On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump became the first current or former US president to be charged with a crime. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and conspiracy for his alleged role in hush money payments to two women towards the end of his 2016 presidential campaign. A felony is usually defined as a crime punishable by a year or more in prison.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Trump’s indictment at Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, alleging that 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. The former president then went to great lengths to hide this conduct, prosecutors say, with dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws.
The charges accuse Trump of three different instances of making hush money payments to cover up alleged affairs. Trump allegedly orchestrated his “catch and kill” scheme through a series of payments that he then concealed through months of false business entries. In total, 11 cheques were allegedly issued for phoney purposes.
From August 2015 to December 2017, Trump allegedly orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit electoral prospects. Each count concerns an entry in the Trump Revocable Trust’s Detail General Ledger, a cheque and cheque stub to Michael Cohen, and invoices from Cohen that are maintained in Trump Organisation records.
After announcing the indictment, District Attorney Bragg said: “The People of the State of New York allege that Donald J Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”
While falsifying business records in New York on its own is a misdemeanour punishable by no more than one year in prison, it is elevated to a felony punishable by up to four years in prison when done to advance or conceal another crime. The charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 136 years under New York law, though if Trump was convicted it would almost certainly be far less than that.
