Roughly one month after Donald Trump entered the White House in 2017, the sitting president orchestrated secret cover-up payments with his attorney from inside the Oval Office, according to Manhattan prosecutors.
The alleged meeting between Mr Trump and his now-former attorney Michael Cohen was to confirm so-called hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, a scene described by Cohen during his congressional testimony in 2019.
“Don’t worry, Michael,” Mr Cohen remembered then-President Trump telling him, according to his testimony to lawmakers. “Your January and February reimbursement checks are coming.”
Mr Trump turned himself into New York Criminal Court on 4 April and was formally charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. The charges stem from similar payments in three cases allegedly made in an effort to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election, according to prosecutors. He has pleaded not guilty.
A statement of facts from the office of New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg claims that Mr Trump and “Lawyer A”, believed to be Cohen, “met in the Oval Office at the White House and confirmed this repayment arrangement.”
The payments to Ms Daniels, delivered in the final days of Mr Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, are among a series of Mr Trump’s so-called “catch and kill” operations to “identify, purchase, and bury negative information about him and boost his electoral prospects,” according to prosecutors.
In 2018, Mr Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges connected to such payments, claiming they were made under Mr Trump’s direction. Cohen provided lawmakers with two of the 11 reimbursement checks he received; one was signed by Mr Trump and the other by his son Donald Trump Jr. Both were for $35,000.
That figure also appears in court filings from Mr Bragg’s office, which alleges that Mr Cohen emailed the first invoice for $35,000 on or about 14 February 2017.
According to prosecutors, a comptroller for the Trump Organization forwarded the invoice to the accounts payable supervisor with the following instructions: “Post to legal expenses. Put ‘retainer for the months of January and February 2017’ in the description.”
Mr Cohen sent 10 similar monthly invoices to the Trump Organization throughout that year, according to court filings.
“Each invoice falsely stated that it was being submitted ‘[p]ursuant to the retainer agreement,’ and falsely requested ‘payment for services rendered’ for a month of 2017,” according to prosecutors.
“Each check was processed by the Trump Organization, and each check was disguised as a payment for legal services rendered in a given month of 2017 pursuant to a retainer agreement,” according to Mr Bragg’s office.
“The payment records, kept and maintained by the Trump Organization, were false New York business records,” documents allege. “In truth, there was no retainer agreement, and Lawyer A was not being paid for legal services rendered in 2017. The Defendant caused his entities’ business records to be falsified to disguise his and others’ criminal conduct.”
