Donald Trump made history earlier this week becoming the first U.S. president formally arrested and charged with a crime — 34 felony counts stemming from “hush money” payments made to an adult film star ahead of the 2016 presidential election. But there’s still a lot to unravel about the complex case against the former president.

Legal scholars are taking to the airwaves and opinion pages to offer praise or criticism for how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is laying out the prosecution’s case in court documents and public statements.

Gothamist pored over court records and sought input from a half-dozen New York attorneys about the underlying issues at play.

Here’s what we learned about the legal theories in this case and what to watch going forward.

Trump is accused of falsifying business records. What does that mean?

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is accusing Trump of falsifying, altering, deleting or omitting business records 34 different times in an attempt to cover up a different crime by him or someone else.

Each of those felony charges are directly connected to a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels less than two weeks before the 2016 election. Daniels claims to have had an affair with Trump a decade prior, and was thinking of going public before the election.

Is it illegal to pay someone for their story?

No, it’s not illegal to pay someone hush money to keep a story quiet. But in this case, Trump is facing charges for allegedly covering the payment in his businesses’ records as part of a scheme to influence the 2016 election.

“The main challenge for District Attorney Bragg will be to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that all these transactions were in furtherance of Trump's election,” said Jerry Goldfeder, veteran election lawyer and director of the Fordham Law School Voting Rights and Democracy Project.

“The defense, of course, is going to argue that it had nothing to do with the campaign. It had to do with Melania, it had to do with his family, it had to do with God knows what.”

Trump is accused of participating in a plan in which Michael Cohen, his lawyer and personal fixer at the time, cut the check to Daniels in exchange for her silence. Trump then reimbursed Cohen with $35,000 monthly checks in 2017. Cohen submitted vouchers fraudulently claiming the payments were for legal services.

The former president paid Cohen with his own personal funds and from his trust, not with money from his business. But the payments were routed through the Trump Organization and noted on the business’ ledgers.

Each of those checks, vouchers and ledger items is the subject of a separate charge Trump is facing — hence the 34 separate counts. If the case gets through to trial, a jury or judge will decide whether he’s guilty or not guilty separately on each count. The former president pleaded not guilty on Tuesday.

Falsifying businesses is usually a misdemeanor charge. Why is it being charged as a felony here?

In order to bump the charges up from a misdemeanor to a felony, prosecutors have to show that Trump was not only falsifying the business records — but that he was doing it to conceal a separate crime.

That's in part where the alleged "catch and kill" scheme comes into play.

Bragg’s office is accusing Trump and Cohen of cutting a deal in 2015 with David Pecker — then CEO of American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer — to buy the rights to potentially negative stories about Trump and keep them from seeing the light of day ahead of his presidential run.

As for what crime Trump allegedly covered up, Bragg and his office didn’t get specific in the indictment.

At the post-arraignment press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Bragg said the indictment doesn’t specify it because “the law does not so require.” But there are some clues in the court filings that lay out a menu of options related to the “catch and kill” scheme, including:

  • Falsifying business records as a result of American Media Inc. paying $150,000 for the story of Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who claimed to have an affair with Trump, and $30,000 payment to a doorman who claimed to have information about a child Trump had through a separate extramarital affair. (Pecker signed a non-prosecution agreement to testify in the Trump case, and AMI later determined the doorman’s story to be false, according to court filings.)
  • Conspiring to promote a candidate through unlawful means, which is illegal under New York state election law.
  • Various crimes to which Cohen already pleaded guilty, including bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign-finance violations. Bragg’s office also accused Trump of participating in a tax scheme — doubling his payment to Cohen so his former lawyer could fraudulently claim it as income and still net the full reimbursement amount after paying income taxes.
  • Violating the federal cap on campaign contributions, since Cohen’s payment to Daniels was designed to influence the election and could be construed as a contribution to Trump’s campaign.

Is charging Trump with a felony a risky move for Bragg?

It could be. Some of the crimes Trump is accused of concealing are federal crimes — such as violating the cap on contributions to a presidential campaign.

That could be an issue Trump’s legal team may take issue with. He’s facing state charges, but he’s accused in part of covering up federal crimes — and legal experts say that concept hasn’t really been tested in the state courts yet.

“There is risk but Bragg could succeed here, including because there are no court decisions actually interpreting what constitutes ‘another crime’ for the purposes of this statute,” Norman Eisen, E. Danya Perry and Fred Wertheimer wrote in a February joint essay on Just Security, an NYU-affiliated website on security and democracy issues.

