ON TUESDAY afternoon, Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the greatest carnival barker in history, presented himself at the Criminal Courts Building at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan, and was formally arraigned after a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict him following a probe into a hush-money payment of $130,000 made during the 2016 presidential campaign on Trump’s behalf to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, in order to conceal a 2006 Trump affair. Trump pleaded not guilty.
The 34 felony counts of the indictment include the charge of falsifying business records in the first degree — recording that hush-money payment as a business expense. The charge, ordinarily a default misdemeanor, is elevated to a felony if the act is committed in the furtherance of another crime.
The New York Times laid out the ways in which the seemingly small potatoes of a payout to hide a personal dalliance could backfire on the former president: “While hush money is not inherently illegal, the prosecutors could argue that the $130,000 payout effectively became an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, under the theory that because the money silenced Ms. Daniels, it benefited his candidacy,” The Times reported March 9.
It’s become almost fashionable to dismiss the importance of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case, calling it the weakest of any Trump investigation. But those analysts and others who’d walk over the Bragg case may be missing the overall. It goes without saying that the Manhattan D.A. wouldn’t waste time prosecuting a case he knew or believed he couldn’t win. Still, there’s value in the Stormy Daniels case and its outcome beyond the zero-sum metric of winning and losing.
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