BRAD SMITH: WHAT I WOULD HAVE TOLD THE TRUMP JURY. In recent days, it has become clear that the Trump trial, in which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg seeks to imprison former President Donald Trump for a maximum of 136 years over allegedly false bookkeeping, will somehow come down to federal campaign finance law. In this way: Trump is charged with falsifying his company’s business records regarding his payment for a legal nondisclosure agreement with the porn actress Stormy Daniels — and doing so with the intention of committing another crime. But prosecutors have never specified what that other crime is. 

In various court filings, however, prosecutors have suggested they plan to argue that Trump intended, along with the false bookkeeping, to violate a state law that bars promoting a political candidacy “by unlawful means.” That’s the other crime, prosecutors will say, and the “unlawful means” will be a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act, or FECA, the 1970s-era law that regulates political fundraising and spending in federal elections.