The New York indictment of former President Donald Trump, which was unsealed on Tuesday, includes 34 felony counts. All of them are related to a 2016 payment aimed at keeping porn star Stormy Daniels from telling the press about her alleged 2006 affair with Trump.
Although there was nothing inherently criminal about that hush payment, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, has transformed it into nearly three dozen felonies through a tricky two-step process. First, Bragg portrays the payment as a violation of federal election law. Second, he claims Trump repeatedly falsified business records to cover up that uncharged and unproven crime. Yet the underlying conduct, while salacious, still does not seem serious enough to justify the first-ever prosecution of a former U.S. president, especially when the defendant is seeking that office again by running against an incumbent who is a member of the district attorney's party.
