Really? Is that all you’ve got?

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed charges against former President Donald Trump last week, making Trump the first former president ever charged with a crime. For such a historic occasion, one would think the crime would be of some great magnitude. What high crime could Trump have committed that would bring him before a judge?

Falsifying business documents.

Here’s the quick version of events that have played out on the news for the last eight years: Three people claimed to have scandalous stories about presidential candidate Donald Trump. Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, paid them to keep quiet. Trump then paid Cohen.

We are not lawyers, and we do know that New York laws are different from Georgia laws, but it doesn’t appear that Trump had done anything illegal at that point.

But as a presidential candidate, Trump had to report any expenditure intended to help him win the election. It’s reasonable that two women alleging affairs with the married Trump and a man claiming to know of an illegitimate child Trump fathered would have negatively impacted his chances of winning the presidency, so the payments to those individuals should have been noted on election reports.

Instead, the payments from Trump to Cohen were marked as legal fees.

Cohen has pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and is expected to testify against Trump in the New York case, but the Department of Justice hasn’t filed any charges against Trump himself.

Bragg has focused on the documents that enabled the payments from Trump to Cohen. He’s filed 34 counts because he alleges 34 documents have been falsified.

Bragg has given himself a difficult challenge. New York law sets the statute of limitations for misdemeanor fraud cases at two years and felony ones at five years, but the law allows some exemptions, such as if a person has spent most of those years out of the state. The documents listed in the indictment are all from 2017, so Bragg will have to prove an exemption applies to Trump. He’s filed the charges as felonies, so he will have to prove Trump violated the elections law — even though he isn’t charged with that — and then prove that he falsified the documents to cover that up.

All for charges that, even if successful, would probably result in a fine. While each charge could result in four years imprisonment, legal scholars quoted in other publications strongly believed Trump wouldn’t see a day of jail even if he’s convicted.

So when Trump’s supporters say the case is all about politics, it’s easy to see their point of view. Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.

Other investigations into Trump, if pursued in court, could have much stronger legal standing. The American presidency and the nation’s legal system deserve better than a political catfight masquerading as justice.