Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Keenan joins the Live show to discuss reports that Donald Trump will be arraigned in NYC next week.
Video Transcript
- Former President Donald Trump indicted on criminal charges over the alleged cover up of hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. The payments were allegedly made to keep Daniels quiet about a relationship with the former president. The charges have not been made public. Still, legal minds are questioning the strength of the case. And here with more is Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan.
So a little bit of a surprise yesterday evening. And we are dealing with it today. We don't know all the details. But what do we know?
ALEXIS KEENAN: Right. So the reason why we don't know the details is because this indictment has not yet been made public. We're expecting to see it in the coming days. So it's all speculation right now about these charges that are supposedly associated with these alleged hush money payments that Donald Trump made to porn star Stormy Daniels. $130,000 worth of payments. That was back in 2016 on the eve of the presidential election. And so this investigation though brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, it's just one of four probes that various jurisdictions have been making into alleged wrongdoing by Donald Trump.
But there are reports that in this case there may be up to 30 separate charges. But still, there are some legal theories here being challenged. And there's a lot of talk among the legal community about whether or not these particular charges would stick. And the reason is because Alvin Bragg as Manhattan DA, he's responsible for charging state charges. Right. Not federal charges. And in this case, the thinking is that Donald Trump could perhaps be facing in connection with these hush money payments-- falsifying business records charges, those are state New York state charges. And also violations of federal campaign finance laws. So federal charges on one hand. State on the other.
There's questions over whether or not the state charges can sort of be bootstrapped into federal charges, and whether those can be married together in the same type of case brought by an Alvin Bragg. So if that's the case, these hurdles are also involved with the statute of limitations. That has to do with how long a prosecutor has before they need to bring charges to the table. Now in this case, if you look at the New York state law for falsifying business records, that has to be brought-- charges that have to do with that have to be brought within five years for the felony level charge on that particular violation. We are now seven years out from that 2016 payment-- alleged payment I should say. So there might be a problem that this case can even be brought at all on that particular charge.
Now also in the case of falsifying business records, that's usually a misdemeanor. It can become a felony. But in order for it to become a felony, it has to be coupled. There has to be a payment made with intent to make a false-- not a payment made. A false business record made. But then you also have to intend to commit an additional crime by making that ledger in a business record.
So the question here is whether that other crime, that federal crime, can be again married together. Whether or not a judge would even permit that to happen. And also whether judge would permit Bragg as a state level prosecutors prosecuting state crimes to charge this federal crime. So also you wouldn't have a grand jury convened on a misdemeanor. That's not the way grand juries work. They are interested in investigating felonies. So a lot of questions here if these are the particular counts that the DA is looking at.
