Legal experts have raised concerns about whether prosecutors can convince a jury to convict Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels trial.
Several experts have pointed to the lack of clear evidence that Trump was engaged in election fraud.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is the first former president in United States history to stand trial in a criminal case. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
The Manhattan District Attorney seeks to prove that before the 2016 presidential election, Trump paid, or discussed paying, the two women not to disclose alleged affairs with them, thereby influencing voters as to his character. He denies affairs with either woman.
Newsweek sought email comment from Trump's attorney on Wednesday.
Boston University legal professor, Jed Handelsman Shugerman, wrote in the New York Times on Tuesday that Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has made a "historic mistake" in taking the case.
Under a headline: "I Thought the Bragg Case Against Trump Was a Legal Embarrassment. Now I Think It's a Historic Mistake," Handelsman Shugerman wrote that the case has no clear examples of election fraud.
"Their vague allegation about 'a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election' has me more concerned than ever about their unprecedented use of state law and their persistent avoidance of specifying an election crime or a valid theory of fraud," he wrote.
"As a reality check, it is legal for a candidate to pay for a nondisclosure agreement. Hush money is unseemly, but it is legal," Handelsman Shugerman wrote. "The election law scholar Richard Hasen rightly observed, 'Calling it election interference actually cheapens the term and undermines the deadly serious charges in the real election interference cases.'"
That is a reference to an April 14 opinion article in the Los Angeles Times by Richard Hasen, a University of California Los Angeles law professor, who wrote that the case demeans true election interference cases.
"Although the New York case gets packaged as election interference, failing to report a campaign payment is a small potatoes campaign-finance crime," Hasen wrote. "Any voters who look beneath the surface are sure to be underwhelmed. Calling it election interference actually cheapens the term and undermines the deadly serious charges in the real election interference cases."
Greg Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University in New York, told Newsweek that Bragg's opening statement has not established that what Trump did was illegal.
Germain said "the DA has never explained what law would make the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels illegal."
Newsweek sought email comment from the office of Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, on Wednesday.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more
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