After Trump indictment, feds owe these two an apology. Shouldn't the law apply to everyone?

The U.S. Department of Justice owes Jerry Lundergan and Dale Emmons each an apology.

At the same time the agency was actively working against indicting Donald Trump, it was going hammer and tong after Lundergan, the father of former Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, and Emmons, one of Grimes’ political consultants, for a similar crime.

Albeit, the crimes Lundergan and Emmons were convicted of were quite a bit less sleazy than the ones Trump is accused of committing. 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed a 34-count felony indictment in state court against Trump alleging that he lied on corporate papers about payments that he made to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen.

The charges were bumped up to felonies because, Bragg contends, those false claims were committed in an effort to conceal another felony – which he implies was violating federal campaign finance law.

Will Biden pardon Trump?: Presidentn should pardon Trump. It's the right thing to do.

GOP stuck in past with Trump: As GOP sticks with Donald Trump and his felony charges, Democrats keep winning elections

Trump indictment centers on 'catch and kill' scheme

According to the indictment and accompanying paperwork filed last week against Trump, the former president conspired with David Pecker, the CEO of American Media, which owns the National Enquirer, to make sure claims that could hurt Trump’s campaign never saw the light of day.

In a scheme known as “catch and kill,” Pecker would pay sources for exclusive rights to stories about Trump and would simply not publish them.

According to documents filed with Bragg’s indictment of Trump, Pecker paid $30,000 to a former doorman at Trump Tower who claimed Trump had secretly fathered a child out of wedlock and $150,000 to a former Playboy model who allegedly had had sex with Trump.

Ew.

And when Pecker balked at paying off another adult film actress, Trump and his lawyer, Michael Cohen, schemed to have Cohen pay her $130,000 to shut up about the sex they had and then have the Trump organization repay him.

Ew. Again.

On both accounts, the indictment says they were using illegal corporate contributions to help Trump’s campaign.

And we know that the purpose was to help the campaign and not to keep those allegations from Trump’s wife, Melania.

How?

Because Trump allegedly told Cohen to try to string out the porn star and not pay her before the election – and then they wouldn’t have to pay at all because her allegations wouldn’t matter any longer.

Trump didn’t care about his wife finding out.

Former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance began to look into these crimes back in 2018 but said recently in interviews that he was asked to “stand down” by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

It’s unclear whether Trump or then-Attorney General William Barr played a role in that request. But what is clear is that the U.S. Attorney’s Office never charged Trump.

Does DA Bragg have a good case?: How strong is the case against Donald Trump? Why Alvin Bragg better get it right.

Trump has committed a lot of shady acts: This is the wrong one to indict him on

That was all going on around the same time Trump’s Department of Justice obtained indictments against Lundergan and Emmons after Grimes lost to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s 2014 U.S. Senate race.

Kentuckians sentenced in campaign finance scheme seem almost wholesome in comparison

The federal government charged Lundergan and Emmons “for orchestrating a multi-year scheme to funnel more than $200,000 in secret, unlawful corporate contributions into a campaign for United States Senate and for causing the concealment of those contributions from the Federal Election Commission.”

Those contributions came from corporations Lundergan owns that provide catering and other services, and they went to his daughter. The contributions were in the form of things like food and drinks and a lower-than-market rental on a bus – not to cover up affairs that a candidate was having while their spouse was home with a new baby.

What Lundergan and Emmons did seems almost wholesome.

And what did they get for it?

Emmons was sentenced to nine months in a halfway house and fined $50,000. Lundergan got 21 months in a federal prison and a $150,000 fine. Grimes, who was never implicated in the crime, probably can never run for office again.

Trump, meanwhile, escaped any sort of federal prosecution over his sleazier machinations to keep voters from learning about his sleazy lifestyle. He’s now the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president in next year’s election.

It’s unclear whether Bragg’s charges will stand up – the charges are somewhat novel – but just because the charges are novel doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

He’s coming under fire from Republicans who say he shouldn’t indict a Republican president.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. James Comer, Trump’s chief bootlicker in Kentucky, is warning that some Republican prosecutor here might just indict President Joe Biden in state court for some unknown, unalleged crime.

Whatever.

Here’s the thing, if the laws of our nation apply to everyone – rich and poor, powerful and weak, Republican and Democrat – then the feds should have indicted Trump. Or they should have never indicted people like Lundergan and Emmons.

Like it or not, Bragg’s indictment could bring some justice – at least for a couple of guys from Kentucky who spent some time in the pokey for a crime similar to (albeit less sordid than) the one Trump allegedly committed.

Joseph Gerth is a columnist at the Louisville Courier-Journal, where this column first ran. He can be reached at jgerth@courierjournal.com