After a two-month hearing that took place in secret in a New York courthouse, the indictment against former president Donald Trump has finally been unsealed.
In a dramatic and unprecedented day in US history, Trump surrendered to authorities, was fingerprinted, and appeared before a judge to hear the charges against him.
He was charged in court with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
He pleaded not guilty.
Now that Trump has been arraigned, the evidence used to persuade the 23-member grand jury to indict him has been made public.
"During the election, Trump and others employed a "catch and kill" scheme to identify, purchase, and bury negative information about him and boost his electoral prospects," District Attorney Alvin Bragg said.
This is everything we learned from the People of the State of New York against Donald J Trump, Indictment No. 71543-23.
What exactly is Trump accused of doing?
The statement of facts alleges that Trump "orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him".
Trump announced he was running for the presidency in June 2015.
Soon after, he allegedly met with the chairman of AMI, a media company that owned the tabloid the National Enquirer, as well as Cohen at Trump Tower in New York.
At the meeting, the AMI chief executive allegedly agreed to help Trump, saying that "he would act as the 'eyes and ears' for the campaign by looking out for negative stories" about him and alerting Cohen before they were published.
The chief executive also agreed to "publish negative stories" about Trump's competitors during the election, the indictment claims.
It's alleged three people were paid for their silence in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
Who was allegedly paid off?
One was a doorman at Trump Tower who told the tabloid he knew that his boss had fathered a child out of wedlock.
AMI "negotiated and signed an agreement to pay him $US30,000 to acquire exclusive rights to the story".
The court documents claim the company falsely characterised this payment in its books and records, including in its general ledger.
When AMI later concluded the story wasn't true, the chief executive was instructed by Cohen not to release the "doorman" from the agreement until after the presidential election.
The document also refers to an "adult film actress" who was "covertly paid $130,000 ... shortly before the election to prevent her from publicising a sexual encounter with the defendant".
The district attorney has now identified this as Stormy Daniels, who says her representatives negotiated the hush money payment with Trump's former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen.
Cohen allegedly created a new shell company to make the payment, transferring $US131,000 from his personal home equity line of credit into that account before wiring it to Daniels' lawyer.
The documents claim that Cohen understood Trump would pay him back.
The document also claims that AMI paid $US150,000 to another woman, who tried to go public with her claim that she had an extra-marital affair with him.
The indictment claims Trump didn't want the information to get out because he was concerned it would impact his presidential candidacy, and so he, along with the AMI chief executive and Cohen, discussed how they could secure her silence.
On the understanding from Cohen that Trump or the Trump Organization would reimburse AMI, the company paid the woman $US150,000 and falsely characterised this payment in its books and records, including in its general ledger.
In an audio recording of one of the discussions of how to reimburse AMI for its payment, Cohen told Trump he would open up a company for the transfer of the woman's account and other information.
He stated that he had spoken to the chief financial officer for the Trump Organization about "how to set the whole thing up".
"The defendant asked, 'So what do we got to pay for this? One fifty?' and suggested paying by cash," the statement of facts alleges.
A shell company was allegedly set up by Cohen to make a payment to AMI in exchange for the company's rights to the story, but the payment was called off before it took place.
The indictment claims the other participants in the 'catch and kill' scheme ultimately admitted that "the payoffs were unlawful".
How the payments were allegedly obscured
The court documents claim that sometime around January 2017, Trump agreed to reimburse Cohen for his payment to Daniels, and Cohen and the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization met to discuss payment.
The pair discussed the $US130,000 ($AUD192,000) paid to Daniels, as well as $US50,000 for another expense, adding up to a total of $US180,000.
This was then doubled for income tax purposes and another $US60,000 was added as an end-of-year bonus, with the final agreed amount being $US420,000.
Instead of being paid a lump sum, it's claimed that Trump, the chief financial officer and Cohen agreed the payments would be made in monthly instalments of $US35,000 for 12 months.
Each month, Cohen would invoice Trump through his employees, to falsely request payment of $US35,000 for "legal services rendered in a given month of 2017" as part of a retainer agreement.
But there was no actual retainer agreement.
The invoices were approved by the Trump Organization's chief financial officer and processed by the accounts team, with instructions to "post to legal expenses".
The invoices were put in the general ledger code as legal expenses and the Trump Organization maintained them as records of expenses paid.
The actual payments were made by either Trump's trust or from Trump himself.
Each of the cheques was cut from Trump's bank account and sent, along with the corresponding invoices from Cohen, to Trump in Washington, DC.
Court documents allege cheques and stubs "bearing the false statements were stapled to the invoices also bearing false statements".
What does all this mean for Trump?
Trump is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying records.
In the US, a felony is a class of crime considered more serious than a misdemeanour, and usually carries jail time.
To make it a felony, New York's prosecutor will need to prove to a jury that the records were falsified with an intent to "commit another crime or to aid or conceal" another crime.
That means that they will have to prove Trump falsified his records to hide damaging information from voters before the 2016 election.
"Thirty-four false statements made to cover up other crimes," Bragg said at a news conference after the arraignment.
"These are felony crimes in New York state. No matter who you are, we will not normalise serious criminal conduct," he said.
Because the payments were made during the final months of the 2016 election, they could be classified as illegal donations to Trump's campaign.
Campaign finance laws in the US are strict, imposing limits on how much a person can donate to a candidate, and requiring the payments to be registered.
Cohen's payment to Daniels was deemed by a court in 2018 to be an illegal campaign contribution.
He was sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion and campaign-finance violations.
How much jail time could Trump face?
At the end of the short hearing, Judge Merchan set the date for Trump's next court appearance for December 4.
If found guilty by a jury, Trump could face up to four years in jail for each count.
But the charges do not carry a mandatory prison sentence.
A judge might conclude that a first-time offender with no criminal record should face a fine or community service instead.
Trump's lawyer Joe Tacopina said they intend to have the charges dismissed.
"I very much anticipate a motion to dismiss coming because there's no law that fits this," Tacopina said on CNN's State of the Union.
If they succeed, this is not the end of Trump's legal woes.
He also faces a Department of Justice investigation into the removal of government documents from the White House, a probe into the riot on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, and a case in Georgia that looks at his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election result there.
But there is nothing in the US constitution that bars him from running for the presidency in 2024 if he's in jail or caught in a criminal trial.
