The “hush money” election-interference case may be the smallest potato in the patch of Trump’s four indictments. But its significance is profound.
It’s all too easy to dismiss as a peccadillo the New York charges against Trump — his alleged falsification of business records to conceal a hush money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels late in the 2016 campaign. Sure, relative to allegedly subverting American democracy after the 2020 election and jeopardizing national security by withholding classified documents, it is.
But it is plausible that this alleged election interference altered the outcome of the 2016 presidential race, which was decided by a mere 80,000 voters in just three states. Trump's detractors see it as the “gateway drug” leading to the events of Jan. 6.
Under our Constitution, the trial of a serious crime such as this begins with picking a jury. If I were the prosecutor picking this jury, I would look for intelligent, college-educated men and women with an apparent ability to grasp the facts and understand the court’s instructions as to the law. If I represented Trump, I would look for a heterogeneous jury, unlikely to come to a unanimous conclusion, consisting of MAGA-type people who listen to Fox 5 and might buy the line that the trial is a “witch hunt” and an “assault on America.”
The jury’s verdict must be unanimous. The judge will instruct the jury more than once that they are bound to follow the evidence brought out at trial and leave at home their biases and prejudices. The only thing they mustn’t leave at home is their common sense. The potential evidence against Trump is damning. He is accused in 34........