There is no TL;DR. He wasn't charged with paying "hush money" -- he was charged for making normal payments to a lawyer in a manner that was, if you make a lot of assumptions, illegal.
Donald Trump's lawyer (Michael Cohen) used his own money to pay off Stormy Daniels to sign an NDA that states she wouldn't publicize allegations that Trump had slept with her.
(aside: There is very good reason to believe that any claims that Trump had slept with her were false, and this was just a shake-down to try to score some quick cash. Apparently it's a very common extortion con that places like TMZ pay for exclusive rights to stories, then offer the subject of the story the chance to pay them off to not run it. So sign an exclusivity deal with Accuser for $10k and then give Accused a chance to squash it for $100k)
But anyway, after that, Donald Trump continued to pay Cohen his retainer fees and his accountants recorded them as "legal expenses". The courts decided that these retainer fees were actually a repayment to Cohen for the Daniels pay-off fees.
Because these retainer fees were monthly payments, they were written down in the company ledgers every time they were paid out.
The prosecution (Alvin Bragg) alleged that these expenses should have been counted as some sort of campaign-related payments, because they were made to try to get himself elected, and because they were mischaracterized, it was a campaign finance violation.
The court case and the 34 counts essentially amounted to, "Trump wrote a check, then he wrote it down in a ledger, then he gave the check to Cohen." And he did that 11 times because the payments were over 11 months. I forget exactly what the 34th count was.
Normally these would all be misdemeanors unless there was a predicate felony that the documentation errors were used to cover up.
The prosecution did not charge Trump with a predicate crime. They just asserted that he had committed a crime that he had never been convicted of.
The judge (Merchan) disallowed any defenses witnesses, including (IIRC) a former director of the FEC that stated that Trump had committed no campaign finance violations. He also allowed Stormy Daniels to basically get up on the stand and testify to all sorts of other things and denied all of Trump's lawyers objections for relevance and only finally stepped in to stop the testimony when she basically accused Trump of raping her. The star witness was Michael Cohen, a man who has been convicted of perjury multiple times and whose story has changed repeatedly.
After the show trial, the judge instructed the (biased, New York) jury to basically decide for themselves if Trump was guilty of any number of felonies (that he had not been charged with) and if so, they were allowed to find him guilty of all of the other felonies that Bragg had brought against him.
Also, the judge's daughter is a well-connected Democrat fundraiser who raised millions of dollars for the party.
Also, Bragg had initially declined to bring any charges because he thought it was a very weak case.
Also, Bragg changed his mind and decided to prosecute after the #3 man from Merrick Garland's US Department of Justice decided to make the inexplicable career move of taking a massive demotion to go work as like a clerk or some bullshit for Bragg's office. Roughly the equivalent of going from a COO position at Walmart to being a store assistant manager.
Also, Michael Cohen's personal lawyer was not allowed to testify that Cohen had told him, explicitly, that Trump had committed no crimes after Cohen had waived attorney client privilege.
Also, amazingly, Merchan is some sort of provisional judge and not actually a "full" judge in New York, but somehow, against all odds, he was chosen for this and multiple other Trump-related cases.
Anyway, I'm sure I've gotten a few details wrong and I know I've left out many. It was a clear show trial from start to finish.
Good breakdown. My favourite extra detail is where Cohen admitted on the stand to embezzling money from Trump while working in his capacity as Trump's lawyer. The guy whose testimony you're supposed to take as evidence that Trump's retainer payments were meant to go to Stormy Daniels is the guy whose responsibility it was to pass on that money, and yet in the same testimony he's stating that some of the money wasn't used as Trump directed, because he, Cohen, is a lying criminal who stole it. This was the star witness, pivotal testimony.
It was even a completely unambiguous admission of crime which was reported with no gloss by the liberal media, I suspect because they thought it was some kind of burn towards Trump, like 'hahaha DRUMPPPFF had his hush money stolen by his own lawyer, that's how much EVERYONE hates him! xD ' TDS got in the way of the realisation that in a sane world this admission should make the testimony as good as toilet paper.
Entire books could be written about each one of the cases. I've followed them mostly through Robert Gouviea and Viva Frei except where the actual video feeds were available in Georgia.
Better than anything on TV, but less believable somehow.
The only difference is that the nuance of the payments is even more crazy.
Trump NEVER ordered any of these payments.
