The Missouri attorney general, Andrew Bailey, has confirmed that he is suing the state of New York for election interference and wrongful prosecution for bringing the Stormy Daniels hush-money case to a trial that saw Donald Trump convicted of 34 felonies.
Bailey, a Republican politician appointed by Missouri’s governor, Mike Parson, last year, said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that he would be filing a lawsuit “against the State of New York for their direct attack on our democratic process through unconstitutional lawfare against President Trump”.
“We have to fight back against a rogue prosecutor who is trying to take a presidential candidate off the campaign trail. It sabotages Missourians’ right to a free and fair election,” he added in a subsequent message.
The lawsuit is anticipated to be a series of similar actions against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, over a pair of lawsuits brought against Trump or the Trump Organization and its officers. Both resulted in findings against the defendants. Trump is appealing both cases.
Bailey claims the hush-money case was brought to smear the presumptive presidential nominee going into November’s election and that New York’s statute of limitations on falsification of business records, a misdemeanor, expired in 2019.
Moreover, he argues, Bragg never specified “intent to commit another crime” – namely election interference – that would have brought the charges back within time-limitation statutes.
“Radical progressives in New York are trying to rig the 2024 election. We have to stand up and fight back,” Bailey told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
But Bailey also told the outlet that he recognized that any attempt by one state to sue another would probably go straight to the US supreme court. He said the investigations and subsequent prosecutions of Trump “appear to have been conducted in coordination with the United States Department of Justice”.
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Next month, Matthew Colangelo, a former federal prosecutor who transferred to New York where he worked on Trump’s state and city prosecutions, will be called to give evidence before Congress.
The aftershocks of Trump’s 34-count criminal conviction continue to travel. On Friday, it was reported that the presumptive Republican presidential candidate had overtaken his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, in fundraising since the May verdict.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
