Camp Hill, Pennyslvania— Townhall.com political editor and FOX News commentator Guy Benson told Pennsylvania conservatives on Saturday the left-wing prosecutorial crusade against Donald Trump is bolstering the former president politically.
In recent months, Benson explained to attendees of the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference at the Penn Harris Hotel just outside of Harrisburg, Trump occasionally underperformed in GOP-primary polling matchups against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. But the pundit said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), by indicting Trump on charges connected to alleged “hush money” payments to pornographic performer Stormy Daniels, has bolstered sympathy for the ex-chief executive.
“I think we see President Trump gaining steam,” he said. “He’s getting a lot of attention; he’s right in the spotlight, which is where he loves to be and there’s no such thing in his mind as bad publicity. And in this case he’s absolutely right, because you have this deranged prosecutor in New York who is famous for downgrading criminal penalties and criminal charges who has somehow found this cockamamie scheme — this legal bank-shot untested theory — to, maybe for the first time in history, upcharge a defendant and it happens to be Donald Trump….”
Benson, an occasional critic of Trump, said that Bragg’s is an “extremely weak case.” He said this despite his view that Trump’s denials of the alleged affair with Daniels are unconvincing.
“I’m like: Eh, you paid her six figures,” he said. “I don’t think that was out of the goodness of your heart. That might’ve been to actually have her not say something.”
He added, however, that the kind of nondisclosure agreement at issue in the case is not an uncommon contract. While he supposed Trump could be vulnerable to a misdemeanor charge for alleged business fraud in covering up a payment to Daniels, he noted the federal government already dismissed the idea of pursuing the matter as a felony violation as Bragg is attempting to do.
“My old-fashioned view is, you shouldn’t bring this type of case against anybody and you especially should not bring this case as the first ever indictment of a former president of the United States,” Benson said.
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Pennsylvania Daily Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
