What You Need to Know About the Trump Charges

Late last month I wrote exactly the kind of piece that makes every legal analyst nervous. I tried to anticipate the Manhattan grand jury’s indictment of Donald Trump and to evaluate its (likely) merits. In my view then, an indictment wouldn’t be frivolous, but it would be unwise — mainly because it was expected to rely on a largely untested legal theory that would transform the business falsification misdemeanors Trump is accused of into felonies by tying the misdemeanors to other crimes that either hadn’t been prosecuted or rest on contentious legal arguments.

In other words, the case wasn’t expected to be nearly as straightforward as the possible felony case in Georgia relating to Trump’s effort to overturn the election result in Georgia, the possible federal felony case relating to Trump’s effort to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power or the possible federal felony case relating to Trump’s mishandling of classified documents and efforts to obstruct justice.