The man who sent Cohen the checks was the Trump organization's Controller. He received a whiny email from Cohen demanding to be paid more money because he didn't think the amount he was getting was fair for the legal services he was providing. He never mentioned Stormy Daniels or anything. He also refused to provide invoices for any of these 'legal services' he was doing that he wouldn't talk about. The Controller told him that he couldn't just "give him more money", especially without an invoice. So, after ranting in his email like a little bitch, the Controller came up with a solution: could advance his contractually required payments forward until Cohen renegotiated his contract. Cohen bitterly agreed. So, the Controller modified his payments and selected an option from the dropdown menu of his accounting software that he thought best matched the description of these requests: Legal Expenses.
The Controller NEVER SPOKE TO TRUMP ABOUT THIS ACTION. He did it off of his own volition because Cohen was upset, and he was going to get this money anyway. Nothing the Controller did was a violation of the law, and you'll notice he was never charged in a conspiracy. Cohen claimed that Trump told him he would order the Controller to make these payments, but there's no evidence of it, and the Controller said he basically never talked to Trump outside of a few random occasions because DJT was never really in his management. The closest would have been Don Jr, who Cohen didn't claim was part of the conspiracy, and again, Don Jr wasn't notified in any part of this.
Yet, somehow, selecting Legal Expenses from the dropdown was a felony... For Trump Sr., but not the Controller. Even though the Controller expressly stated that he did all this because Cohen was complaining, and he was going to get the money anyway.
After all that, Cohen literally went into a bank and robbed the Trump organization of $60,000 which he was never authorized or entitled to remove. Read that again, COHEN COMITTED FELONY ROBBERY because he complained Trump wasn't paying him enough.
Yeah, there's simply too much detail to add. The entire case revolved around a known convicted liar and something that, almost certainly wasn't even a crime.
Also, of all the lawfare cases against Trump, this is probably the least insane one. Unless you count the crazy E. Jean Carroll rape accusation, which is just run of the mill crazy woman accuses someone of rape-which-a-woman-would-never-falsely-do-totally-pinky-swear-for-realsies.
No, the Carroll crap is one of the most insane things. He was convicted of being libel, not for rape/sexual assault; but for defamation... because he called his false accuser crazy.
Can someone let me in the know on the hush money trial? I couldn't care about politics when it started and I never kept up with it.
There is no TL;DR. He wasn't charged with paying "hush money" -- he was charged for making normal payments to a lawyer in a manner that was, if you make a lot of assumptions, illegal.
Donald Trump's lawyer (Michael Cohen) used his own money to pay off Stormy Daniels to sign an NDA that states she wouldn't publicize allegations that Trump had slept with her.
(aside: There is very good reason to believe that any claims that Trump had slept with her were false, and this was just a shake-down to try to score some quick cash. Apparently it's a very common extortion con that places like TMZ pay for exclusive rights to stories, then offer the subject of the story the chance to pay them off to not run it. So sign an exclusivity deal with Accuser for $10k and then give Accused a chance to squash it for $100k)
But anyway, after that, Donald Trump continued to pay Cohen his retainer fees and his accountants recorded them as "legal expenses". The courts decided that these retainer fees were actually a repayment to Cohen for the Daniels pay-off fees.
Because these retainer fees were monthly payments, they were written down in the company ledgers every time they were paid out.
The prosecution (Alvin Bragg) alleged that these expenses should have been counted as some sort of campaign-related payments, because they were made to try to get himself elected, and because they were mischaracterized, it was a campaign finance violation.
The court case and the 34 counts essentially amounted to, "Trump wrote a check, then he wrote it down in a ledger, then he gave the check to Cohen." And he did that 11 times because the payments were over 11 months. I forget exactly what the 34th count was.
Normally these would all be misdemeanors unless there was a predicate felony that the documentation errors were used to cover up.
The prosecution did not charge Trump with a predicate crime. They just asserted that he had committed a crime that he had never been convicted of.
The judge (Merchan) disallowed any defenses witnesses, including (IIRC) a former director of the FEC that stated that Trump had committed no campaign finance violations. He also allowed Stormy Daniels to basically get up on the stand and testify to all sorts of other things and denied all of Trump's lawyers objections for relevance and only finally stepped in to stop the testimony when she basically accused Trump of raping her. The star witness was Michael Cohen, a man who has been convicted of perjury multiple times and whose story has changed repeatedly.
After the show trial, the judge instructed the (biased, New York) jury to basically decide for themselves if Trump was guilty of any number of felonies (that he had not been charged with) and if so, they were allowed to find him guilty of all of the other felonies that Bragg had brought against him.