In his press conference, Bragg alluded to a number of crimes Trump tried to conceal — some of which are state-level crimes. That includes the alleged tax scheme, in which he overpaid Cohen with the idea that Cohen would report it as income. That alleged crime would apply at both the state and federal levels, since Cohen is based in New York.

But even the tax theory is novel, too. The scheme called for Cohen to essentially overpay taxes to New York state, all in an alleged effort to conceal the hush money payment to Daniels.

“It’s sort of bizarre, but it’s part of the concealing — let’s make sure we conceal this real, real good,” Catherine Christian, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said Wednesday on WNYC’s "The Brian Lehrer Show."

What are some of the next steps for Trump’s defense attorneys?

The defense team includes at least the three attorneys who appeared with him in court on Tuesday and likely many others working in the background. Attorneys Joe Tacopina, Susan Necheles and Todd Blanche later spoke to throngs of reporters as they exited the courthouse.

“A state prosecutor is prosecuting a federal election law violation that doesn't exist, according to federal election law officials,” Tacopina said, offering a preview of their defense. “It's as simple as that.”

Since Bragg did not specify all of the crimes the alleged falsification of business records was concealing, experts say Trump’s team will likely request a “bill of particulars” that requires the prosecution to spell out how they are charging each of their counts.

Trump’s team is also expected to file a motion to dismiss, potentially on several different grounds including the fact that the prosecutors did not clearly state what crime elevates these typically misdemeanor charges.

“They need to know what offense is lifting this misdemeanor up to a felony level, or they have no way to challenge it,” said John Kaley, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York and a partner at Doar Rieck Kaley and Mack.

What kind of penalties could Trump face if convicted?

First-degree falsification of business records is a Class E felony, the lowest-level felony in state law. Each charge carries a maximum of four years in prison — though it’s highly unlikely that Trump, a first-time offender, would get anywhere near that sentence if convicted.

That doesn’t mean Trump hasn’t tried to capitalize on it, though.

In a fundraising solicitation to his supporters on Wednesday, Trump totaled up the potential maximum sentence: 136 years in prison.

“I sat in a courtroom in the city I grew up in, the city I raised my family in, the city I loved — to hear that I could face 136 years in prison for having committed NO CRIME,” he wrote before asking for a campaign contribution.

A more demure Trump appeared in court on Tuesday, but then delivered a speech from Mar-a-Lago that night in which he was openly critical of the case and the justice system. Could that become an issue in this case?

When Trump was in court, state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan warned him to avoid making statements or engaging in conduct that could, “incite violence, create civil unrest, or jeopardize the safety or well-being of any individuals.”

But in his Mar-a-Lago speech, he repeated his well-worn, unsubstantiated attacks on the election system and once again took direct aim at Bragg, hurling attacks at him and his family.

That kind of rhetoric might be grounds for a gag order, in which the court bars the defendant from discussing the case in public with the threat of potential sanctions. But experts are divided on whether the court will actually take that step.

“It’s frowned upon,” said Cheryl Bader, associate professor at Fordham University Law School and a former assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey. She said a gag order could be seen as a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and noted that political speech is the most highly protected form of speech.

“It would also just be impractical to say, ‘everybody in the nation is going to be talking about this on all the talk shows and everywhere else, but Trump, you can't talk about this as you try to win this election,’” Bader added.

While Trump’s post-arraignment speech criticized Merchan, his son Donald Trump Jr. went a step further and posted a photo of Merchan’s daughter on social media. That escalation might force the court to act out of an express concern for public safety.

“The man is running for president so he has to have certain leeway,” said Kaley, the former assistant U.S. attorney from New York. “But if God forbid something happened to the judge's daughter, or there was an attempt, I could see some kind of gag order.”

The ultimate gag order, Kaley said, would be to hold Trump on Rikers Island until the trial happens, though he did not anticipate that happening. “I think Mr. Trump will have more sense than that.”

What's next in this case? How quickly should we expect it to move through the court system?

You shouldn't expect it to move quickly at all, really.

Trump’s next court date isn't scheduled until December, so it's going to be quite some time until there's another in-person appearance.

Before then, it'll likely be like any other white-collar criminal case in New York. There will be a flurry of court filings. Trump’s attorneys will likely make a motion to dismiss the case. The prosecution will get its chance to respond. Trump will get his chance to respond to the response.

All the while, any interim rulings could be appealed and work their way through the court system. If the case gets to trial, it wouldn’t happen until 2024.