Filing false business record’s….
It is punishable with ‘misdemeanour unless prosecutors can prove the defendant acted with an intent to commit another crime, in which case the charge can be elevated into a Class E felony, the state’s lowest-level felony count.’….
The monies involved in the case go from $130,000 to $420,000….
The Manhattan DA says the Trump action could been seen as other state and federal crimes , but Trump has NOT been charged with anything else…
Trump, an ex-President and if convicted, would be first offender and a jail sentence remote….
(A case with another sexual angle in it, eh?)
BUT?
Trump, the defendant, HAS attacked the DA, Judge and the judges family in the media and the judge DOES have ability to put Donald Trump in jail at the cities Rikers Prison….
For Trump?
This IS NOT something that is a just Mickey Mouse it would appear…
He has had his lawyer’s try NUMEROUS efforts to get the case thrown out and delayed….
A conviction would make him a convicted FELON…..
Something he knows most Americans would NOT be comfortable when voting in the November Presidential Election….
In addition?
The end of the trial and a possible Supreme Court loss in his ‘Blanket Immunity’ try would bring into gear a Washington D.C. criminal trial right after….
Trump would going from one court room and criminal trial to another in places that he KNOWS are NOT gonna have sympathetic judges and juries…
For my money?
I’m no lawyer….
But Trump’s chances of winning this case in New York City ARE NOT GOOD….
The case has drawn intense scrutiny — in part because it represents the first-ever criminal prosecution of an ex-president. It also involves $130,000 paid to an adult film actress ahead of the 2016 presidential election to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
While some legal observers consider the charges a reasonable use of New York’s penal code, others view them as a legally shaky effort to tie business fraud to attempts to keep information about Trump’s behavior hidden from voters.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has defended his approach by saying the allegations against Trump are not out of the ordinary in the nation’s financial capital and calling the charges the “bread and butter of our white collar work.” Cases include instances of business owners and companies falsifying records to evade insurance payments, cover up theft and improperly secure federal loans, including from pandemic-relief programs, according to Bragg’s office.
Across New York state, prosecutors filed charges of first-degree falsifying business records 11,663 times in cases arraigned in state and superior criminal courts from 2014-2023, according to records provided by the New York State Office of Court Administration. The Manhattan district attorney’s office brought those charges in 437 cases in the decade preceding Trump’s indictment in April 2023, prosecutors said in a court filing in November. In many instances, there were additional, more serious charges included in the indictments….
…
Some analysts said Trump’s age, 77, and the lack of a prior conviction would probably preclude a jail sentence.
New York attorney Matthew Galluzzo, also a former Manhattan prosecutor, said Trump’s chances of jail would increase substantially if he publicly denigrates the jury or judge and fails to demonstrate contrition for a guilty verdict.
“He risks jail if he loses badly,” Galluzzo said, “and if he disrespects the process as a ‘witch hunt’ and says the judge is biased and that ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ The judge might say, ‘Fine, do 90 days in Rikers and see how you like it.”….
Note…
image….Donald Trump arrives for a news conference at 40 Wall Street after a pretrial hearing at Manhattan criminal court on March 25 in New York…Yuki Iwamura/AP