Alvin Bragg again tries an underhanded tactic against Trump

Perhaps Judge Juan Merchan has been sobered by the defense mistrial motion he prompted last week. The judge foolishly allowed Manhattan prosecutors to elicit graphic testimony from porn star Stormy Daniels about a 2006 sexual encounter she claims to have had with Donald Trump. That testimony was irrelevant to the sole question in the trial, which is whether Trump fraudulently falsified his financial records in 2017. On that matter, Daniels has no knowledge; thus, her testimony was offered solely to inflame the jury against the defendant.

Whatever the reason, the latest ploy by District Attorney Alvin Bragg was too much, even for the complaisant Merchan. After a weekend of handwringing, the judge this morning denied the attempt by Bragg’s prosecutors to place before the jury the severance agreement of Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s former chief financial officer.

Weisselberg is currently incarcerated at Rikers Island. That’s right: While Manhattan’s Democratic district attorney turns a blind eye to serious crime in the Big Apple, he has prosecuted Weisselberg not once but twice in the last two years.

Weisselberg is currently doing a five-month stint in the slammer after Bragg pressured him to plead guilty to perjury committed in the recent civil fraud case against Trump (Weisselberg falsely denied his complicity in the exaggeration of the valuation of some Trump assets). He previously served a four-month sentence in Rikers on minor tax convictions.

Weisselberg’s real crime appears to be that he has for years rebuffed Bragg’s pressure to implicate Trump in crimes. The 76-year-old is sitting in jail yet again, even though Bragg’s default position is to keep criminals out of Rikers, so he can, shall we say, get his mind right.

The prosecutors’ severance agreement gambit is deceitful.