No. of Recommendations: 15
I thought it might be helpful to present a summary of what the prosecution alleges happened, and their argument as to why that violated NY State law. Note that these are all their allegations, and it was up to the jury to determine whether the factual events occured:
* Trump was advised that Stormy Daniels might publicly claim that she and Trump had an affair.
* Trump entered into an agreement with Daniels to pay her $130,000 in exchange for non-disclosure. This would have been perfectly legal for Trump to do if he had either: i) paid her the money directly; or ii) gave Cohen the money to make the payment on his behalf as his client.
* Instead, Trump and Cohen and Weisselberg determined that the $130,000 would be paid to Cohen as personal income to him, and that he would pay the money to Daniels as a personal expense that he incurred. To do this, Cohen would have to declare the $130,000 as income on his state and federal tax returns, and would thus incur a tax liability. The parties agreed that Cohen's payment would be "grossed up" to cover that tax liability.
* The criminal activity was not the decision to make a payment to Daniels or enter into an NDA; it was choosing to falsely characterize the money flowing from Trump to Cohen as personal income for legal services, rather than what is was - client funds to be used to satisfy the client's obligations under the NDA.
* The agreement to falsely characterize the payments from Trump to Cohen as income to Cohen, and the payments from Cohen to Daniel's SPE as payments from Cohen, caused the Trump Organization to create false business records. These business records affirmatively stated that the funds were being paid to Cohen for legal services, and not the true purpose of the funds to satisfy an obligation to a third party.
* By setting up the payments in this way, and falsely hiding the true nature of the payments, Trump and Cohen violated three criminal laws. They violated FECA, because the campaign expenditures were falsely hidden behind Cohen (when Trump was the true contributor) and because several of them were made by corporate entities and not personal expenditures. Cohen violated NY State tax law, because he mistated his income on his state tax returns. And Trump violated NY State election law, by entering into a conspiracy with Cohen and Weisselberg to support his election through illegal means.
* The only plausible intent for mischaracterizing the payments was to conceal the crimes identified above. Trump could have made the payments legally, but it would have left a paper trail that could have revealed that he had paid off Daniels. So he made the payments illegally in an effort to hide the flow of money, and in so doing caused the business records of his company to be falsified in order to conceal the illegal form of payment.
* The foregoing was established at trial by evidence consisting of: i) documentary evidence of the false payments, showing a deliberate intent to mischaracterize the payments to Cohen as income rather than payments for a client; ii) testimony regarding a similar arrangement entered into with Pecker and AMI re: Karen MacDougal, showing a contemporaneous effort to secure campaign benefits; iii) testimony from numerous Trump employees (and some allies) to the effect that Trump was a micro-manager and did not habitually pay bills of this size without being fully informed of their purpose and structure; and iv) the direct testimony of Michael Cohen, corroborated by all of the above.
Pretty straight forward. They made an agreement to hide the money, instead of just doing the legal thing and have Cohen put it in his client trust account for Trump. That cause the Trump Org bookkeepers to record false business records of the transaction; because it was booked as income to Cohen for legal services rather than money held for satisfying Trump's obligations, the records were false. The reason for doing that was to conceal the actual purpose of the payments and to conceal that they were structured as an unlawful campaign contribution and/or falsified tax returns.
