On Monday night, it was leaked that Donald Trump will be charged with 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records. The details of the indictment were not supposed to be released, and Trump quickly called out District Attorney Alvin Bragg for illegally leaking the details of the indictment.
“Wow! District Attorney Bragg just illegally LEAKED the various points, and complete information, on the pathetic Indictment against me,” Trump wrote in a post shared on Truth Social. “I know the reporter and so, unfortunately, does he. This means that he MUST BE IMMEDIATELY INDICTED. Now, if he wants to really clean up his reputation, he will do the honorable thing and, as District Attorney, INDICT HIMSELF.”
Bragg certainly won’t indict himself, but, as Tucker Carlson noted, leaking details from Trump’s sealed indictment is bigger than the crimes for which Trump has been indicted.
After pointing out that Bragg “stitched together a Frankenstein legal theory to justify” his prosecution of Trump after the statute of limitations had passed, the leak of Donald Trump’s grand jury indictment to the media “in itself is a crime under the law in New York, in fact, a much bigger crime than those under which Donald Trump is being charged.”
The act of leaking grand jury testimony is considered a Class E felony under New York state law. Whether it was Bragg, someone in his office, or a grand juror, we don’t know yet, and you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for an investigation. But if Bragg is responsible for the leak, he could face as long as five years in prison.
In an op-ed for the New York Sun on Friday, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote, “It is likely that a serious felony has been committed right under District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s nose and he is not investigating it. Under New York law, it is a felony to leak confidential grand jury information, such as whether the jurors voted to indict.”
“The protection of secrecy is as applicable to President Trump as it is to anyone else,” Dershowitz added. “We know that the information was disclosed while the indictment itself remains sealed and before any official announcement was made or charges brought. It is unlikely that the leak came from the Trump team, which seemed genuinely surprised.”
Is it plausible that Bragg or the person responsible for the leak would receive severe punishment in the same jurisdiction that indicted Trump for trivial charges? While it is technically possible, it seems improbable.
