Donald Trump was convicted Thursday on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York state hush money case, becoming the first former U.S. president to be tried and found guilty of a crime.
The 12-person jury unanimously agreed on the verdict after deliberating for two days, finding that Trump falsified records to cover up a $130,000 payment before the 2016 election to an adult film actress to keep her quiet about a sexual encounter with him years earlier.
Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s presidential race but the charges and the verdict have nothing to do with politics despite wild allegations made by the disgraced 2020 election loser.
Following a federal jury’s decision to order Trump to pay millions to E. Jean Carroll, his legal team and supporters emphasized that the jury dismissed the claim that Trump had raped her. However, the presiding judge clarified the record.
“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ” wrote Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. “Instead, the proof convincingly established, and the jury implicitly found, that Mr. Trump deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm.”
The evidence that led to Trump’s hush money conviction included 34 documents: 11 invoices, 12 vouchers, and 11 checks.
Throughout Donald Trump’s hush money trial, prosecutors repeatedly told jurors not to rely on what Michael Cohen, their key witness and the ex-president’s former lawyer and fixer, had said in court.
Instead, they should focus their attention on the paper trail.
The jury seems to have done that, finding Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. At the heart of the prosecution’s case against Trump were 34 documents: 11 invoices, 12 vouchers and 11 checks. Each of these documents accounted for one of the charges on which Trump was found guilty.
Falsifying business records is a felony in New York when there is an “intent to defraud” that includes an intent to “commit another crime or to aid or conceal” another crime.
Prosecutors alleged that these documents show that Trump intentionally misclassified payments to Cohen that reimbursed him for hush money he gave adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
The hush money was to keep the woman quiet about the sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006 — an allegation Trump denies without having any other explanation for the $130,000 payment to Daniels.
The porn star and Trump’s former lawyer —who spent time in prison for the federal election law violation it represents— say it was intended to buy her silence before the 2016 election about the alleged sexual encounter, which took place while he was married to his third wife, Melania.
The prosecution discovered that in 2017, Cohen received a total of $420,000 from Trump and his trust. During his testimony, Cohen informed the jurors that he had discussed this amount with Trump and the then-CFO of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, shortly before Trump’s inauguration. This total includes $130,000 for hush money, $50,000 for a vendor payment made by Cohen on Trump’s behalf, $180,000 to cover the tax liabilities for these payments, and a $60,000 bonus.
Michael Cohen, serving as vice president of the Trump Organization and personal counsel, and often labeled as Trump’s fixer, pleaded guilty on August 21, 2018, to eight criminal charges. These charges included willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate, primarily to influence the election.
U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III sentenced Cohen to three years in prison with a $50,000 fine and ordered him to pay $1.4 million in restitution plus forfeit $500,000. At his sentencing hearing, Cohen stated: “I take full responsibility for each act that I pled guilty to: The personal ones to me and those involving the president of the United States of America.”
In other words, Trump’s fixer already pleaded guilty and went to jail for his role in the incident that a jury found were crimes committed by the former president.
The various amounts were documented on a handwritten note by former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney, who testified to a separate meeting with Weisselberg where they discussed the repayment plan to Cohen.
In the meeting with Trump and Weisselberg, Cohen testified, the men decided he would be repaid for his $130,000 payment to Daniels through twelve $35,000 payments.
Cohen submitted what he claimed to be fraudulent invoices for payment of legal services each month. The prosecution showed that these invoices were improperly recorded as legal expenses, but Cohen received payment by check, nine of which bore Trump’s distinctive signature.
In total, Cohen sent 11 invoices to Weisselberg in 2017 for “services rendered.” He testified that no services were rendered, and that the check was really “reimbursement of hush money.”
In total, 12 vouchers were created to record the payments to Cohen. Vouchers are a standard business practice to record how much money a company spends, and to detail who is paid and why, but the prosecution alleges that these vouchers inaccurately describe the money being paid to Cohen as a legitimate legal expense. The voucher entries were recorded by Trump Organization bookkeeper Deborah Tarasoff, who testified that authorization to pay Cohen came from Weisselberg and another top financial officer of the company.
In total, 11 checks were made out to Cohen, totaling $420,000. Two of those checks were from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust Account, and nine were from Trump’s personal account.
The year after the payoff, Daniels testified, was the best of her life; she was writing and directing successful films, riding horses, and raising her daughter to be a straight-A student. But she said her life turned into “chaos” when the Wall Street Journal in 2018 published an article revealing the tryst and payoff.
“It blew my cover,” she told prosecutor Susan Hoffinger. “We were ostracized from her playgroups, from the riding stable.”
When a defense attorney asked the porn star whether she knew about the business records at the heart of the case, Daniels replied, “I know nothing about his business records, no. Why would I?”