WorldNetDaily followed the rest of the ConWeb on Donald Trump's first indictment in playing the George Soros card on prosecutor Alvin Bragg and serving up Trump stenography. But editor Joseph Farah also accused Bragg of "shucking and jiving."
By Terry Krepel Posted 10/2/2023
Like the rest ofthe ConWeb, WorldNetDaily reacted to the idea that Donald Trump might be held criminally liable for his behavior by attacking the district attorney prosecuting him, Alvin Bragg. An anonymously written March 20 article was quick to play the Soros card on Bragg:
One of a slew of "Soros DAs" – prosecutors whose election campaigns have been bankrolled by far-left billionaire George Soros, and whose tenures in office are characterized by being radically soft on actual crime while often prosecuting innocent conservatives – Bragg was the recipient in 2021 of $1.1 million from Soros’ Color of Change PAC for his campaign, enabling him to win election as the district attorney of Manhattan. His term as DA began Jan. 1, 2022.
In fact, while Color of Change has received donations from Soros interests, it's not a "Soros PAC." Another article the same day, by Bob Unruh, spread more fearmongering about Bragg:
It's never happened before so the impact of a prosecutor's move to charge a former president with a crime remains uncertain.
But former congressman Trey Gowdy, now a commentator of Fox News, has a warning. It's that the agenda Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg is pursuing against President Trump, charges that federal authorities and election officials both rejected, could bring down the nation.
"Now we’re a nation where politics reigns supreme," Gowdy said in a commentary. "The end justifies the means. Use the system to reward friends and punish foes. If this persists, the greatest experiment in self-governance the world has ever known will surely fail."
Gowdy didn't explain how, exactly, it would kill America to hold Trump accountable for his actions.
Unruh mocked Bragg for responding to his (right-wing) critics in a March 21 article:
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the far leftist who wants to take a case previously tossed out by multiple investigations and turn it into a felony against President Trump, has issued a statement claiming he is working "fairly" to apply the law.
Bragg reportedly has been developing a case against Trump over a lawyer's payment to a porn star – many years ago, purportedly as hush money to keep details of an affair with Trump secret.
Federal prosecutors and election investigators, during the 2016 race, both dismissed the claims as not prosecutable.
Those circumstances prompted members of the U.S. House to call for Bragg to explain to them what is going on with the apparently "political" prosecution, as Democrats have been working for years to find some allegations with which to prevent Trump from seeking the 2024 presidential nomination.
Their earlier work included ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's multiple failed attempts to impeach him and remove him from office. Further, they keep insisting the Jan. 6, 2021, events at the Capitol were an "insurrection" as they want to tar Trump with that label.
Now Fox News says Bragg's office has released a statement responding to Congress.
"We will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process, nor will we let baseless accusations deter us from fairly applying the law," the statement said.
"In every prosecution, we follow the law without fear or favor to uncover the truth. Our skilled, honest and dedicated lawyers remain hard at work," it added.
The statement didn't explain what accusations are "baseless," except that that is how Trump has described Bragg's allegations, which reportedly could result in an indictment as early as this week.
Unruh went on to rant that Bragg's "record in office has been scandalous."
WND's columnists defended Trump and attacked Bragg as well. Jonathon Moseley spent his March 20 column arguing that the hush money Trump paid to Stormy Daniels wasn't a crime and even if it was, the statute of limitations has expired. Editor Joseph Farah used his March 21 column to huff that Bragg "is backed financially by Democrat mega-donor George Soros," adding:
Make no mistake – the Radical Left is trying to use this latest witch hunt to intimidate you.
We now know this entire investigation is about one thing and one thing only: It's an unprecedented attempt to intimidate Trump's MAGA base. They want to SCARE you into silence. But don't let them silence you! Because as Trump often says, they're really coming for you.
Our Constitution provides ample remedies for the problems facing our nation. Instead of waiting for the impending indictment of Donald Trump by the New York County District Attorney, our elected representatives can and should act swiftly to smoke out how improper this prosecution is.
[...]
Bragg has reportedly based his charges on an incident that was well known to the Americans who elected Trump in 2016 and voted for him again in 2020. Other prosecutors who had already examined the same widely publicized facts found them not to be criminal, yet this Democrat D.A. has dredged up ancient history in an obvious effort to impede Trump's reelection in 2024.
