Thirty-four felony charges are, well, a lot of felony charges.
The best way to understand the really, really dense indictment is by looking at the conduct Trump allegedly engaged in. What did he actually do? Well…
Once upon a time, in August of 2015, then-candidate Donald Trump met with his then-lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen, and David Pecker, the CEO of American Media, best known for the National Enquirer (Ted Cruz’s Father Helped Kill Kennedy!) This triumvirate agreed to try and suppress stories that could embarrass candidate Trump and harm his election chances. Nothing illegal about that. It would be done by sniffing out potential scandal, and then paying off the would-be tattlers in exchange for “exclusive” rights to the story. But there would be no story. This “catch and kill” tactic was first used by the Trump campaign in the fall of 2015, when a former doorman at Trump Towers was peddling a story (falsely) alleging that Trump fathered a child out-of-wedlock. Pecker then arranged to pay the doorman $30,000 in hush money. Nothing illegal on Trump’s part here either.
In June of 2016, a woman (widely believed to be ex-Playboy Bunny Karen McDougal), was about to come forward to allege an affair with Trump. Pecker arranged to pay her $150,000, and then killed the story. While Pecker broke the law because of the way he recorded the payment (and received a non-prosecution agreement), Trump is not charged with this either.
Enter Stormy Daniels. Shortly after the Access Hollywood tape story (“grab them by the pussy”) broke in October, 2016, the adult film star threatened to come forward with her own story of her fling with the married Trump — a relationship she later characterized as the “worst 90 seconds of my life.”
Had Trump just sent Daniels a cashier’s check for the money and had her sign a non-disclosure agreement, we wouldn’t be here now.
But no. At Trump’s direction, Cohen took out a home equity loan and transferred $130,000 to a shell corporation. On October 27, 2016, with the election less than two weeks away, the payment was forwarded to Daniels. This was a contribution that Cohen stated he made expressly at Trump’s request to save Trump’s campaign. The former president and Cohen decided that the Trump Organization would repay Cohen and list the repayment as “legal expenses.” Because Cohen would have to declare this as income for his tax purposes, Trump doubled the amount and threw in a bonus to boot — totaling $420,000.00. But how to make this look kosher?
And here is where the actual crime of falsifying business records comes in. Cohen would submit fake invoices for legal services each month for a year, and the Trump Organization would pay him $35,000 per month so it would look like lawyer retainer fees. Each payment was fraudulently designated by the Trump Organization as “legal expenses” in the bookkeeping records. Each invoice was fraudulently recorded as a “legal expense.” And the fraudulent payments were recorded in other Trump Organization books as well. Each payment was made to conceal the fact that Cohen had made a fraudulent campaign contribution to Trump by paying off Stormy Daniels — a violation of State and Federal election law. And every one of these fraudulent transactions is now charged as a felony.
The crime of falsifying business records in the first degree gets charged frequently in New York County. Manhattan is the financial center of the United States and thus, it is also the fraud center. When someone intentionally makes a fraudulent entry in business records in order to conceal another crime, that is a Class E felony. And people generally don’t commit bookkeeping fraud for fun; it is almost always done to conceal another crime — usually some graft or grift or money laundering. That the underlying crime in Trump’s case is election fraud is more of a testament to most actual crooks not running for public office, rather than than any novel legal theory.
The prosecution still must prove these things. And, as with any other defendant, they must prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Just because these crimes were really stupid and largely unnecessary does not make them any less real or less criminal. And the notion that Trump is being charged with a “bookkeeping” mistake is just silly — 34 separate criminal transactions, taking place every month for a year, cannot be explained away by “oops, I did it again.”