If cover-up is the real crime, Trump’s hush-money charges have a Nixonian ring | Sidney Blumenthal

Trump's New York trial is only superficially about his tawdry sex life and really about his ultimate victim: the constitution

Of all of Donald Trump's charged crimes, spelled out in 88 felony counts - from plotting to overthrow the government of the United States to stealing national security secrets, and obstruction of justice along the way - there is one case that most closely parallels the greatest political crime in American history: his trial in New York, scheduled to begin 15 April, for falsifying business records.

Yet against the enormity of the former president's transgressions, that case's gravitas has been diminished by some legal pundits as the runt of the litter" and probably the least serious of the crimes he's been charged with". This case, brought by the Manhattan district attorney, however, reveals Trump as having essentially the same purpose as Richard Nixon in Watergate, hiding the truth through fraud and bribery in order to manipulate the outcome of a presidential election.