Girls Just Want to Have Fun

What is Washington Post columnist Ms. Jennifer Rubin up to? She reports breathlessly about the Trump trial, displaying ignorance even surprising (or not?) for a Washington Post columnist. And she’s a lawyer too.

Rubin wrote in her column: “While Cohen’s expected testimony this week remains an important part of the prosecutors’ case, the critical testimony might have happened already.”

Rubin needs to brush up on her grammar: she should have written “. . . the critical testimony may have happened already.” And even that’s not entirely correct: “testimony” doesn’t “happen”; it’s “given”—as in, “Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

Rubin was referring to the testimony of porn star “Stormy Daniels” (not her real name) and, before her, of Hope Hicks (her real name), a former Trump employee.

Commenting on Daniels’ testimony, Rubin wrote: “Daniels’s account and demeanor on the stand proved devastating.”

That’s certainly not what George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley thought. Rubin’s column is so off base, one has to wonder what she’s up to—if anything, other than wishful thinking or, worse, riling up her readers so they will be disgusted when either Trump is acquitted at the trial or on appeal—though, of course, a reversal on appeal is not likely to occur until after the election.

Rubin wrote: “The strongest part of her testimony might [she means “may”] have come on cross-examination, when she [Daniels] proved savvy, candid, funny and utterly believable.” Rubin quoted a former prosecutor saying, “Daniels’ testimony has shown them exactly what the public would have heard and who they would have heard it from . . . .”

“Savvy, candid, funny, and . . . believable,” maybe. But utterly irrelevant.

Turley explained: He [Judge Merchan] allowed the prosecutors to get into the details of the alleged affair despite the immateriality of the evidence to any criminal theory. Neither the NDA [Non-Disclosure Agreement] nor the payment to Daniels are being contested. It is also uncontested that Trump wanted to pay to get the story (and other stories, including untrue allegations) published.

The value of the testimony was entirely sensational and gratuitous, yet [Judge] Merchan was fine with the attempt to humiliate Trump.

Rubin wrote: “The campaign-related motive for the hush money coverup is essential to prove that Trump’s conduct was in furtherance of other crimes (e.g., violating campaign finance laws), thereby making the charges felonies.”

But Turley says: “[District Attorney Alvin Bragg ] has refused to clearly define the crime that Trump was seeking to conceal when payments for a non-disclosure agreement were listed as a legal expense.”

Surely Rubin has read that the federal government passed on prosecuting Trump for violating campaign financing laws when he paid off Daniels because, as many lawyers have said (including Andy McCarthy, former assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York), they lacked evidence of campaign violations. If there isn’t any such evidence, what is the crime Rubin thinks the payoff was in furtherance of? She doesn’t say.

Even the New York Times seems to have a better idea of what’s going on. The first line of one of its pieces covering the trial stated: “Stormy Daniels is not central to the prosecution’s case.”

How did Rubin miss that? Haven’t we all always assumed that all the libs read each other’s copy?

And finally, Rubin writes: “Prosecutors have not completed their case, Trump’s counsel has yet to put on their case, and closing arguments might not occur for weeks. However, Trump is much closer to conviction than he was before the women’s testimony. If Trump is convicted, much of the credit will go to two steely and candid women brave enough to pull back the curtain on Trump’s escapades.”

Ah, yes, of course. Now we get it. The whole column turns out to have been just a paean to women—specifically, Stormy Daniels and Hope Hicks. The country, the world, no, the cosmos, will owe those two girls big time for what they did.

Rubin should have called her piece “Ladies Day at the Trump Trial.” It was a girls’ trip. And boy, are they mean girls. Girls just want to have fun, after all.

Who knew?

Daniel Oliver is Chairman of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.

Email Daniel Oliver at Daniel.Oliver@TheCandidAmerican.com.