From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow. This is a daily.

This case has problems from the get-go, the longer I look at it, the more problems I see.

In the week since Donald Trump was arraigned, on 34 felony charges.

I think it's strong cross-cutorial trade craft. This is a well-written indictment.

The debate about whether the case against him is either weak or strong, has only intensified.

The indictment is insufficient on its face. It was just a bunch of papers that were stapled together.

These facts are not that squishy to me. This seems like a straightforward business records fraud case.

I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be. You've got tapes, you've got records, you've got a recipe for a very strong case.

This is crap that a pre-law student shouldn't even put in front of a damn judge.

Today, my colleague, Charlie Savage, has been closely studying the case to understand which side is right.

It's Wednesday, April 12.

Charlie, when Donald Trump was indicted last week, we were very eager to finally get a look inside this case

that the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, has been building.

We always had a pretty good sense that he was going after Trump for falsifying business records.

That was kind of the base of the case, which is a set of misdemeanors.

We knew that Bragg would need to prove a second crime in order to make those charges turn into felonies.

Then the indictment comes down, and we don't get an answer to what that second crime is going to be.

We still don't have an answer to that. That's why it feels like there's such a lively debate playing out about whether this case is strong or whether it's weak.

That's where you come in because you are very smart about legal questions and prosecutions.

So, with all that in mind, where should we start?

Let's start by breaking this down.

As you just mentioned, normally bookkeeping fraud, falsifying business records under New York penal law is a misdemeanor.

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