is entering day 18 of the historic first criminal proceedings against a former president, but legal experts say prosecutors have yet to identify the “other crime” needed to upgrade misdemeanor charges to a felony conviction.is set to take the witness stand again Thursday for his second day of cross-examination by the former president’s defense team.
One potential object offense prosecutors say Trump could be culpable of is a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act, the same federal campaign finance law Cohen pleaded guilty to violating. Simply put, Bragg’s team is seeking to prove two underlying allegations against Trump: that the 11 checks he paid to Cohen in 2017 were misclassified as “legal expenses” in order to cover up hush money payments and that it was done for electoral reasons rather than merely to save Trump from personal embarrassment. The former president has denied Daniels’s allegations about the alleged affair and contends the lump $420,000 amount he paid Cohen was for legal work.
“If I had to bet, I would say that the jury ultimately will be convinced that this was done to cover up another crime, but the theory that they have to follow in order to find that is a little convoluted, and I think that even for most lawyers who have been following the trial, it’s been a little difficult to figure out exactly what the DA’s theory is,” SklanskyAnd if prosecutors want to rely on Cohen’s 2018 guilty plea to the campaign finance violation, then they must confront the fact that...