Unsealed Trump Indictment Previews a Case That Puts Us in Uncharted Territory

If the defendant weren’t named Trump, would this prosecutor have brought these charges, or any charges at all? You know the answer to that.

Furthermore, Trump (a Republican) will point out that when he was seeking his party’s nomination for district attorney, Bragg (a Democrat) boasted about how often he had taken on Trump, claiming that he had “sued Trump more than a hundred times.”

Other pretrial motions or defenses at trial will include the arguments that whatever reimbursements were made were paid by Trump with his personal funds and, as former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith recently noted, “an obligation isn’t a campaign expenditure if it exists ‘irrespective’ of the campaign.”

Finally, the defense may (and likely will) argue that Trump didn’t have any “intent to defraud.” Trump might assert that he thought he really was paying Cohen for legal services at the time those payments and the correlative business entries were made.

Trump also might assert that since wealthy men and public figures often are sued for illegitimate reasons, he settled these matters for their “nuisance value” or to spare himself and his family the embarrassment that would come from such scandalous allegations (a defense that was successfully deployed by former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., during his 2011 criminal trial). He also might assert that he would have made these payments regardless of whether he was running for public office.

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