The media focus has been other court cases…
But the Manhattan District Attorney COULD kick off in about 45 days in March….
And ALL eyes will be on this first criminal trail in place Donald Trump left in running to live in Florida….
The jury poll is probably not gonna be what Trump would like and need…
When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Donald Trump last April, the first criminal indictment of a former President in history, the case drew some derision. Prosecuting a former President over hush-money payments to a porn star seemed trivial and relied on a legal technicality to bump the charges up to felonies, some said. Given that three other cases were targeting Trump for trying to overthrow the 2020 election and refusing to return national security secrets, Bragg’s case seemed like weak sauce.
Ten months later, the New York case has become less of an afterthought. In fact, it might end up being the main show. As the other three cases find themselves facing various legal roadblocks, Bragg may be the best positioned to hand Donald Trump a felony conviction before the November election.
Bragg is gearing up to bring Trump to trial in late March, according to a person familiar with the case, hopscotching over a federal case focused on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that had been previously seen as likely to be the first of Trump’s four criminal trials. While Trump’s inner circle says it would prefer none of the criminal trials happen before Election Day, some see a trial on the New York case as the next best outcome for the former President. “It is the goofiest of all cases,” says a Republican strategist close to the Trump campaign. “If Trump beats this case, it sets the tone and feeds into his narrative that all of these cases are a witch hunt.”
The Bragg case hinges on the timing of Trump’s efforts to cover up a sex scandal—weeks before the 2016 election. Trump is charged with 34 counts of faking business records to hide payments to actress Stormy Daniels intended to stop her from publicly describing a sexual encounter. Bragg has argued that the charges should be bumped up to felonies from misdemeanors because the payments were covering up a federal crime: election interference….