The 4 criminal investigations into Donald Trump, explained

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In retrospect, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Donald Trump, the many-times-bankrupt former president and game show host who confessed on video to sexual assault, would be indicted for the most absurd crime imaginable: allegedly falsifying business records to cover up the hush money payments he paid to a porn actress, which was itself intended to cover up an extramarital affair Trump allegedly had shortly after his third wife gave birth to their son Barron.

On Tuesday, Trump was indicted on 34 separate counts related to this alleged scheme.

Nor is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into Trump, which led to this indictment, the only such investigation that could lead to criminal charges against the former president. There are three other known investigations into Trump.

Two are federal; a federal special prosecutor, Jack Smith, took over both last November.

The first federal probe involves an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida compound, which revealed that the former president kept classified documents — including, according to the Washington Post, ones “relating to nuclear weapons.”

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The dubious legal theory at the heart of the Trump indictment, explained

There is something painfully anticlimactic about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump. It concerns not Trump’s efforts to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, but his alleged effort to cover up a possible extramarital affair with a porn star.

And there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax. It is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him.

The indictment charges Trump with 34 separate counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a felony. A separate document laying out the factual basis for Bragg’s allegations against Trump points to a complicated web of arrangements between Trump, his former lawyer Michael Cohen (who is identified as “Lawyer A”), and David Pecker, the CEO of American Media, the company that publishes the National Enquirer.

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