This morning, I reread New York state’s 34-count felony indictment of Donald Trump - and the indictment’s accompanying “statement of facts.” I wanted to be sure the case was as bizarre as I remembered.

It was worse.

Donald Trump’s first criminal trial officially began today with opening statements in a lower Manhattan courthouse. That dry statement is true, as far as it goes. But it does not begin to capture the miscarriage of justice unfolding before our eyes - or the profound consequences it will have, whatever its outcome.

Yet the elite media has gone along with the charade, just as it did in the insane New York state civil trial of Trump that ended two months ago. Reporters have covered both cases as if they were normal uses of prosecutorial power, rather than explaining what is really happening in them and how bleeding-edge aggressive are the legal theories underlying them.

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In the civil case, this meant articles that referred endlessly to the “fraud” Trump had committed while rarely stating clearly that he fully repaid the loans made to him and that the banks that made them did not consider themselves defrauded.

But what is happening in the criminal case is worse, because Trump faces the real possibility of prison time if he is convicted.

The media frequently refers to the case as a “hush money” trial, because it involves $130,000 in payments that Michael Cohen, a one-time lawyer for Trump, made to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 after Daniels threatened to expose an affair she had with Trump.

In reality, though, the payments are not at issue.

Cohen pled guilty in 2018 to federal charges of making an illegal campaign contribution on the $130,000 in payments - as well as concealing $4 million in taxable income and avoiding $1.3 million in tax - and was sentenced to three years in prison. Trump was not charged in that case.

Instead, he is being charged with violating New York state’s “business records” law by misclassifying $420,000 in payments to Cohen in 2017 as legal services, when in fact they were reimbursement for Cohen’s payment to Daniels and another $50,000 payment Cohen had made. (Those two payments totaled $180,000, which Trump’s top financial officer then doubled to $360,000 to account for the roughly 50 percent state and local tax rate Cohen would face on the money; the additional $60,000 was a “bonus” to Cohen.)

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(Read it and weep… and there are 33 more counts just like this one)

SOURCE

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Again, all 34 state criminal charges Trump faces relate to whether he and his company properly classified those $420,000 in payments.

So Trump is being charged with 34 felonies for referring to a payment a lawyer made on his behalf - IN HIS OWN RECORDS - as legal services. That’s it. Everything else is noise. Whether Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels is irrelevant. Whether she threatened him with exposure is irrelevant.

But falsifying business records is a misdemeanor, not a felony, in New York state, except in cases where the defendant falsified the records to commit or conceal another crime. Bragg didn’t charge Trump with a second crime, or even specify in the indictment what it was.

In their opening statements Monday morning, prosecutors finally settled - sort of - on an underlying crime, accusing Trump of a “criminal conspiracy” to “promote” his election by hiding . In other words, he was running for President and trying to win.

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To say the least, this theory has some holes legally.

But it has an even bigger hole factually. The heart of the underlying crime - the reason that the case is being charged as a felony - is that Trump supposedly engaged in a "conspiracy" to win election.

BUT TRUMP IS NOT BEING CHARGED FOR ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED IN 2016. He's charged for misclassifying the repayments he made to Cohen in 2017.

And in 2017, at the time of the payments to Cohen, Donald Trump had already beaten Hillary Clinton. He was president of the United States. He didn’t need to engage in a conspiracy to win the 2016 election. He COULD NOT engage in a conspiracy to win the 2016 election, not without a time-travel machine, which is not mentioned in the indictment.

The prosecutors have worked feverishly to get around this little problem using two legal strategies known as finding a really favorable jury and throwing stuff against a wall in the hope it sticks. Lucky them, they have a judge who seems to see the case - and more importantly, the defendant - the same way they do.

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The real tragedy here is that the other criminal cases against Trump are significantly stronger than this one. By which I mean that at the least they are not laughable.

But this case is likely to be the only one to be tried before Election Day.

And so the world - at least that part of the world that’s paid any attention to the charges underlying the case - will be confronted with the spectacle of the leading opposition candidate for President being hamstrung and hauled into court twice by prosecutors affiliated with the ruling party in cases that - at the least - stink of selective prosecution.

If this isn’t lawfare, I don’t know what is.

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