The next day, Farah framed a Trump indictment as a career move ... for Trump:
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says this about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg: "The prosecutor in New York has done more to help Donald Trump get elected president than any single person in America today."
Hype? Exaggeration?
Surely, Graham wouldn't intentionally give Bragg more credit than himself. It's clearly a good soundbite. But could Trump get a big boost for his renewed presidential campaign from Bragg's likely arrest and indictment?
That's the big question.
Could it be the best thing that ever happened in Trump's third bid for the presidency?
[...]
Is Bragg running scared? Has he been warned off filing an indictment? Are Democrats having second thoughts?
Trump leads Joe Biden in early polls for the 2024 race by between 5 and 20 percentage points. It's just possible Bragg could make it a runaway election.
Is arresting President Trump on a twisted, fabricated charge, that is beyond its statue of limitations, so he can be put on trial an attempt to convict him of a federal crime to knock him out of the 2024 presidential race? Or is it really that Trump haters are trying to get their hands on the 45th president to permanently stop the MAGA movement by a heinous act that very likely could result in ending that movement, permanently? After all, Biden stated, "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic." If that is the opinion of mumbling, bumbling Biden, then what do you think is the opinion of all the little liberal Democratic "yes-men" in New York?
[...]
Is it really justice to allow President Trump to be surrendered and taken into the custody of people who hate him?
You know, I'll bet that if you cut the light on in the White House kitchen at night you would get to see Joe Biden scurry across the floor.
Earlier in his column, Blakley had called Biden, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren "roaches" who "potentially commit[ted] treason," either "for money or just out of hatred of America, or both."
When the indictment actually happened, WND's outrage went to a whole new level. Bob Unruh's March 30 "news" article on the indictment simply parroted pro-Trump talking points:
Former President Donald Trump is accusing President Joe Biden of "political persecution" and "election interference at the highest level in history," following news that a Manhattan grand jury has indicted Trump on a questionable charge that most legal experts, including lifelong Democrats like Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, have condemned as a totally "political" prosecution.
Previously, federal investigators and federal election investigators, even the Manhattan DA himself, all tossed out the complaint as unworthy of prosecution.
But Democrats, desperately clawing at anything to use against Trump as he runs for the 2024 presidential victory, pushed DA Alvin Bragg, a far leftist whose campaign was funded by billionaire extremist George Soros, to go after a claim about a "hush money" payment to a former stripper to keep quiet about an alleged affair.
Such payments are not illegal, but Democrats are alleging the payment was a campaign contribution to Trump's 2016 campaign.
Without this odd and controversial combination of claims, the allegations would have been dead in the water.
Democrats hope they can exploit a legal case against Trump as they promote the mentally declining octogenarian Joe Biden for another term in the White House.
However, polls show that Trump might actually benefit from the publicity and outrage, and experts in the law have concluded that Trump, even under indictment, still could be elected.
Democrats have a deathly fear of Trump as a candidate because of the success of his first "Make America Great Again" term, when he literally vaporized much of Barack Obama's "accomplishments."
Their concern, with reason, is that Trump would do the same to Biden's agenda.
An article by Unruh the next day touted pro-Trump "constitutional expert" Jonathan Turley criticizing the indictment, even though it "still hasn't been released, so few people know what it actually contains now." Unruh followed that a couple hours later by hyping a vicious smear of Bragg:
Alvin Bragg, the far-left Manahattan district attorney who obtained a grand jury indictment of President Trump, probably over a payment and a nondisclosure agreement with a stripper over an affair both have denied happened, is being accused of adopting the promise that was made, back in the day, by Stalin's secret police chief.
Margot Cleveland, a longtime veteran of the federal court system and now a senior legal correspondent at The Federalist, identified that chief as Lavrentiy Beria and his promise as, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."
Never mind that, again, neither Cleveland nor Unruh actually knew what was in the indictment at this point.
Peter LaBarbera attacked Bragg as well in an alleged "news" article while touting how Trump has Republican support despite his apparent criminality:
With his politically-driven grand jury indictment of Donald Trump, Manhattan's George Soros-backed District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, has done what only a hard-left, Trump-hating Democrat could do: quickly unite most major Republican leaders behind the former president.
