In an unprecedented criminal charge against a former US president, Manhattan prosecutors are accusing Donald Trump of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal illegal conduct related to his 2016 presidential campaign.
The criminal charges stem from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into clandestine payments made during the 2016 campaign to women who alleged they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which he denies.
Trump “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that concealed harmful information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” according to indictment documents released on Tuesday.
Each criminal charge Trump faces relates to a specific entry in the Trump Organization’s business records.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges on Tuesday.
See the breakdown of the charges and evidence brought against Trump in the indictment and court documents:
Trump’s “Illegal” Electoral Influence Scheme as Support for Criminal Charges
A key question was whether Bragg would charge Trump with a crime and how he would do it, since falsifying business records — an offense for which Trump is charged 34 times — is a misdemeanor unless prosecutors can prove the records were falsified with the intent to commit or conceal another crime.
The new statement of facts only hints at the approach Bragg is taking, but the prosecutor laid out his legal theory more clearly during an interview with journalists after the indictment.
Bragg said the business records were falsified in 2017 with the intent to conceal criminal conduct related to the 2016 campaign. He referenced a New York state law that makes it a crime to collude to promote a candidacy by illegal means.
Bragg is not accusing Trump of violating election law or of conspiracy related to this alleged campaign-related conduct. The indictment says that for all 34 counts, Trump had the “intent to defraud and commit another crime and help conceal his commission.”
The statement of facts explains that Trump allegedly orchestrated an “illegal” scheme with others to “influence the 2016 presidential election” and that other participants in the scheme admitted to “committing illegal conduct in connection with the scheme.”
Specifically, the statement of facts references former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s guilty plea in the federal campaign finance case that was prosecuted in 2018 and admissions by American Media, Inc (AMI) – the publisher of the National Enquirer publication. – in the non-prosecution agreement reached in the federal investigation process.
The statement of facts warns in a footnote that it “does not contain all the facts relevant to the alleged conduct”.

Trump, Cohen made refund deal in Oval Office, prosecutors say
In describing the alleged electoral influence scheme, the prosecution documents detail how the plan to silence women who accuse Trump of extramarital affairs came to be.
According to the indictment documents, the editor-in-chief and CEO of the National Enquirer approached Trump’s then-lawyer Cohen shortly after the “Access Hollywood” tape was made public in October 2016, and told Cohen that the adult film actress Stormy Daniels was claiming that she had an affair with Trump.
The indictment documents say Cohen negotiated a secret payment with Daniels to “ensure silence [de Daniels] and prevent the release of harmful information in the final weeks before the presidential election”.
Trump allegedly hid reimbursement payments to Cohen by marking monthly checks for “legal services,” according to the statement of facts, in an agreement the two struck in the Oval Office.
Trump personally signed checks reimbursing Cohen, prosecutors allege, including the $130,000 he paid Daniels in exchange for her signing a non-disclosure agreement.
The plan was to make refunds to Cohen totaling $420,000, with an extra $180,000 to cover his tax exposure, and then a $60,000 bonus on top of that, the documents allege. billing.
Trump also reportedly agreed to pay Cohen $35,000 a month for one year.
“In early February 2017, Defendant and Counsel A met in the Oval Office of the White House and confirmed this reimbursement agreement,” reads the statement of facts.

Many of these specific facts have been public for years. Cohen publicly disclosed one of the $35,000 checks while testifying to Congress in 2019 in an effort to corroborate his story that Trump played a role in coordinating and orchestrating the payment to Daniels.
Central payments for Trump’s charges came directly from his bank account
Prosecutors say the checks were delivered monthly — including some coming directly from Trump’s bank account — to Cohen. They claim they were disguised as attorney payments when they weren’t.
“Each check was processed by the Trump Organization and each check was disguised as payment for legal services rendered in a specified month of 2017 pursuant to a retaining agreement,” prosecutors wrote in the statement of facts accompanying the indictment.
“The payment records maintained and maintained by the Trump Organization were false New York business records. In fact, there was no fee agreement and Attorney A was not being paid for legal services rendered in 2017,” he adds, referring to Cohen.
The way the payments were falsely recorded in the company’s records, prosecutors say, is the backbone of the crime Trump is being charged with.

Scheme participants knew payments were illegal, prosecutors say
According to the legal theory that Bragg is championing, the factor that criminalizes falsified business records is hidden campaign finance, a federal crime, which Trump is accused of trying to hide. The district attorney also claims that state election law was violated with the scheme.
The statement of facts points to court proceedings in the federal investigation into the bribe payments to assert that participants in the alleged illegal scheme, including Cohen, admitted that the payments to the two women were illegal.
At the end of 2018, American Media, Inc. also entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York regarding the payment of Karen McDougal, another woman who allegedly had an affair with Trump – which he denies – for her story on the former president, the statement reads. of facts.
Detailing AMI’s role in the alleged scheme could also help prosecutors convince a jury at trial that the payout plays were aimed at protecting Trump’s election chances, contradicting how the payouts were allegedly recorded in business records.
AMI told officials it never intended to publish McDougal’s story and made payment to McDougal so that she would “not release harmful allegations” about Trump “prior to the 2016 presidential election and thereby influence that election,” it says. the statement of facts.
The statement of facts also cites a federal guilty plea by Cohen, who said he worked under Trump’s direction to arrange payment to the two women, McDougal and Daniels, to prevent stories that could be harmful to the former president.

The documents also include the allegation that Trump instructed Cohen to delay payments to Daniels until after the election because, after that, it wouldn’t matter if her story got out and they might be able to avoid payments altogether.
Prosecutors may try to use this alleged instruction to justify criminal charges by arguing that the payments were intended to secretly influence the presidential campaign in violation of election law.
*With information from Holmes Lybrand and Devan Cole of CNN.
Source: CNN Brasil

Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.