ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams said Sunday on “This Week” that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into former President Donald Trump is an attempt to turn a seven-year-old misdemeanor into a felony.
Anchor Martha Raddatz said, “All eyes are on the Manhattan DA this week. The case seems to hinge on a legal theory that’s never been used in New York. How risky is this?”
Abrams said, “It is risky for a number of reasons. The new theory is in getting it from a misdemeanor to a felony. They are kind of jerry-rigging it to some degree. The reason that’s novel and difficult is it has not been quite done in this way before. But there is also another factor here which is this is just not a misdemeanor case. They’re trying to get into a felony. It is also a seven-year-old case. It is also a case that two other sets of prosecutors, the previous DA and the federal prosecutors, decided not to move forward with.”
He added, “So when people say to me sometimes, well, this had been me, I would have been prosecuted for sure. My response is, if this had been you, I don’t know if, seven years later, they would have revisited this misdemeanor and try to turn it into a felony. So it is a challenging legal theory. They may be able to do it, but there are problems here.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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