In the wake of revelations that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has indictments coming for former president Donald Trump, as well as the subsequent fallout and media freakout, the discussion (at least, on the right) has turned to the weaponization of the criminal justice system for political purposes.

To be fair, the left is so concerned about Trump getting arrested that they are just throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks. This, as others have repeatedly pointed out, is just purely partisan politics. After all, the feds walked away from charging Trump over the Stormy Daniels issue, and Bragg himself also backed away from it, until the left screamed at him until he complied.

But, the screamers of the left are not representative of America as a whole, and the latest data we have to prove that comes from a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

About half of Americans believe a New York investigation into whether Donald Trump paid hush money to a porn star is politically motivated, but a large majority find the allegations believable, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll found.

The two-day poll, concluded on Tuesday, found 54% of respondents – including 80% of the former president’s fellow Republicans and 32% of Democrats – said politics was driving the criminal case being weighed by a Manhattan grand jury.

Seventy percent of respondents, and half of Republicans, said it was believable that Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign paid the adult film actress Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter.

Some 62% of respondents, including a third of Republicans, said it was also believable that Trump falsified business records and committed fraud.

There is a caveat here: It was a 2-day, online poll that measured adults. Not likely or even registered voters. Just adults.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll gathered responses from 1,003 adults nationwide, including 415 self-described Democrats and 383 Republicans. The poll had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4-6 percentage points in either direction.

Still, that doesn’t render the data completely irrelevant. There has been very little in terms of arguing that Trump didn’t sleep with the porn star while his wife was pregnant with his child. There isn’t even much of a denial that she was paid to keep quiet about it. The question is how much he knew and how closely tied to his 2016 campaign it was.

It’s also worth noting that, even if he is arrested, tried and convicted, and sent to prison, that doesn’t mean he can’t run for president. It just means he’d be doing so from a prison cell.

But the bottom line is that the investigation and impending indictment/arrest(?) is almost certainly politically motivated. Bragg is notorious for reducing charges against offenders and going easy on felons in a misguided attempt at “criminal justice reform” from within the system. But his policies, like those of other like-minded progressives, have only worsened the crime situation. That he would reduce violent felonies to misdemeanors and then pick up a high-profile elections case against Trump – a case the feds wouldn’t even touch – tells you everything you need to know about his motivations.

Is Trump guilty? Possibly. Probably, even. Is it a crime he should be prosecuted for? Maybe so. But it’s not like paying someone to keep quiet is something only Trump offended. How willing is Bragg to go after Democrats who have done the same all for the sake of getting elected or re-elected? That’s a zero-motivation proposal. But he will take this one because (say it with me, kids) “Orange Man Bad.”