...."The Defendant DONALD J. TRUMP Repeatedly And Fraudulently Falsified New York Business Records To

The Daily Beast

Trump Indictment: He Knew Exactly What He Was Doing

Trump was arrested and arraigned Tuesday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. There's quite a lot to the charges.

...."The defendant DONALD J. TRUMP repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”

That’s how the 13-page Statement of Facts supporting the historic criminal indictment of former president Donald Trump begins, laying out 34 felony counts of falsifying business records connected to Trump’s efforts to hide hush money payouts to porn star Stormy Daniels, former Playmate Karen McDougal, and a doorman who claimed to have information about an undisclosed Trump child.

The 34 counts of falsifying business records are all in the first degree—meaning they’re felonies under New York law. The false records relate to $420,000 in hush money reimbursements to his former attorney Michael Cohen, in connection to attempts to undermine the election by buying the silence of those three people.

“From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant 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 the Defendant’s electoral prospects,” that document states.

To carry out the “unlawful scheme,” the statement says, Trump and others “violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York.” It further alleges that the participants “took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme.”

When his lawyers were asked about Trump’s attempts to intimidate the judge and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.—in one post Trump made to Truth Social, the former president is holding a baseball bat in front of Bragg’s head—Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said Trump was merely showing off “an American-made baseball bat.”

The charges largely hang on the allegedly false business records Trump created after winning the election, when he wrongfully classified those hush money payments to his former personal attorney as “legal services” related to an ongoing retainer.

While the false records counts alone would be misdemeanors, Bragg added more muscle by connecting them to the tax and election interference schemes, according to the statement of facts, thereby elevating all the false records counts to felonies.

In reality, the DA alleges, the payments should have reflected the true nature of those checks—purchasing the silence of two women in order to shield his candidacy from further allegations of sexual impropriety in the final weeks of the election."