As to the nature of that conspiracy, Steinglass called the Daniels NDA "a subversion of democracy." He said it was an "effort to hoodwink the American voter." He told "a sweeping story about a fraud on the American people," as The New York Times puts it. "He argue[d] that the American people in 2016 had the right to determine whether they cared that Trump had slept with a porn star or not, and that the conspiracy prevented them from doing so."

Did the American people have such a right? If so, Trump would have violated it even he had merely asked Daniels to keep quiet, perhaps by appealing to her sympathy for his wife. If Daniels had agreed, the result would have been the same. As the prosecution tells it, that still would amount to "election fraud," even though there is clearly nothing illegal about it.

There is a glaring mismatch between the charges against Trump and what prosecutors describe as the essence of his crime, which is not a crime at all. Because they cannot charge him with "election fraud" merely because he tried to hide embarrassing information, they have instead built a convoluted case that relies on interacting statutes and debatable assumptions about Trump's knowledge and intent.