“I think it’s going to be an uphill battle for the state, no doubt,” Toland said. “What we can expect is a long drawn out process. What you’ll probably see, is a lot of arguments about that Michael J. Cohen or the attorney you know, ‘he was doing things that we didn’t direct him to do,’ or, ‘We didn’t know he was doing things of that nature.’ I think you’re going to see a lot of those types of arguments.”

Toland said if this case ends up in the hands of a New York jury and Trump is convicted, a lot of unknowns still lie ahead. Then added: “It’s more likely than not that it’ll be hard to get a conviction. These, by all legal accounts, are difficult cases to prove. If there is a conviction, it’s highly unlikely that a former president with no criminal record faces any real chance at jail time.”