There are some exceptions: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's silence on the Trump indictment has been deafening. And former Arkansas governor and potential longshot presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson says Trump should "step aside," calling the indictment a "huge distraction" that is bad for Republicans and bad for America.
Even as he rails publicly against the "witch hunt" against him, Trump reportedly is cooperating with Bragg's office "to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.'s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal," CBS reported. He likely will not be handcuffed, and the process will take place Tuesday afternoon, after which Trump will return to Mar-a-lago.
LaBarbera offered no proof that Bragg is "hard-left" or that he hates Trump any more than he does any other criminal.
Unruh cheered intimidation of Bragg by right-wing members of Congress in an April 3 article:
It's no secret that leftist billionaire George Soros has been donating, sometimes heavily, to the campaigns of leftist district attorneys who, once they are in office, impose their own bias regarding justice.
They decline to prosecute certain crimes, they decline to seek prison terms for convicts, they work to arrange early release for those already in jail.
Significantly, in most cases, they allow crimes to skyrocket in their jurisdictions, to the point businesses and residents are seeking to move out.
Now Republicans in the U.S. House have come up with a response to the agenda: To strip those officials of their legal immunity.
According to a report from Just the News, Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., said liberals tried to remove the qualified immunity that protected police officers from lawsuits previously.
Now it's time for that move to target prosecutors.
"I think you're going to have to look at prosecutorial misconduct and whether or not prosecutors in this country should be exempt from liability," he said during an interview on the "Just the News, No Noise," television program.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy already has said Congress will do something to punish Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a far-left activist who took a misdemeanor complaint that multiple jurisdictions had concluded provided no evidence for a prosecution to file what apparently is a felony against President Trump.
Again, the indictment still had not been made public at this point, so Unruh could not possibly know the evidence behind it.
Joe Kovacs offered a Trump-friendly narrative about Trump's arraignment on April 4, where he deemed that the most important event of the day was Trump trying to pull an alpha-male move:
Donald Trump "definitely glared" at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who indicted the former president Tuesday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with his alleged role in hush-money payments toward the end of his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump vocally pleaded "not guilty" to all counts before Judge Juan Merchan, an avowed Democrat whose daughter has reportedly worked for Kamala Harris.
"It is not just about one payment," said Bragg.
Jake Gibson, a federal law-enforcement producer for Fox News, said after Tuesday's arraignment : "I think it's worth noting, President Trump definitely glared at the D.A. Bragg when he left.
"He seemed to get up, look around the room. .. and then lock his eyes on Alvin Bragg."
On the heels of his arraignment Tuesday in New York, former President Donald Trump addressed America from his Florida home at Mar-a-Lago, saying "our country is going to hell" and that the 34 felony counts against him "should be dropped immediately."
"Now there's radical election interference on a scale never seen before in this country," Trump said.
"I never thought anything like this could ever happen in America."
[...]
Trump specified that criminal as the "radical George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg" who the former commander in chief says "campaigned on the fact that he would get President Trump ... at any cost before he knew anything about me."
Kovacs made no attempt to fact-check anything Trump said, demonstrating that he's not much of a reporter or editor.
Farah's freakout (and racial attack)
Given the size of the freakout WND had over the indictment of Donald Trump, it stands to reason that WND's biggest Trump fanboy, Farah, would be freaking out just as bigly. Indeed, Farah's March 31 column began with a bizarre racial attack, accusing Bragg (who is black) of "shucking and jiving" over the indictment:
What was all this shucking and jiving about for the last few weeks?
President Donald Trump was about to be indicted. Then he wasn't. Then he was.
What was going on in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, I wonder. Who was he talking to besides his fairy godmother, George Soros? Was he seeking permission from Merrick Garland or Joe Biden? Did he know what kind of furor he would set off by criminally indicting a U.S. president for the first time in history?
And what are these 30-something counts he was putting together for release next week? Were they something the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York and the Federal Election Commission haven't seen before? They decided against bringing charges. In fact, two of Bragg's own attorneys quit his office when he began talking about indicting Trump.
You would think he was trying to disgrace himself by going ahead finally with his wicked plans. Or maybe he had to get permission. Maybe it's just part of a devious plot to further weaponize the government, as if we could imagine that.
