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b'A grand jury in Manhattan voted on Thursday to indict former President Donald Trump for his involvement in a hush-money payment, of a hundred and thirty thousand dollars, to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels. In the final days before the 2016 election, the payment was covered up. In the first part of this week\\u2019s political roundtable, the New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos look at what the unprecedented indictment means. \\u201cI think that banana republics are getting a bad rap right now,\\u201d says Osnos. \\u201cIf you want to know what really makes a banana republic, it\\u2019s not going and prosecuting a former President. It\\u2019s allowing certain people to live above the law.\\u201d\\xa0\\nBut the Daniels case is about more than hush money. It\\u2019s also about suppressing news before an election. In the second half of the show, our roundtable explores the history of pre\\xeblection dirty tricks in the realm of foreign policy. In 1968, Richard Nixon\\u2019s campaign quietly worked to sabotage Vietnam War peace talks before voters went to the polls. More than a decade later, allies of Ronald Reagan are reported to have meddled in hostage negotiations with Iran in order to influence the results of the 1980 election\\u2014a claim resurrected by a recent New York Times report. And Donald Trump, of course, was impeached for attempting to extort the President of Ukraine during the infamous \\u201cperfect phone call.\\u201d'