Legal Analyst Reveals Alvin Bragg's 'Strength' Against Trump

Legal analyst Rebecca Roiphe says Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's "strength" against Donald Trump in his criminal hush money trial is that the former president isn't a "run of the mill" businessman.

Trump on Monday became the first former president in U.S. history to stand trial in a criminal case. Following an investigation by Bragg's office, Trump was indicted in March 2023 on charges of falsifying business records relating to hush money paid to adult-film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels alleges that she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which he has denied.

Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has pleaded not guilty to all charges and said the case against him is politically motivated.

On Wednesday, Roiphe, a law professor and former Manhattan ADA, shared her thoughts on the former president's case in a Politix podcast episode. She explained that the prosecutor's "strength" is that Trump is not "some run of the mill" businessman, adding that the former president's "conduct is totally unique" due to the fact he is a public figure and a former president.

"When you make yourself such a public figure, people are looking through things with a fine-toothed comb...Had this evidence been found about some run of the mill, boring, non-exciting business man, this would have been charged. There's no chance in the world a prosecutor's office would find this and say 'no big deal.' This is the kind of thing that would have been prosecuted if a regular person committed it," Roiphe said.

"And that, honestly, that's what I think is the strength of this case from a rule of law perspective because if you want to say no one is above the law, it's harder to say when the conduct is totally unique."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's spokesperson and Bragg's office via email for comment.

Roiphe's comments come after some people have raised concern over the difficulty of finding potential jurors in the case due to Trump being a public figure.

In a letter sent to the prosecution and defense on April 8, Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, listed 42 questions he agreed each prospective juror would be asked before the jury selection was made. These included questions about what publications they read and if they had attended pro or anti-Trump rallies. However, potential jurors won't be asked about their voting history or whether they have made any financial campaign contributions.

Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, said that selecting jurors will be a major challenge for the judge.

"Jury selection alone will be challenging because everyone knows Trump and has an opinion about him. Judge Merchan may have to go through hundreds of potential jurors to find 12 who can be fair and impartial," he previously told Newsweek.

In addition, Texas-based jury consultant Robert Swafford noted both the defense and prosecutors would scrutinize possible jurors for signs of bias, but warned this may prove impossible to detect.

"I'm sure that both legal teams are doing research on the prospective jurors' social media accounts, their voting records, any prior criminal convictions, and credit histories—everything that can be searched in a database," Swafford said. "But at the end of the day, if someone scrubbed their social media or their activity on internet forums, those online trails become very hard to find. If someone simply denies they have certain biases, that is even more difficult to disprove."

Trump is also facing a criminal trial over accusations he mishandled classified documents then obstructed their return to the relevant authorities, and over allegations he broke the law attempting to overthrow the 2020 presidential election both across the nation and in the state of Georgia specifically. He has pled not guilty to all charges and insists the cases against him are politically motivated.