Former President Donald Trump was arraigned yesterday in Manhattan, where he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his alleged role in hush money payments during his 2016 presidential campaign to two women who claimed to have had affairs with him. This is the first time a former president has had to plead to criminal charges. The indictment against Trump is a "politically motivated prosecution" that will "enormously help Trump in South Carolina" in 2024, according to Senator Lindsey Graham. Trump later appeared at Mar-a-Lago, where he lashed out at the investigations he faces. Hush money payments are entirely legal, and the charges Trump faces are ultimately about fraud allegedly committed in service of violating unspecified statutes, possibly campaign laws. The maximum contribution an individual could legally make to someone else's campaign was $2,700 at the time of the campaign, far less than $130,000. One of the charges to which Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer and fixer, later pleaded guilty was causing an unlawful corporate contribution. If Trump had paid off one of the women using personal funds or campaign funds and properly reported the transaction on FEC reports, then legally he would have been in the clear.