Judicial Watch Statement on Prosecution of President Donald Trump in the ‘Hush Money’ Trial

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding the unprecedented prosecution of President Donald Trump by Democrats in New York:

It will be nearly impossible for Trump to receive a fair trial in a courtroom run by biased, anti-Trump Democratic Party politicians. Today’s s kangaroo court proceedings in the Manhattan Supreme Court mark the first-ever criminal trial of a U.S. president. Today is a sad day that will go down in infamy. This is a dangerous attack on the rule of law and a brazen attempt to rig the 2024 elections for President Biden and Democrats. Judicial Watch denounces Alvin Bragg’s corrupt attempt to make former president Donald Trump a political prisoner.

Trump committed no crimes, and this is a prosecution about “nothing.” These and other Democratic Party political prosecutions of Trump are an abomination under law and are destabilizing to our nation. 

Judicial Watch will continue to expose in court the truth about these attacks on the rule of law, free and fair elections, and the U.S. Constitution.

Judicial Watch has several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits related to the prosecutorial abuse targeting Trump:

In March 2024, Judicial Watch filed a Georgia Open Records Act lawsuit against District Attorney Fani Willis and Fulton County, Georgia, for records of any communication Willis and the county had with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee. The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of Fulton County after Willis and the County denied having any responsive records. 

In February 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal court to allow the agency to keep secret the names of top staffers working in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office that is targeting former President Donald Trump and other Americans.

(Before his appointment to investigate and prosecute Trump, Specia Counsel Jack Smith previously was at the center of several controversial issues, the IRS scandal among them. In 2014, a Judicial Watch investigation revealed that top IRS officials had been in communication with Jack Smith’s then-Public Integrity Section about a plan to launch criminal investigations into conservative tax-exempt groups. Read more here.) 

In January 2024, Judicial Watch filed lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, for records regarding the hiring of Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor by District Attorney Fani Willis. Wade was hired to pursue unprecedented criminal investigations and prosecutions against former President Trump and others over the 2020 election disputes. 

In October 2023, Judicial Watch sued the DOJ for records and communications between the Office of U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney’s office regarding requests/receipt of federal funding/assistance in the investigation of former President Trump and his 18 codefendants in the Fulton County indictment of August 14, 2023. To date, the DOJ is refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records, claiming that to do so would interfere with enforcement proceedings. Judicial Watch’s litigation challenging this is continuing.

Through the New York Freedom of Information Law, in July 2023, Judicial Watch received the engagement letter showing New York County District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg paid $900 per hour for partners and $500 per hour for associates to the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm for the purpose of suing Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in an effort to shut down the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight investigation into Bragg’s unprecedented indictment of former President Donald Trump.

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