Here’s a good discussion of the charges and the challenges with securing a felony conviction. In the author’s analysis, a misdemeanor charge is a slam dunk, but the felony is an uphill battle.
The problem for Bragg is that they’re only misdemeanors, and the district attorney wants a felony conviction. Why? Most obviously, to ensure that his prosecution does not look like petty, partisan effort to give Trump a mere slap on the wrist. But there’s a purely legal reason, too: The statute of limitations may have passed for misdemeanor charges, but it surely has not for felony charges.
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But what election law, exactly, did this plot run afoul of? The entire prosecution hinges on that question—and yet neither the indictment nor the statement of facts identifies it. Instead, Bragg briefly described them in a press conference afterward: a New York law that prohibits any conspiracy to “promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means” and a federal limit on campaign contributions. It’s not totally clear whether violation of a federal law can transform the business record charge from a misdemeanor to a felony, so that theory is somewhat shaky.
(By the way, what should we be posting in this thread and what should we be posting in the “Trump Indicted” thread?)