Also, the judge's daughter is a well-connected Democrat fundraiser who raised millions of dollars for the party.
Also, Bragg had initially declined to bring any charges because he thought it was a very weak case.
Also, Bragg changed his mind and decided to prosecute after the #3 man from Merrick Garland's US Department of Justice decided to make the inexplicable career move of taking a massive demotion to go work as like a clerk or some bullshit for Bragg's office. Roughly the equivalent of going from a COO position at Walmart to being a store assistant manager.
Also, Michael Cohen's personal lawyer was not allowed to testify that Cohen had told him, explicitly, that Trump had committed no crimes after Cohen had waived attorney client privilege.
Also, amazingly, Merchan is some sort of provisional judge and not actually a "full" judge in New York, but somehow, against all odds, he was chosen for this and multiple other Trump-related cases.
Anyway, I'm sure I've gotten a few details wrong and I know I've left out many. It was a clear show trial from start to finish.
Good breakdown. My favourite extra detail is where Cohen admitted on the stand to embezzling money from Trump while working in his capacity as Trump's lawyer. The guy whose testimony you're supposed to take as evidence that Trump's retainer payments were meant to go to Stormy Daniels is the guy whose responsibility it was to pass on that money, and yet in the same testimony he's stating that some of the money wasn't used as Trump directed, because he, Cohen, is a lying criminal who stole it. This was the star witness, pivotal testimony.
It was even a completely unambiguous admission of crime which was reported with no gloss by the liberal media, I suspect because they thought it was some kind of burn towards Trump, like 'hahaha DRUMPPPFF had his hush money stolen by his own lawyer, that's how much EVERYONE hates him! xD ' TDS got in the way of the realisation that in a sane world this admission should make the testimony as good as toilet paper.
Entire books could be written about each one of the cases. I've followed them mostly through Robert Gouviea and Viva Frei except where the actual video feeds were available in Georgia.
Better than anything on TV, but less believable somehow.
The only difference is that the nuance of the payments is even more crazy.
Trump NEVER ordered any of these payments.
The man who sent Cohen the checks was the Trump organization's Controller. He received a whiny email from Cohen demanding to be paid more money because he didn't think the amount he was getting was fair for the legal services he was providing. He never mentioned Stormy Daniels or anything. He also refused to provide invoices for any of these 'legal services' he was doing that he wouldn't talk about. The Controller told him that he couldn't just "give him more money", especially without an invoice. So, after ranting in his email like a little bitch, the Controller came up with a solution: could advance his contractually required payments forward until Cohen renegotiated his contract. Cohen bitterly agreed. So, the Controller modified his payments and selected an option from the dropdown menu of his accounting software that he thought best matched the description of these requests: Legal Expenses.
The Controller NEVER SPOKE TO TRUMP ABOUT THIS ACTION. He did it off of his own volition because Cohen was upset, and he was going to get this money anyway. Nothing the Controller did was a violation of the law, and you'll notice he was never charged in a conspiracy. Cohen claimed that Trump told him he would order the Controller to make these payments, but there's no evidence of it, and the Controller said he basically never talked to Trump outside of a few random occasions because DJT was never really in his management. The closest would have been Don Jr, who Cohen didn't claim was part of the conspiracy, and again, Don Jr wasn't notified in any part of this.
Yet, somehow, selecting Legal Expenses from the dropdown was a felony... For Trump Sr., but not the Controller. Even though the Controller expressly stated that he did all this because Cohen was complaining, and he was going to get the money anyway.
After all that, Cohen literally went into a bank and robbed the Trump organization of $60,000 which he was never authorized or entitled to remove. Read that again, COHEN COMITTED FELONY ROBBERY because he complained Trump wasn't paying him enough.
Yeah, there's simply too much detail to add. The entire case revolved around a known convicted liar and something that, almost certainly wasn't even a crime.
Also, of all the lawfare cases against Trump, this is probably the least insane one. Unless you count the crazy E. Jean Carroll rape accusation, which is just run of the mill crazy woman accuses someone of rape-which-a-woman-would-never-falsely-do-totally-pinky-swear-for-realsies.
No, the Carroll crap is one of the most insane things. He was convicted of being libel, not for rape/sexual assault; but for defamation... because he called his false accuser crazy.
Superb breakdown
Thank you for the writeup, sounds exactly like I would suspect them to operate.