Donald Trump’s first criminal trial will be both momentous and tawdry

Yes and no. Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has brought the first criminal indictment against a former president, who also happens to be running again. But the felony charges are low-level and the details tawdry. The case is about sex, money and blackmail. Mr Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, who will testify against him, once described the conduct at issue as the “filth and muck of politics” and, less delicately, a “shit sandwich”.