The case against Donald Trump is stronger than anticipated

On Tuesday, Americans were presented with a remarkable split screen of former president Donald Trump sullenly submitting to the indictment process in New York and his familiar raging, furious performance before his closest friends and advisers back at his hotel in Florida. After 50 decades of living in a grey zone of legality, taking full advantage of the myriad ways in which US law avoids punishing wealthy, white-collar defendants for financial offences and resorting, in the end, when necessary, to paying fines, Mr Trump’s fuzzy bookkeeping habits appear to have finally caught up with him.

Mr Trump's final posting on his bespoke social media network, Truth Social, captured his disbelief and outrage: “Heading to Lower Manhattan, the Courthouse. Seems so SURREAL — WOW, they are going to ARREST ME. Can’t believe this is happening in America. MAGA!”

In the courthouse, though, the only words he spoke, reportedly softly, were "not guilty", in response to 34 felony counts involving false financial reporting in furtherance of a range of other alleged crimes.

It was fully anticipated that Mr Trump would face charges related to $130,000 in payments made by his former lawyer and self-declared "fixer" Michael Cohen to the former adult film actress Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence a few weeks before the 2016 presidential election. But it also includes similar payoffs of $150,000 to former model Karen MacDougall who also says she, like Ms Daniels, indulged in an extramarital affair with Mr Trump. That, too, came as no surprise.

However, District Attorney Alvin Bragg did present an unexpected theory that could significantly strengthen his case. The two hush-money payoffs could be tricky to turn into convictions. Defence attorneys will likely argue that statute of limitations has passed. And such payoffs for silence are, on their own, not illegal. Even the bookkeeping fraud charges alone constitute misdemeanours, and would often not be prosecuted.

But, as expected, Mr Bragg is insisting that all 34 counts involve felonies because, under New York law, financial misrepresentations in furtherance of separate crimes rise to the level of felonies punishable by up to four years in prison. Mr Cohen, for example, was sentenced to three years in prison for the payoffs he insists were at the behest of Mr Trump. There is no doubt that he made the payoffs and that Mr Trump subsequently over-reimbursed him, including for taxes the fixer would have incurred in the process.

But Mr Trump's lawyers have many potential arguments to counteract Mr Bragg’s assertions that the former president and his “fixer” were engaged in de facto unlawful campaign contributions or other underlying felonies. They could, for instance, try to argue that Mr Trump routinely made such payments to alleged former lovers throughout his career to protect his reputation and family, and that therefore these payments were routine reputational hygiene rather than covert campaign contributions.

Mr Bragg's surprising addition to the charges that argue the bookkeeping fraud was pursuant to second crimes (often federal ones, further weakening his argument), is to insist that these financial misrepresentations were also intended to break serious New York State laws, primarily state tax regulations. The District Attorney insists that participants in the scheme, including Mr Trump and Mr Cohen, had mischaracterised the true nature of the payments for unlawful tax avoidance purposes, a felony in New York.

It is a remarkable irony for a candidate who spent so much of his 2016 campaign encouraging chants of 'lock her up, lock her up'

These tax allegations give Mr Bragg's case a largely unanticipated safety net, whereby his state tax-avoidance allegations are more secure from the numerous potential weaknesses of his hybrid and untested state/federal campaign finance violation charges.

The National