'No time to wait': Manhattan DA urged to seek criminal charges on Trump 'extortion racket'

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg secured the only legal conviction against now-President Donald Trump in the series of criminal cases against him, under an arcane bookkeeping fraud statute for his hush payments to an adult film star to keep damaging information away from voters in the 2016 election.

Now, he should file another case against him, wrote Jonathan Zasloff for Slate.

Specifically, the case should target Trump's series of "deals" with law firms that represented anti-Trump clients, to change their policies in ways favorable to the president to be exempt from executive orders that would lock them out of federal contracts — an arrangement, Zasloff wrote, that is a textbook case of criminal extortion. While some law firms are fighting these orders, others have caved to Trump's demands.

"What Trump is doing to these firms — first Perkins Coie; then Paul, Weiss; then Covington & Burling; then Jenner & Block; then WilmerHale — has for the most part been treated as a political scandal and a threat to the First Amendment, which it is," wrote Zasloff. "But there’s a legal term for what Trump is doing: extortion. He is threatening to kneecap businesses not because they are doing anything illegal, but rather just the opposite: because they are using legal channels to resist him. Trump’s message is straightforward enough: Nice law firm you got here; would be too bad if something were to happen to it. This is an extortion racket run straight out of the Oval Office."

Paul, Weiss, one of the law firms, is headquartered in New York, meaning state law applies. And in New York, extortion is defined as misdemeanor "coercion," where someone "compels or induces a person to engage in conduct which the latter has a legal right to abstain from engaging in, or to abstain from engaging in conduct in which he or she has a legal right to engage" using, among other things, the fear that person will cause "damage to property" or "use or abuse his or her position as a public servant by performing some act within or related to his or her official duties, or by failing or refusing to perform an official duty, in such manner as to affect some person adversely."

This is a dead ringer for what Trump is doing, wrote Zasloff.

"He compelled the firm to cease engaging in legal activity that it had a right to engage in (practicing law on behalf of its clients) by threatening damage to Paul, Weiss’ property — its business — and by threatening to abuse his position, denying the firm security clearances and blocking their access to federal property," he wrote. "Trump himself did not gain control over Paul, Weiss by extorting it to take a deal involving $40 million of friendly services from the firm and a change in its hiring practices, but the statute says he does not have to."

Prosecuting Trump again will be precipitously difficult, Zasloff noted — partly because the Justice Department argues sitting presidents cannot be indicted, and partly because the Supreme Court set strict limits last year on the prosecution of even former presidents for "official acts." But it is incumbent on Bragg to try to stand up for the laws of his state regardless, he continued.

"There is no time to wait," wrote Zasloff. "Bragg should take this case to a grand jury, and if it indicts, it indicts. If then Trump argues that he can’t be indicted, or that Trump v. United States allows him to use the power of the federal government on a vendetta against his political enemies, and the Supreme Court agrees, then at least we will have some confirmation that the Constitution is a dead letter and the rule of law has all but perished."