NEW YORK — Donald Trump was formally accused Tuesday of falsifying records about paying off porn star Stormy Daniels — but a careful reading of the indictment and an accompanying statement shows Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and his prosecutors see several ways to win a felony conviction.
Bragg laid out the scope of his case against the former president in a 13-page “statement of facts” released Tuesday, describing a scheme to “catch and kill” embarrassing stories about Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, who Trump allegedly had sex with while married.
That scheme also includes an agreement with the chief of the company that owned the National Enquirer to pay a Trump Tower doorman so he wouldn’t spread a bogus tale that Trump had a child out of wedlock.
Bragg casts the charges in the indictment, which charges Trump with 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records, as a plot to violate election laws and state tax laws, “to influence the 2016 presidential election.... and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects.”
A charge of falsifying business records on its own is a misdemeanor under New York law, punishable by up to a year behind bars. But the law raises it up to a felony if “the intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”
That’s what Trump is charged with — 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records, a class E felony that can carry a sentence of 1 1/2 to four years in prison.
In the indictment, the underlying crime could involve state and federal election laws — or it could involve the illegal romp through New York tax laws Trump orchestrated to pay Daniels $130,000 through his then-fixer, Michael Cohen.
Trump wanted Daniels to keep quiet about her alleged 2006 tryst with him, worried that the revelations might compound his problems after the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced in October 2016, the DA’s statement of facts in the case says.
After Cohen paid Daniels, Trump had Allen Weisselberg, then the Trump Organization’s CFO, establish a plan to reimburse Cohen — by shelling out $420,000 spread across 11 payments in 2017, Bragg wrote.
The idea was to mask the reimbursement as taxable income in a way that allowed Cohen to pocket about $180,000 after taxes.
“He did not simply say that the payments were reimbursements for Mr. Cohen’s payment to Stormy Daniels. To do so, to make that statement, would have been to admit a crime. So instead, Mr. Trump said he was paying Mr. Cohen for fictitious legal services in 2017 to cover up actual crime committed the prior year,” Bragg told reporters Tuesday.
“And in order to get Michael Cohen his money back, they planned one last false statement. In order to complete the scheme, they planned to characterize the repayments as income to the New York State tax authorities.”
Each charge of first-degree falsifying business records in the indictment corresponds to an individual record connected to those payments — such as invoices by Cohen, ledger entries and checks.
Bragg dates Trump’s alleged scheme back to 2015, when American Media Inc. (AMI) CEO David Pecker met the then-candidate at Trump Tower and agreed to act as “eyes and ears” for the campaign.
Pecker, whose media company owned the National Enquirer, said he’d keep a lookout for negative stories and let Cohen know about them before they were published.
Pecker set up the $30,000 payment to the Trump Tower doorman but wanted to release him from the agreement after AMI determined the love child claims were bogus, Bragg said. Cohen told him to wait until after the election.
Bragg also referred to a “public and private pressure campaign” to keep Cohen from singing after the FBI raided his residences and office in 2018, including a Trump tweet thread that read, “Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if... it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!”
New York Daily News staff writer Molly Crane-Newman contributed to this story.
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