Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley told "America's Newsroom" Monday that the Manhattan district attorney's efforts to indict former president Donald Trump is an attempt to the criminal justice system "for political purposes." The Constitutional law professor said public pressure is pushing DA Alvin Bragg forward with the case.
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JONATHAN TURLEY: Well, there's a host of legal principles designed to keep this from happening— that you're taking something that has a statute of limitations of two years and trying to bring it back to life seven years later. But also, you have the Manhattan D.A. trying to effectively litigate a federal crime that the federal government didn't feel needed to be litigated, didn't bring to court. All of that is troubling in and of itself. But you then combine that with the timing here. We're in the middle of a presidential election, and you have Bragg going to these extraordinary steps to try to prosecute Donald Trump.
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And for Trump, he could not have hoped for a better case to start with. He's been threatened on a number of fronts. If he had to choose, this would be it. I mean because Bragg is completing the narrative. He's giving him an example of the very thing that Trump has been complaining about— that he is being targeted for political purposes. I just don't see how you could reach any other conclusion. I mean, nobody seriously thinks that any individual except Donald Trump would warrant or bring this type of rather bizarre legal theory to life.