From wiki: “In law, bootstrapping can also refer to an attempt to gain jurisdiction over a non-jurisdictional matter by its circuitous relationship to a jurisdictional matter.”
I think he meant it in this more general way. The state charge had passed the SOL, so Bragg used the federal law to pull the expired one up by its bootstraps by comingling the two.
Never mind that the Federal Elections Commission had already ruled not to prosecute.