Trump faces trial on criminal hush money charges: What to know

Central to Bragg’s case is Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges related to hush money payments made to two women before the 2016 election.

Cohen is expected to be a key witness in the trial, where he will say Trump directed him to make those payments.

To pay Daniels covertly, the DA alleges, Cohen opened a bank account for a shell company he had created specifically to facilitate the payment. He then transferred $131,000 into that account from a home equity line of credit. On Oct. 27, less than two weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen wired $130,000 to Daniels’ lawyer in exchange for her silence about the alleged tryst with Trump.

After the election, Bragg says, Trump reimbursed Cohen for the payment through a series of monthly checks, processed by the Trump Organization, which recorded them as payments for legal services rendered in 2017 through a retainer agreement.

Those records were false, the DA alleges.

Trump and Cohen were also allegedly involved in a 2016 hush money payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who received $150,000 from the then-publisher of the National Enquirer to keep quiet about her own alleged affair with Trump.

Bragg also cites a $30,000 payment by that publisher, American Media Inc., to a former Trump Tower doorman for the rights to a story about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock. After determining that the story was untrue, the publisher’s CEO David Pecker wanted to end the deal — but he held off until after the 2016 election at Cohen’s instruction, the DA alleges.

Falsifying business records in the first degree is a Class E felony that carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison.

But the sentence a defendant ultimately receives is often far below the maximum, and Trump’s age and lack of a prior conviction could also play in his favor in any potential sentencing decision.

His antagonism toward presiding Judge Juan Merchan and others related to the case — including the judge’s daughter — may work against him, however.

“I think there is a substantial risk that he will be convicted and that he will face a sentence of incarceration,” said Norm Eisen, a legal analyst who aided House Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment, in a press briefing Thursday previewing the hush money trial.

“When you have the falsification of business records that is intended to aid, conceal, or commit serious crimes, that receives sentences of jail time regularly,” Eisen said.

Trump can continue to run for office even if he is convicted and jailed.

Trump’s attorneys have thrown the kitchen sink at the trial in hopes of a delay. They have made more than 10 attempts to push it later, three of which came in last-minute appeals filed in the final week before jury selection.

Trump, as he has done in his other legal battles, has wielded his public following as a weapon against the case.

In regular social media diatribes and interviews, he has railed against the judge, the DA, key witnesses and various others, while claiming that all of his criminal charges are part of a Biden administration conspiracy to damage his presidential bid.

Merchan imposed a gag order on Trump, and then expanded it after the former president repeatedly criticized the judge’s daughter over her work for a Democratic political consultant. Trump’s legal team has repeatedly demanded that Merchan recuse himself due to his daughter’s political activities. Merchan declined to do so last year.

In a video posted to Truth Social on Thursday, Trump decried the gag order, falsely claiming, “it only happens to me,” and asserting, “there’s never been a judge more conflicted than this one.”