In a criminal case alleging that, in 2017, business records were falsified regarding a nondisclosure agreement executed in 2016, Judge Juan Merchan has allowed prosecutors from elected progressive Democratic DA Alvin Bragg’s office to elicit from porn star Stormy Daniels that, in 2011 (i.e., years before anything relevant to the case happened) she was threatened in a parking lot by a man she can’t identify — and whom she did not report to the police. She claims the unknown man warned her to stop telling her story about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006 — i.e., five years earlier. She says the “threat” happened after she did an interview with In Touch magazine about the Trump encounter.

Daniels did not actually connect to Trump this uncharged threat that appears nowhere in the indictment. But how else would a jury see it?