Preliminary thoughts:
It appears extremely thin to me - I need to research it further but as I appreciate it the false business records charge is typically a misdemeanor which would be prescribed by the passage of time. In this case it is charged as a low level felony because related to campaign financing which is connected to the payments or reporting. It thus beats the time bar issue.
But in my humble opinion this indictment is an incredible stretch which gives credence to the claim that it is politically motivated in the extreme.
As a further indication of Bragg’s bad faith note that the indictment references the “grab ‘em by the [expletive deleted]” video - which has zero to do with the substance of the charges and serves only to further sensationalize things.
Note also that one payment - to the doorman - was for something that was not true: a child out of wedlock.
So a guy running for office gets shaken down/ extorted - and lies about the nature of the payments.
As you point out, the elevation from misdemeanor to felony is related to “the intent to commit other crimes”, i.e. campaign finance law violations.
I think this is what this case will turn on. The campaign finance laws in question are state and federal. Both the State of New York and the Federal Election Commission declined prosecution some time back on these charges.
What you seem to have is a DA filing charges based on the belief that there were campaign violations.
The problem for Bragg imo is that there was never a trial or verdict surrounding any violation of campaign finance law by Trump to establish the claim that the payments were sommitted in support of another crime.
For that matter, I will not be surprised if Trumps attorneys argue that there was no crime because well, that pesky little thing: “innocent until proven guilty”. There has been no finding of guilt.
I think this evidence could potentially support misdemeanor charges, and that may be what we see happen in this case: Bragg gets his hand forced to downgrade the charges or the jury finds for a lesser charge.
Which would render all of this academic, petty, and personal. Misdemeanors will not keep Trump off any ballots.
