A bad day for Trump and the rule of law

The indictment of former President Donald Trump is a moment — there have been many — at which to pause and state explicitly that Republicans should turn decisively away from him and not renominate him to be president of the United States.

This is not because the indictment secured by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an irresponsible and odiously partisan Democrat, stands even cursory scrutiny. It does not. One might even regard it as comically weak if the stakes were not so high for the 2024 election and the rule of law — and the bad joke were not made at our country's expense.

Bragg has charged Trump with a New York misdemeanor related to the bookkeeping of the former president's hush money payment to a porn star who alleges he had sex with her. Trump denies it, but no one disputes that he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her signature on a nondisclosure agreement. Bragg says Trump recorded this as “legal expenses'' when it was a campaign expense. It is wafer-thin stuff with which to elevate a misdemeanor into a felony by alleging that Trump falsified records to break federal campaign finance laws.