Analysis: Trump hush-money case raises thorny legal issues

NEW YORK — The cover up is worse than the crime, the expression goes. And in the hush money case against former President Donald Trump, prosecutors say the cover up made the crime worse.In an indictment unsealed Tuesday, prosecutors say the 45th president falsified records about three hush-money payments in order to keep potentially damaging stories from coming to light as he campaigned for the presidency. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said it was his effort to cover up crimes related to the 2016 election that allowed prosecutors to elevate the charges to felonies.The indictment, however, raises many thorny issues about state and federal law that could provide openings for the defense to attack the charges to try to get them tossed before the case even gets to trial.”The bottom line is that it’s murky,” said Richard Hasen, an expert in election law and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles law school. “And the district attorney did not offer a detailed legal analysis as to how they can do this, how they can get around these potential hurdles. And it could potentially tie up the case for a long time.”Trump has railed against the charges, saying he did nothing wrong and the case is political persecution. In remarks from his Mar-a-Lago home just a few hours after his court appearance, he said, “This fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election and it should be dropped immediately.”In the end, the case isn’t about the tawdry details of the hush-money payments. It isn’t about the porn actor — Stormy Daniels — or Trump’s acrimonious relationship with his onetime lawyer-turned-government witness, Michael Cohen.It’s about a presidential candidate using his money and influence to silence potentially damaging stories that might make voters choose another candidate, particularly as Trump’s reputation was suffering at the time from comments he’d made about women.The 34 counts of falsifying business records would normally be misdemeanors, lower-level charges that would not normally result in prison time. But they were bumped up to felonies — which carry up to four years behind bars — because, Bragg says, they were done in an effort to commit or conceal other crimes.The $130,000 payment to Daniels exceeded the federal cap on campaign contributions, Bragg said. He also cited a New York state election law that makes it a crime to promote a candidate by unlawful means.”That is what this defendant did when he falsified business records in order to conceal unlawful efforts to promote his candidacy, and that is why we are here,” one of the case prosecutors, Chris Conroy, told the judge Tuesday.Prosecutors filed a “statement of facts” that told their story of a scheme to protect Trump’s presidential prospects by buying and suppressing unflattering information about him. Still, some legal observers were surprised that the indictment itself wasn’t more specific about how each of the charges was elevated to a felony.”There are an awful lot of dots here which it takes a bit of imagination to connect,” said Richard Klein, a Touro Law Center criminal law professor. Bragg said the indictment doesn’t specify the potential underlying crimes because the law doesn’t require it. But given the likelihood of Trump’s lawyers challenging it, “you’d think they’d want to be on much firmer ground than some of this stuff,” said Klein, a former New York City public defender.Hasen said it’s not clear whether candidates for federal office can be prosecuted in cases involving state election laws. The defense may also argue the case can’t be brought in state court if it involves a federal election law.