Former Trump lawyer: the criminal charges won't work in his favor.

New York. Former President Donald Trump will face a criminal trial for the first time in less than two weeks, and his former attorney believes Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will have no trouble getting a guilty verdict. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, attorney Alan Dershowitz, who represented Trump in his first impeachment, said Trump's legal team should expect the worst-case scenario given their current 0-3 record in New York courtrooms. He added that it would be foolish to let the former president take the stand in his own defense in court. Four other unnamed sources close to Trump also told the publication that they feared Bragg could set “potential perjury traps” for Trump if he were to be sworn in on the witness stand.

“The Trump team has to assume there will be a criminal conviction. It's a terrible case, in my opinion ... but any freshman could win a case against Donald Trump in Manhattan, so they have to assume they're going to lose this case in front of a jury,” Dershowitz said. “[My advice would be] to focus on an appeal rather than a trial, so, in this case, the client has no walls. I don't see what specifically Donald Trump could add in a deposition.”

“I think Trump is correct to view these cases as political, and he is correct to respond to these cases publicly by saying they are political,” he continued. “But he should not give the other side an opportunity to get caught up by engaging in hysteria inside the courtroom, whether it's on the witness stand or sitting at his desk with his lawyers.”

The allegations against Trump

Bragg was the first to indict Trump in the spring of 2023.

The Manhattan District Attorney charged the former president with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels facilitated by his former personal attorney Michael Cohen during his 2016 presidential campaign. While the allegations are usually misdemeanors, Bragg escalated them to criminal misdemeanors by characterizing the hush money payments as illegal campaign contributions.

Further details

Cohen himself has already served a three-year federal prison sentence for his role in the scheme among other crimes, and will be considered one of Bragg's key witnesses at trial. Daniels, who was paid $130,000 hush money in 2016, could also be called to the witness stand. Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, has admitted to having an affair with Trump shortly after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron.

Past court defeats

Trump has yet to win a case in New York after becoming a private citizen in 2021. In 2023, he was ordered to pay $5 million in civil damages to writer E. Jean Carroll for sexual harassment. Then earlier this year, he lost a separate defamation case when a jury found he lied in accusing Carroll of making up sexual harassment allegations for financial reasons and found him liable for $83.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages. He was also ordered to pay the stateNew York$455 million in fines and disinvestment interest after Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that he fraudulently inflated the value of his real estate holdings for tax and insurance benefits.

Predictions

Bragg's prosecution of Trump may be the only one of the president's four upcoming trials that will conclude before Election Day, as his two federal trials and his election interference trial in Fulton County, Georgia, have yet to be formally scheduled. The Supreme Court is currently considering his argument for absolute broad presidential immunity from federal prosecution. This has effectively frozen his election interference caseWashingtonuntil September because the court has until June to reach its verdict, and federal Judge Tanya Chutkan promised both sides two to three months to prepare for trial.