Mar. 21, 2023: Unpacking Alvin Bragg's case against Trump
On the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, as pro-Trump rioters were ransacking the Capitol in Washington, prosecutors in Manhattan gathered on Zoom to discuss Donald Trump's bookkeeping practices.\xa0\nMore than two years later, while state and federal criminal investigations into Trump\u2019s culpability for the events of Jan. 6 continue, it is the Manhattan probe that is set to produce the first Trump indictment \u2014 as soon as this week.\nWhile we don\u2019t know for sure what crime \u2014 or crimes \u2014 that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg will charge Trump with, the weight of available evidence suggests Trump will be charged with violating a New York state law against falsifying business records.\xa0\nSpecifically, Bragg is apparently preparing to argue that Trump created fictitious records during the scheme to pay off Stormy Daniels in October 2016 after she threatened to expose their alleged affair.\nThe return of the hush money caper to the white-hot center of American politics has a lot of people scratching their heads and puzzling over some basic questions: Of all the Trump scandals, why is this the one that\u2019s going to get him arrested? Didn\u2019t authorities already rule out any culpability for Trump in that case? And isn\u2019t Bragg\u2019s legal theory hopelessly flawed?\nTo understand how one of the OG Trump scandals returned from the dead to ensnare Trump seven years after Daniels got her $130,000, we need to review the case\u2019s complicated history.\nSubscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletter\nRaghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.