Subject: Re: 34 Felony Counts
the fact that the FEC already ruled it wasn't a violation

They did not. They simply didn't have the votes to move forward on the case. And the two votes against moving forward made it explicit that:

"As explained in further detail below, based on these factors we voted to dismiss these matters as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion."

...not that it wasn't a violation.

You can't charge somebody for tax evasion on an internal document.

That's not really the relevant analysis. If someone falsifies an internal document in order to help them commit tax evasion, the fact that tax evasion is a separate offense doesn't really matter to the business records charge. If I print up a whole bunch of fake invoices so that I can cheat on my taxes, I am

"...guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof."

Note that the latter part is an intent provision. I don't need to actually cheat on my taxes for my fraudulent invoices to now be a felony - it only matters that my intent in making the fraudulent invoices was to either commit or conceal another crime. If I intended to cheat on my taxes when making the fake invoices, but ultimately chickened out, I'm still guilty of the felony version of the crime.

Faking your internal documents is a great way to conceal things, especially from internal compliance and control employees within your organization. Which can easily be fraud, and can often be the commission or concealment of another crime.

We have norms and standards for a reason. This effort by Bragg throws a lot of that out the window, and democrats may not like where it leads.

There's no norm or standard that says that a powerful politician should be immune from being prosecuted for crimes they commit just because they're a powerful politician. The reason that we haven't prosecuted ex-Presidents isn't because we have a norm or standard that they should be immune from prosecution - it's because they haven't committed provable crimes the way Trump appears to have.