What are Trump's 34 charges? He's accused of falsifying business records in hush-money payments
Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, has said Trump directed him to pay a combined $280,000 to silence two women who claimed to have had sex with Trump before the 2016 election.
Bart JansenDonald Trump pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 34 counts of allegedly falsifying business records at his namesake company, where he is accused of hiding hush-money payments his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, arranged to silence two women before the 2016 election.
The 34 counts apply to payments the Trump Organization paid Cohen in the guise of a legal fees, according to the indictment and a statement of facts released by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Cohen has testified 11 reimbursements went to him – Trump signed nine of the checks – for arranging to silence porn actress Stormy Daniels for $130,000 and Playboy model Karen McDougal for $150,000 about their claims of having had sex with Trump.
Bragg's office said the Trump organization made a total of 34 false entries in business records from Feburary to December 2017 to conceal the covert $130,000 payment. The indictment describes Cohen submitting invoices for payments and making false entries with voucher numbers into a ledger for the Trump Organization through either the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust or Trump himself.
Under New York law, falsification of business records can be a misdemeanor. But the charges can be elevated to felonies by alleging they were committed with the intent to defraud such as by committing another crime or concealing another crime.
Bragg's office has filed 117 felony counts under the statute against 29 individuals and companies under the statute during his first 15 months in office. Bragg's predecessor filed 168 felony counts against 34 individuals and businesses from 2019 to 2021, according to the district attorney's office.
"We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct," Bragg said in a statement.
Trump's lawyers called the indictment "disappointing" for its lack of detail, particularly about what elevated the charges to felonies.
“It’s really disappointing. It’s sad,” lawyer Todd Blanche told reporters after the hearing. “We’re going to fight it and we’re going to fight it hard.”
If convicted, the maximum sentence for the felony would be four years in prison, but first-time offenders typically get shorter sentences or probation.
The indictment doesn't explicitly specify what elevated the charges from misdemeanors to felonies. Bragg's statement of facts about the case said the scheme mischaracterized the payments for tax purposes, but one of Trump's lawyers has denied that.
"Further, participants in the scheme took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the reimbursements," the district attorney's office statement said.
In a news conference after Trump's arraignment, Bragg said the law doesn't require him to spell out the elevating charges. But he said the allegations were based on violations of state and federal election law.
The payments were recorded, but never filed with the Internal Revenue Service or the Federal Election Commission, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
“They were never filed anywhere,” Tacopina said.
Legal experts expected Bragg to elevate the charges based on alleged violations of campaign finance law but said that was an unusual approach.
Former district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., said the office historically elevated cases of false documentation to felonies when federal statutes were involved. But linking the charges to a campaign finance violation would be unique, he said.
“It’s never been done that I know of with regard to federal election law, which is quite a specific area of law,” Vance told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
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Trump and his allies have criticized Cohen as a disgruntled former employee who is a convicted liar. Cohen was imprisoned in part because of the hush payments.
The statute of limitations for false-documents misdemeanors is typically two to five years, depending on the circumstances. Trump might argue the charges were filed too late, according to legal experts.
“They’re not false entries. They don’t exist,” Tacopina told CNN. “Assuming they were, they are misdemeanors way beyond the statute of limitations, so they had to cobble them together to try and get a felony.”
Despite the seediness of the allegations, some legal experts argued it was an important case because the payments arguably could have changed the outcome of the 2016 election.
"This is about someone who was struggling in a campaign and took steps to try to make sure that his further struggles were minimized on the eve of an election," said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama. "I think that that’s incredibly serious just standing on its own.”