GUEST COLUMN, Dick Morris
History is repeating itself. In 1996, Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr tried to leverage publicity about President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky to force Clinton to testify under oath and set up a trap to catch him committing perjury.
Now Trump’s prosecutor, Alvin Bragg is trying the same stunt. Bragg is hoping that Stormy Daniel’s testimony about her relationship with Donald Trump is sufficiently steamy and pornographic to induce Trump to testify in his trial and subject himself to the possibility of prosecution for perjury. He is also hoping that Michael Cohen’s testimony is sufficiently powerful that Trump has to take the stand to rebut it.
What Clinton and Trump have in common is that neither wants to testify under oath. What Bragg’s Democrats and Trump’s Republicans also have in common is that neither one is as interested in what Clinton or Trump have to say as that they say it under oath and subject themselves to prosecution for perjury.
Both the 1996 prosecution of Clinton and the 2024 proceedings against Trump are trying to use the embarrassment of a sex scandal to force the candidate to answer under oath.
Neither Bragg nor Starr could prosecute their targets for having an affair. So each is trying to embarrass their adversary so much that he has to endanger himself legally — by testifying under oath.
Here’s why Starr’s approach worked and Bragg’s won’t: Trump is immune from embarrassment and political harm — his support is too strong — and he does not need to take the stand to answer the charges, whereas Clinton did and he committed perjury as a result.
