Trump charges: The strongest/weakest case you've ever/never heard

Star Tribune opinion editor's note: The following excerpts by sources we monitor were published in connection with the arraignment of former President Donald Trump on Tuesday in New York, after which the charges against him were unsealed. We've included URLs that will take you to the full articles, though note that some may be behind paywalls.

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For weeks, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has come under heavy fire for pursuing a case against Donald Trump. Potential charges were described as being developed under a novel legal theory. And criticism has come not only from Trump and his allies, as expected, but also from many who are usually no friends of the former president but who feared it would be a weak case.

With the release of the indictment and accompanying statement of facts, we can now say that there's nothing novel or weak about this case. The charge of creating false financial records is constantly brought by Bragg and other New York DAs. In particular, the creation of phony documentation to cover up campaign finance violations has been repeatedly prosecuted in New York. That is exactly what Trump stands accused of. …

The books and records counts laid out in the charging papers against Trump are the bread and butter of the [Manhattan district attorney's] office. Trump, who pleaded not guilty to all charges on Tuesday, is the 30th defendant to be indicted on false records charges by Bragg since he took office just over a year ago, with the DA bringing 151 counts under the statute so far. …

While the particulars of Trump's case are unique, his behavior is not. Candidates and others have often attempted to skirt the disclosure and dollar limit requirements of campaign finance regulations and falsified records to hide it. Contrary to the protestations of Trump and his allies, New York prosecutors regularly charge felony violations of the books and records statute — and win convictions — when the crimes covered up were campaign finance violations, resulting in false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity. …

[It's] worth noting that Trump was a federal candidate, whereas … other New York cases involved state ones. But court after court across the country has recognized that state authorities can enforce state law in cases relating to federal candidates. …

Whatever happens next, one thing is clear: Trump cannot persuasively argue he is being singled out for some unprecedented theory of prosecution. He is being treated as any other New Yorker would be with similar evidence against him.

Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former Manhattan chief assistant district attorney, and Norman Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump, writing in the New York Times. The full article was republished at startribune.com/opinion under the headline "We finally know the case against Trump, and it's strong" (tinyurl.com/roundup-agnifilo).

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The spectacle of a former president driving in a motorcade to the courthouse and sitting at a defense table surrounded by his attorneys will long be remembered as a symbol of the poisonous politics of the Trump era.

It'd be one thing if there were a clear felony violation that is consistently prosecuted, but the unsealed indictment is as weak as advertised.

The case, we learned, involves not just a hush payment to Stormy Daniels, but to a Playboy playmate Trump also allegedly had an affair with and to a former Trump doorman who claimed (apparently falsely) to know the story of a Trump love child.

Hush payments aren't illegal. But the reimbursements from the Trump Organization to Trump fixer Michael Cohen were logged as legal expenses. This was misleading and is potentially a misdemeanor. Prosecuting Trump over misdemeanors would be too ridiculous even for Bragg, who campaigned on nailing Trump and showing leniency to street criminals. It would also run afoul of the fact that the statute of limitations has lapsed on any misdemeanor.

So Bragg needed a way to transform the misdemeanors into felonies, which he can do, in theory, if the false business accounting was in the service of another crime. There's been a great deal of speculation about what that other crime is, and the much-anticipated indictment … doesn't say.

Instead, it catalogs every false business entry, deeming each a felony, in a frowned-upon practice known as "stacking" to try to make an attenuated or relatively minor offense seem more serious through sheer repetition.

The editors of National Review. Full article at tinyurl.com/roundup-nr.

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The criminal indictment of former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump is historic and unprecedented. It stands for the principle that, in the United States, no one is above the law.

At the same time, from the perspective of protecting U.S. democracy, the indictment is poorly timed. It would have been far better for the stability of our democracy if Trump had first been charged with crimes connected to his attempts to subvert that democracy by pressuring Georgia election officials to find more votes, not to mention interfering with the transfer of power on and around Jan. 6, 2021. If prosecutors in different jurisdictions consider it improper to confer with each other on timing, then Bragg should have waited for others to move first.

The relatively minor charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney regarding Trump's alleged hush money payments to cover up extramarital sexual encounters do not target the core of Trump's challenge to our democratic constitutional system. As a practical matter, they may even make it more difficult to prosecute him for more serious crimes.

Noah Feldman, a professor of law at Harvard University, writing as a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. The full article was published Tuesday at startribune.com/opinion under headline "This should've been a later Trump indictment, not the first" (tinyurl.com/roundup-feldman).

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As I've argued before, if Trump's role in the hush-money payments broke the law, it's a serious matter, because those payments helped him get elected, and the plot to cover them up sent his former lawyer to prison. Trump, the statement of facts says, "orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the defendant's electoral prospects." If this is true, it's perverse to suggest that Trump's success in this scheme — represented by him winning the presidency — is a reason not to prosecute him.

Nevertheless, for all the hype going into Tuesday, the indictment feels anticlimactic. …

Indeed, what's struck me over the last two days in New York is a distinct lack of excitement. Many who detest Trump, I suspect, have lost faith in the ability of the legal system to hold him to account. And while his supporters may threaten civil war, not many of them seem willing to brave Manhattan, which they've been told is a crime-ridden hellhole.

Michelle Goldberg, a columnist for the New York Times (tinyurl.com/roundup-mgoldberg).

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As the Trump grand jury was in secret, the trial must be in public, but in New York State, basically unique in the country, the public is unable to watch trials unless they are lucky enough to snag a courtroom seat. That should change — for all trials — before the prosecution of Donald J. Trump. …

Long ago, New York feared that cameras would encourage grandstanding and banned them. Over time, as state after state has embraced transparency, it's clear that the benefits, letting people see how cases are presented and proved or not, far outweigh the risks.

A coming trial, with unprecedented public interest, will be an O.J.-sized spectacle in which every interaction is run through the cable TV and Twitter hysteria mills. Cameras in court can be an antidote to such breathlessness. Both Trump boosters and Trump haters would see what actually unfolds: the banalities on which the case is built, how witnesses are examined and cross-examined, how holes are poked in the prosecution. As they do, they are less likely to embrace outlandish conspiracies and likelier to root their reactions in reality. This would be a public education as important as putting Senate hearings on C-SPAN.

The Editorial Board of the New York Daily News (tinyurl.com/roundup-nydn).