payments were technically not campaign expenditures, which is why the feds did not bring enforcement action against Trump."

Indeed, Fox News reported in 2021 that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) failed to find that Trump's payments to Daniels were a violation of federal campaign finance law.

Thus, jurors "are being asked to suspend common sense and believe that Trump stole an election in 2016 by committing crimes that didn’t happen until the following year" when Daniel began receiving payments.

Law professor calls case "an embarrassment"

McCarthy is not the only legal expert to deride Bragg's case this week, as George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley did so too.

“Trump is right. This is an embarrassment. The fact that we are actually talking about this case being presented in a New York courtroom leaves me in utter disbelief."

-Professor @JonathanTurley pic.twitter.com/JZ0Hznwr4A

— GOP (@GOP) April 22, 2024

Turley told Fox News that the trial "is an embarrassment," adding, "The fact that we are actually talking about this case being presented in a New York courtroom leaves me in utter disbelief."

"You had this misdemeanor under state law that had [the statute of limitations] run out. They zapped it back into life by alleging that there was a campaign finance violations under the federal laws that doesn't exist," he complained.