Sorry I spent an hour writing this and now I want to post it even though the comment in reply to me is dead. I don't think that comment should be dead except for the first sentence where they came in hot. But it's otherwise important for the conversation going on.

> here is an article outlining his plans and promise on doing just that before he took office

This article does not show that Bragg ran for office promising to prosecute Trump. Quite the opposite. Notwithstanding the article you linked was written after the election, it doesn't even allege what you are claiming.

Bragg, who will be sworn into office on January 1, said he hasn’t been briefed on the facts of the Trump case, which is before a state grand jury. But he indicated he has no plans to disrupt the investigation he’s inheriting even as he also wants to focus on his own agenda.

“This is obviously a consequential case, one that merits the attention of the DA personally,” Bragg said in a recent interview over lunch in Harlem.

He ran on a platform to shake-up the culture of the storied prosecutor office.

Half the article isn't even about Trump, but about Braggs other plan's, you know... the platform on which he actually ran. The article admits Bragg did not campaign on prosecuting Trump when it says "he also wants to focus on his own agenda.", explicitly differentiating Bragg's agenda from prosecuting Trump. The entire "Day One Plans" section is what Bragg actually campaigned on: "reducing gun violence and addressing what he’s called a “humanitarian crisis” at Rikers, the long-troubled New York City jail" according to the article.

Bragg even explicitly says he plans to treat Trump the same as any other citizen, in that he will apply the same standards to Trump: "even though the investigation involves a former president, he would apply “the analysis that we’ve always used, I’ve always used, in multiple offices.” He said that is: “Would you bring this case otherwise? That’s got to be the guiding light.”

So thanks for the article, it proves my point. You won't be able to find one that proves your point, because Bragg didn't actually campaign on prosecuting Trump.

> The falsification was that the records were not properly labeled as campaign expenditures.

Well that's the crux of the matter. Your framing, that they were "not properly labeled" was Trump's defense, and was rejected by a jury after reviewing the evidence. In fact, the jury found the records were not properly labeled intentionally in the commission of a crime.

> which is usually not done by local/state courts

But sometimes is, as in this case.

> prosecutors usually don't have the authority to prosecute on federal campaign laws

But sometimes they do? Either way that's not what happened here, they didn't prosecute on federal campaign laws. All they had to do was show that Trump intended to commit a crime, one of which could be violating campaign finance laws. That's not the same as prosecuting a federal campaign law. And besides, the article lists two additional crimes that were on the table to satisfy that requirement.

> this case is very novel in that regard.

I would expect it to be -- not too many people are prosecuted for the facts of this case because not too many people put themselves in a situation to be prosecuted as such.

> Furthermore, the judge allowed the jurors to differ on what the second crime (the alleged crime the falsified records were covering for) actually was. So, the jury was not unanimous on all facts of the case.

Wrong, the jury was unanimous on the facts required for conviction. If the law requires the commission of an additional crime, and 6 jury members points to crime A, while the other 6 jury members points to crime B, that satisfies the requirement of the law. There's no requirement for them all to have to point to the same crime, why should there be? The point of the upgrade to a felony is to make it so that if you do more crime, you do more time. What is the problem with this, that seems reasonable to me.

> you are usually given ample and crystal-clear instructions at every step of the process, notably getting an easy-to-follow checklist of what facts you have to find to find the defendant guilty.

And sometimes you're not? You keep pointing to "usually this" and "usually that", but not everything is usual, especially in an unusual case. Something being unusual doesn't mean it's wrong or nefarious. And you seem to be speaking as to how things are usually done, but I'm not confident you have the depth/breadth of knowledge or experience in this area to actually claim how things usually are with any authority. There are other resources that have been posted here (a link from justsecurity) which seem to indicate that this law has been used frequently in the past to prosecute individuals.

> Judge Merchan did NOT do this and instead gave somewhat confusing verbal instructions to the jury.

You can't say this, you don't know the jury was confused. If they were confused, they had ample opportunity for clarification from the judge. In fact they used this process to get clarification over the transcript and their instructions. The judge asked them if they needed more info and they said no. So the jury was not confused by their instructions. When they rendered their guilty verdict, they knew exactly what they were doing.