It is all but certain that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump, starting March 25, will be the first of the four Trump criminal cases to go to trial.
The conventional wisdom that the Manhattan DA’s criminal prosecution is the weak stepsister of the pending Trump criminal prosecutions is misguided. What gives this case its killer gravitas is the DA’s overwhelming evidence against Trump on the crimes charged and Trump’s motive for committing those crimes.
Trump’s motive mimics former President Richard Nixon’s playbook in covering-up the Watergate scandal. As presidential candidates, both concealed from the voting public the unsavory facts that each knew spelled certain defeat in their presidential races. To facilitate that concealment, Nixon engaged in the federal crime of obstruction of justice, and Trump perpetrated the state crime of falsifying business records.
In June 1972, nearly five months before the presidential election, five men were arrested during a break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Their mission, directed by Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President, had been to steal information from the........