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.
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 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.