On a recent Thursday, Donald Trump was found guilty by a jury for tampering with business documents to disguise payments intended to ensure the discretion of adult film actress Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 Presidential Election. This provides a greater understanding of the allegations levelled against Trump by Alvin Bragg, Manhattan District Attorney, at the time when Trump, the Republican option, was contesting against the incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden in the U.S. Election due on November 5th.
What were the charges against Trump?
In the previous year, Bragg’s office had accused Trump of 34 instances of manipulating business documentation to hide a transaction worth $130,000. This payment, authorized by Trump’s ex-personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, was given to Stormy Daniels, whose actual name is Stephanie Clifford. It’s alleged this sum was given to Daniels towards the end of the 2016 Presidential campaign in lieu of her maintaining silence about an alleged sexual interaction with Trump from ten years prior.
The prosecution argues that this action was part of a wider “catch-and-kill” strategy aimed at quashing any damning news about Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, which saw Trump overcoming his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
Cohen attests that he and Trump pondered over another sum of $150,000 given by American Media, the publisher behind the National Enquirer tabloid, to ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, in order to keep her silent about an alleged affair with Trump. The paper chose not to run the story. Whilst Trump refutes both alleged sexual involvements, he has dubbed the accusations a politically skewed “witch hunt.” Trump did, however, admit to repaying Cohen’s payment to Daniels in 2018, but his legal team has since insisted these payments were part of Cohen’s retainer for his services in 2017 as Trump’s personal lawyer.
Which laws is Trump alleged to have broken?
Trump is alleged by prosecutors to have obfuscated his 2017 payment to Cohen in connection to the Daniels payment, masking them as legal retainer fees within records of his family’s New York real estate business, The Trump Organization.
All 34 charges are linked directly to a check, invoice, or ledger notation related to Trump’s payments. It is a contravention of New York state law to record false entries within a company’s books. Although falsifying business records on its own is a minor offence, its standing rises to a felony carrying up to four years imprisonment if accomplished with the intent of concealing or aiding additional crimes.
Bragg reported that another criminal act was a transgression of a New York legal code which deems it a minor offence to scheme to advance a political run through illicit methods. It is claimed by the prosecution that Trump, Cohen, and David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media, schemed to silence individuals who might have negative stories about Trump, including Daniels, prior to the 2016 elections. They argue these finances were essentially campaign donations that surpassed the $2,700 limit on single contributions in 2016.
In respect of how Trump paid Cohen, the jury was presented with 11 cheques from either Trump or his trust made out to Cohen in 2017, amounting to a total of $420,000. The prosecution asserts that this sum encompassed refunds related to the payment to Daniels and $50,000 relating to other costs Cohen faced while working on Trump’s electoral pitch, as well as $180,000 towards taxes Cohen would owe due to misrepresentation of the funds as income instead of a refund. Additionally, the cheques comprised a $60,000 reward for Cohen’s services to the Trump Organization, the prosecution claimed.
In terms of Trump’s defence, his legal team insisted that Daniels’ payment was solely Cohen’s initiative. They stated that the main intention behind silencing Daniels and McDougal was to avoid causing humiliation to Trump and his family by bringing potentially scandalous extramarital affairs to public notice, not for the benefit of his electoral run. They also asserted that the payments Trump made to Cohen in 2017 were legitimate legal retainer charges.
Trump’s lawyers aimed to undermine Cohen’s credibility as a witness, highlighting his previous perjury before Congress, his guilty plea to federal crimes, and his frequent public declarations of wanting to see Trump penalised.
In 2018, Cohen confessed to breaking federal campaign finance laws through his role in the hush-money scheme. Trump, referred to as “Individual-1” in the charging document against Cohen, was never indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan for any crime. In a 2018 interview with Reuters, Trump rejected the claim that Daniels’ payment was a campaign donation and denied any legal breaches in relation to what they did.