Donald Trump has been charged by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office with 34 state felony counts of falsifying business records involving 11 invoices, 12 vouchers and 11 checks.
Prosecutors allege the payment was not an initial fee for legal fees, as records show, but a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet and to secure the lifetime right to publish her story ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, implicated Trump in the hush money scheme, saying on the stand that he paid $130,000 with Trump’s approval and a promise to repay it.
Making hush payments is not a crime. Prosecutors allege that Trump knowingly falsified documents to disguise payments to Cohen as fees for legal services in order to conceal damaging information to voters during the 2016 presidential election.
Under the law, to find Trump guilty of the felony charge of falsifying business records, a jury would have to find that he not only “caused false entries in a company’s business records” while acting “with intent to defraud,” but that “the intent to defraud included an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission of that crime.”
Prosecutors allege the underlying crime was attempting to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.
