(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) In a move that is almost certain to trigger felony election-interference charges from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., has attempted to obfuscate $162,091.92 in payments to the digital advertising firm Authentic Campaigns during the 2024 election cycle by surreptitiously sending them to the private Richmond, Virginia, residence of company president Loren Merchan.
The bombshell discovery was first reported Friday by investigative journalist and activist Laura Loomer, who noted that Goldman’s filings to the Federal Election Commission also dropped the “s” at the end of the company name, further throwing any would-be sleuths off the trail of an open-records search.
EXCLUSIVE EXPOSE:
🚨🚨🚨NEW YORK CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN SENDING MONEY TO JUDGE MERCHAN’S DAUGHTER’S PERSONAL HOME RESIDENCE IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA AND DECEPTIVELY DISTORTING FEC RECORDS TO COVER UP PAYMENTS TO LOREN MERCHAN’S COMPANY🚨🚨🚨
I was searching through… https://t.co/R9U8sM2YQE pic.twitter.com/Ssv2PicORe
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) May 17, 2024
Loomer’s discovery comes not long after Goldman boasted about having helped coach star prosecution witness Michael Cohen, whose testimony this week nonetheless unraveled on cross-examination as was widely expected.
Cohen, the ex-attorney of former President Donald Trump, made payments to porn-star Stormy Daniels and others during the 2016 campaign to keep negative publicity from sinking the tight race against Hillary Clinton. Those payments, although unseemly on their face, were not inherently illegal.
However, there are no indications that Cohen believed Daniels’s account of a decade-old sexual liaison with Trump in the early days of his marriage to Melania Trump, the future first lady.
During cross-examination, Trump’s attorneys also called into question whether Cohen fully consulted Trump on the payments, with accounts suggesting that what he claimed to be a brief phone call about Stormy Daniels might, in fact, have been about a 14-year-old boy who had been prank-calling him.
Another possible point of perjury. Cohen testified Tuesday that a Oct. 24 phone call was to speak to Trump. However, Branche revealed that, in a Cohen text to Keith Schiller, Donald Trump's former bodyguard, Cohen asked Schiller about harassing calls from an alleged 14-year-old…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 16, 2024
The case hinges on several factors that Bragg and his prosecutors have yet to establish—including the commission of a second—yet unknown—crime that would justify the upgrading of charges from state misdemeanors that had exceeded their statute of limitations to federal felonies.
Bragg and his team must also explain how Trump intended to deceive the public by listing the reimbursements to Cohen as “legal expenses” in his private ledgers, and how that constituted a falsification of business records since it was, in fact, an accurate explanation of the expenses.
All of these mitigating factors, of course, assume that there will not first be a public corruption scandal so great that the humiliation and pressure will force Merchan to declare a mistrial.
The judge, who himself made several small donations to Biden during the 2020 election, was not randomly selected but was deliberately chosen after his handling of a tax-fraud trial involving the Trump Organization.
Yet, even after his conflicts of interest—including his daughter’s political involvement—became widely known, he refused to recuse himself, instead putting a gag order on Trump that would prevent the presumptive GOP presidential nominee from discussing the judge’s family.
With Loren Merchan’s direct connection to the trial via Goldman now firmly established, it is no longer possible to ignore the appearance of impropriety.
Dan Goldman paid over $157,000 dollars to the firm of Loren Merchan. Now he is prepping clients who are appearing before her father. pic.twitter.com/TnVuMjrpIb
— Truth Ninja (@TruthNinja316) May 14, 2024
Bragg, likewise, has several serious conflicts of interest. The George Soros-funded district attorney is one of many prosecutors who campaigned on a “Get Trump” platform.
Despite the fact that his predecessor and he both saw little compelling evidence to press forward with the trial against Trump, he yielded to the political pressure, effectively engaging in his own form of election interference while accusing Trump of doing just that.
Despite the parallel situation between Goldman’s attempted falsification of records and what Trump stands accused of, it is unlikely that Bragg would, in fact, file charges against the New York congressman, who appears to be colluding with the DA’s office in some capacity.
However, Headline USA reached out to Victoria LaCivita, the spokesperson for Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (as well as the daughter of Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita) to inquire whether the Republican attorney general was considering any investigations into Goldman or Authentic Campaigns for their nefarious practices.
Headline USA also reached out to Loren and Juan Merchan, staffers for Goldman’s office, Bragg and Cohen. We will update with any response.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
