The indictment of Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Thursday sent shockwaves around the country. Trump’s defenders — and even some legal experts — haven’t been shy about describing the prosecution of Trump as politically motivated. While the specific indictment has yet to be revealed, Bragg appears likely to charge Trump with felony “falsifying of business records” pertaining to a Federal Election Commission violation relating to buying the silence of pornographer Stormy Daniels, who alleged the two had an affair. Bragg is further employing a dubious and novel legal theory to charge Trump because the statute of limitations on this crime has expired.
Daniels would later publicly deny she had an affair with Trump and that she had been paid hush money to stop talking about it. Her personal lawyer, Michael Avenatti, who was a driving force in bringing the allegations against Trump, would later end up in prison for tax fraud and stealing from clients, including Daniels. As for the seriousness of the underlying FEC charge, Hillary Clinton and the DNC only paid a fine for the FEC violations relating to the false and defamatory Trump-Russia dossier, which amounts to a far bigger public deception than Trump buying off a woman over their alleged private affair.
But in evaluating whether Bragg’s charges against Trump are politically motivated, it’s worth remembering that Trump is the second major GOP presidential candidate in less than a decade that has been indicted by a local Democratic district attorney. And
