Not all that long ago, I thought that the trial currently being held in The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump would be the last one I’d want to see as the first one tried against the former president. It seemed the least serious of the cases against him. Here’s a man who tried to overthrow American democracy by launching a coup to stay in power. A man who allegedly stole dozens of boxes of classified national-security documents from the White House, some containing secrets about other countries’ nuclear-weapons capabilities, then lied about the documents, concealed them, and obstructed a federal investigation about them.

I thought I would have strongly preferred the cases about those matters to have gone first, particularly the secret-documents case, which substantively would be a lock, were it not for the judge overseeing it. But I feel the need to admit error. The truth is, I’ve come around to the view that People v. Trump is, in at least some ways, the perfect case to put Trump in the dock for the first time, and—I hope, but we’ll see—perhaps prison.

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All these locutions work, but what the case is really about is Trump’s modus operandi—lying. He’s a matryoshka doll of mendacity. He lies, usually lies some more, and then often lies about the lies he’s previously told. He told at least 30,573 lies while president, by The Washington Post’s count. He lies almost whenever he opens his mouth, even when truth would better serve him. To be sure, his other criminal cases involve lies—lies about the 2016 election, lies about the military secrets he stole. But the alleged lies in People v. Trump strike at the core of his moral putrescence—and Trump knows it. They are lies allegedly meant to cover up a tawdry man’s tawdry behavior. The case truly embodies Donald Trump. And for that reason, I think, it deeply disturbs him.

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Trump’s insistence on pointlessly contesting Daniels’s veracity entitled the prosecution to draw her account out even more than it otherwise could have ... The result, thanks to the defendant, was the introduction of more evidence that made him look like a duplicitous clod.