U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara: Prosecute Donald Trump Now.

Preet Bharara is the hero of honest New York, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and anticorruption crusader who took down two legislative leaders in a perfect one-two punch: Sheldon Silver, a corrupt Democrat who ran the Assembly, and Dean Skelos, a corrupt Republican who ran the Senate.

Donald Trump is a criminal New Yorker, who has committed serious federal felonies in Bharara’s jurisdiction, most prominently (but probably not exclusively) in creating a fraudulent “University” that promised a real estate education to its victims, but actually just gave people a hard sell and stole their money.

Bharara has an opportunity to crush Trump’s racist and demagogic presidential campaign with a federal indictment and prosecution.

Let’s talk about the felonies.

Of Trump University, the New York Attorney General, who is suing Trump, says:

Between 2005 through 2011, Trump University operated as an unlicensed educational institute that promised to teach Donald Trump’s real estate investing techniques to consumers nationwide but instead misled consumers into paying for a series of expensive courses that did not deliver on their promises.

“Mr. Trump used his celebrity status and personally appeared in commercials making false promises to convince people to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got.”

The petition filed in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan by Attorney General Schneiderman details the advertisements run by Trump University in major newspapers across the country and the direct mail solicitations sent to entice consumers to attend a free workshop. These ads prominently displayed Donald Trump’s photograph and signature, or were styled as letters written by Trump himself. The advertisements were replete with false claims, including claims that consumers would learn “from Donald Trump’s handpicked instructor a systematic method for investing in real estate that anyone can use.” Other ads promised “my handpicked instructors will share my techniques” or “learn from my hand-picked expert” and “just copy exactly what I’ve done and get rich.”

An investigation by Attorney General Schneiderman revealed that Donald Trump did not handpick even a single instructor at these seminars and had little or no role in developing any of the Trump University curricula, or seminar content.

The federal wire fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. 1343, provides as follows:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

The allegations in the New York AG’s lawsuit, as well as in the other lawsuits, are more than enough to justify a federal investigation into the evident wire fraud.

Donald Trump personally appeared in advertisements for Trump University (see the video clip posted in this National Review article), where he personally makes the claim that the instructors are “hand-picked” by him at 1:20 in that video clip. (I assume these advertisements were transmitted over wire, radio, or TV, but that’s something federal investigators can easily figure out.)

If, as the New York Attorney General alleges, that claim was a deliberate misrepresentation meant to induce people to part with thousands and thousands of dollars, then Trump is plainly guilty of the federal crime of wire fraud.

Trump’s presidential candidacy should not insulate him from the consequences of his crimes. If Bharara prosecutes Trump, Trump will scream that it’s “politically motivated,” and in the general election, whomever the Republicans nominate instead of Jailbird Trump will say the same (even as the establishment Republicans secretly breathe a sigh of relief). But do we want to live in a country where running for President gives you a free pass for fleecing innocent people of their money?

To the contrary, this ought to be a politically motivated prosecution. Politically motivated prosecutions are just fine. Political candidates ought to be held to higher standards than the rest of us. If you want to be president, you probably shouldn’t be committing felonies; if you commit felonies then run for president, you put a target on your back.

And the Democrats might pay an electoral price for the prosecution, but that’s a small price indeed compared to the potential horrors of the election of an American Mussolini.

[Update: further discussion on the acceptability and boundaries of politically motivated prosecutions here.]

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Paul Gowder is a law professor and political theorist. His first book is The Rule of Law in the Real World.