And why is so brazen to turn down a subpoena to testify to the House Judiciary Committee?
There's something very strange about the timing of it all. Trump is growing in popularity since announcing his bid for the presidency. Does Bragg think this is going to make him less of a political threat?
Despite none of the the evidence having been released at this point, Farah ranted that Trump is innocent:
They're just going to stay on him. To date they haven't found ANYTHING! He's as clean as a hound's tooth. They keep throwing stuff at him, and he acts like the Energizer Bunny. Hey, maybe this guy just loves his country. Have they ever thought of that?
Nevertheless, these are gravely dangerous times in America. Most of us just can't wait to get Trump back in office; it won't come fast enough. We just have to live through the next few months. The country can't take much more punishment and oppression.
Of course, nobody feels it like Donald Trump. He should have one job to do – run for president! He's never taken his sight off that. How can a man go through all of this?
Just pray for him – and anybody who can afford to give him some money along the way, encourage him that way.
Trump is a very wealthy man who does not need anyone to donate money to him.
Farah repeated discredited election fraud conspiracy theories to defend Trump in his April 5 column headlined "Trump was right about EVERYTHING!":
You can see it for yourself now. It's perfectly obvious to all of us. Donald Trump accurately called the stolen election in 2020, what followed in the Capitol "insurrection" and all that followed in America ever since. Just look at the Big Picture. Just watch how the Democrats changed their tactics and became tyrants.
That's right. In case someone hasn't noticed yet, the odds are they are actively considering another Big Steal in 2024 – or worse. They are actively building a police state, an authoritarian nightmare. It's their only option to retain power.
First, they tried to sell the claim that 2020 was just another election – with Joe Biden receiving some 80 million votes – without even campaigning! Then they created, manufactured, dreamed up the Capitol sham. Next came the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Then Alvin Bragg's gambit. And there are other states and jurisdictions set to wage lawfare against Trump this year. They'll potentially be able to tie him up, not giving him time to campaign this year – or worse.
Nothing they do now would surprise me.
What they know is that Trump seriously threatens their New World Order, their Great Reset. They've already got the fake media in their pocket, Big Tech censors in place, unlimited money interests set up, the Deep State machinations. They have New York, California, Illinois and a few other clueless states they can count on. We have Donald Trump's real popularity – up to 72% in some polls.
[...]
"2024 is the final battle," said President Trump in Waco, Texas, recently. "That's going to be the big one. You put me back in the White House, their reign will be over, and America will be a free nation once again."
We all need to back Trump now – our best hope for the future in the natural world. May God bless him, and may God bless America.
Only a dead-ender like Farah would think a corrupt, amoral man like Trump is "our best hope for the future in the natural world."
For his April 6 column, Farah cherry-picked quotes by President Biden to invent a reason why he had not spoken out on Trump's indictment: "Hint: It's because he's in on the plot to stay in the shadows for once, now that others are carrying the ball."
Other columnists
Other WND columnists also failed to take the indictment well. Scott Lively managed to work his homophobia obsession into it in an April 3 column headlined "Trump's arrest is a lefty 'Sieg Heil' to the Rainbow Swastika":
Without Trump we would collectively have slept right through the transition from a Constitutional Republic to a Global Maoist Technocracy under Hillary Clinton – ignoring the shouts of warning from "crack-pot bigots" like myself on the "radical fringe" of society. And that is, of course, why ALL the Woke, and a great many "useful idiots" following their lead, hate Trump with a passion that burns in them like the unquenchable fires of Hell, blinding them to all reason and prudence – to the point that many have abandoned even the pretext of rationality and justice. Trump is America's "Judge" in the truest Old Testament Samsonian sense, and our fate as a nation is inextricably intertwined with his.
[...]
Learning from history doesn't necessarily ensure you can avoid its repetitions. You also have to take effective action to stop the bad guys. In this case, it means educating Americans on the centrality of the LGBT agenda to the attack on our system, and the willingness to accept that the only real solution is a restoration of Judeo-Christian religious and cultural norms.
But the person who most needs to learn the history exposed in this article is President Trump, who seems completely ignorant of the fact that his indictment and arrest is above all else a Lefty Sieg Heil to the Rainbow Swastika.
