The Trump trial spectacle begins
Donald Trump on Monday will become the first former U.S. President, and the first leading presidential candidate, to be put on criminal trial. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will try to prove to a jury that Mr.
Trump is guilty of 34 felonies related to his 2016 hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Eight years later, and seven months before the 2024 election, it’s a trial that shouldn’t happen in a case Mr. Bragg shouldn’t have brought.
The Stormy affair was sordid business, but the DA’s argument is a legal stretch, in ways that might bother a skeptical juror or an appeals court. The facts are these: Ms. Daniels has said that in 2006 she and Mr.
Trump had one, er, intimate encounter. A decade later, as the 2016 election neared, Mr. Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen paid Ms.
Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. A nondisclosure agreement isn’t illegal. Mr.
Bragg’s complaint is about the paperwork. Mr. Cohen was reimbursed through 2017 via a monthly retainer “disguised as a payment for legal services," the DA said.
He padded his indictment by separately charging each invoice, check and ledger entry to get 34 counts. Falsifying business records in New York can be a misdemeanor, but the statute of limitations on that has expired. Mr.
Bragg therefore must charge felonies, which under New York law means showing that Mr. Trump cooked the books with “intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof." Even that requires special dispensation. The 2017 payments are outside the five-year felony window, but state judge Juan Merchan ruled that Mr.
Bragg enjoys an extra year of leeway after emergency Covid-19 executive orders stopped the clock on legal cases. The crucial question is Mr. Trump’s alleged
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