Rachel Alexander was less homophobic, but still worked in a Stalin reference, in her column the same day:
We are living in an Orwellian era when the formerly most powerful man in the world, who remains very powerful, is being prosecuted in order to stop him from becoming president again. If they can take him down, they can take down any conservative. The left has weaponized lawfare, which started with merely civil lawsuits but has now progressed into disbarring attorneys and prosecution. Once they've gone after Trump through prosecution – even if unsuccessful – it will be easier to go after him again on other charges, and easier to go after any other conservative. And they won't stop there; they'll next go after RINOs and those on the left who side with the right against the abuse of the legal system.
[...]
The left is throwing everything they can at Trump in order to stop him from becoming president again. They brought impeachment charges against him twice. The FBI was sent to search his home. More indictments by other prosecutors are expected.
The U.S. is turning into a banana republic with this deterioration of the legal system combined with election fraud determining elections. As Stalin's secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, famously said, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." Similarly, criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverglate wrote a book, "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent," which explains how there are so many vague and broad laws now the average person commits three felonies a day and doesn't know it. If they want to get you, they'll figure out a way.
Andy Schlafly manufactured a victimhood narrative in his April 4 column:
By indicting President Trump, the New York County prosecutor is infringing on the First Amendment rights of all Americans. Every American has a right to an unfettered debate and campaign by candidates, including Trump, for our nation's highest elective office.
This indictment interferes with the 2024 presidential election by hampering the full participation of a leading candidate, and the right of Americans to benefit from his undivided attention to his campaign. One Democrat district attorney in Manhattan infringes on all these rights by indicting the front-runner Republican candidate, Donald Trump.
"The freedom to speak and the freedom to hear are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin," declared Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1972. Democrats are interfering with the right of every American to hear from Donald Trump without distraction by an improper prosecution.
[...]
As patriotism declines in polls and millions of immigrants fail to assimilate into our traditional culture, the glue binding our vast country together may have lost some strength. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision arrogantly denied rights to slaves rather than allow the political process to work, and a few years later our nation broke up.
Last we checked, paying hush money to a porn star to cover up an affair is not an act of patriotism.
Jim Darlington's April 7 column described the purported three-step process behind Trump's indictment, which escalates quickly into right-wing conspiracy theories:
Speculation 1: Tar the candidate.
This is the opening salvo of a multi-pronged lawfare campaign. If these parking-ticket-level "offenses" are to be the new standard for Democrat prosecutions, then we can expect the name of Donald Trump to be showing up on any number of dockets 'round the blue states of the nation. The tentative calculus here must be for the communists to watch and see if the algorithm of echoing blind accusations and actual pending charges can be safely deemed sufficient to sink Trump's presidential candidacy.
Speculation 2: Bury the candidate.
But if not ... When the backfiring effect of this plan arouses the nation's perception of Trump's heroic martyrdom and his poll numbers hit 60%, we have every right, even every duty, to prepare for the day of the assassins. The battle is boiling down to the division of the godly from the godless, who, in the end, can be trusted to act without a shred of moral hesitation. Sort through the recorded lists of the purported "Arkicides" associated with the Clinton Syndicate, and pause a moment to wonder, "Are these really just a string of coincidences, cooked up by some feckless fool on the loony fringe, or, is there more to see here than we might really care to see?"
Speculation 3: Abolish the nation.
Some of us poor pessimists keep thinking, "This could be our last election." Even every movement of the paranoids is now available to be temporally and spatially monitored. We know where you are, when you are there. The Planned Epidemic proved successful in measuring the American citizenry's massive willingness to submit to federal dictates, based upon spectacular lies. The J6 Reichstag fire was aimed at letting you all know that the feds can make bucking the narrative an act of terrorism, and making you tremble. The escalating outrages by the Biden group are straight-out destructive on one hand, and an invitation to counter-revolutionary conservative violence – which, if big enough, could be answered with martial law. As Dear Leader Joe said, "What good are your AR-15s when we've got F-35s?" Justin Trudeau gave us a shout out from up North, to the effect, "Watch what happens when we seize their bank accounts."
Biden didn't actually say that, despite Darlington putting it in quotes, and neither did Trudeau (who froze, not seized, bank accounts of those behind last year's disruptive trucker protests). And, of course, portraying the Capitol riot as a "Reichstag fire" is wildly dishonest.
