As expected, Donald J. Trump was indicted in Manhattan on Thursday (30), becoming the first American president to be charged with a crime.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which brought the charges, is focused on the former president’s involvement in paying hush money to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had an affair with him. Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s intermediary at the time, made the payment during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
The district attorney’s office, led by Alvin L. Bragg, issued a statement on Thursday night (30) announcing that Trump had been indicted and that his lawyers had already been contacted to arrange a surrender.
Although the facts are dramatic and the accusation serious, the conviction of the former president is far from certain.
First, why was Donald Trump indicted?
The charges against Trump have not yet been disclosed, but two people with knowledge of the matter say there are more than two dozen charges against him.
The charges are expected to stem from an alleged hush money payment made to Daniels, who in October 2016, during the final weeks of the presidential campaign, was trying to sell the story of an affair she had with the former president to the media.
Initially, Daniels’ representatives contacted The National Enquirer to offer the exclusive rights to the story. David Pecker, the tabloid’s editor and a longtime Trump ally, did not buy Daniels’ story. Instead, he and the tabloid’s top editor, Dylan Howard, helped broker a separate deal between Cohen and Daniels’ attorney.
Cohen paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet, and Trump later reimbursed him.
In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to several charges, including federal campaign finance crimes involving the hush money. The payment, federal prosecutors concluded, amounted to an improper donation to Trump’s campaign.
In the days following Cohen’s guilty plea, the Manhattan district attorney’s office opened its own criminal investigation into the matter. While federal prosecutors were focused on Cohen, the district attorney’s inquiry would center on Trump.
So, what did Trump potentially do wrong?
By pleading guilty in federal court, Cohen pointed the finger at his boss. It was Trump, he said, who instructed him to pay Daniels, an allegation that prosecutors later corroborated.
Prosecutors then raised questions about Trump’s monthly reimbursement checks to Cohen. They stated in court documents that Trump’s company “falsely accounted” for the monthly payments as legal expenses and that the company’s records cited a retention agreement with Cohen. Although Cohen was a lawyer and became Trump’s personal attorney after he took office, there was no such retention agreement, and the reimbursement was not related to any legal services provided by Cohen.
In New York, falsifying business records can be considered a crime, although it is usually only a misdemeanor. To elevate the case to a felony charge, prosecutors need to show that there was an “intent to defraud” on Trump’s part, that he falsified records to conceal a second crime. In this case, a violation of election law. While hush money is not inherently illegal, prosecutors may argue that the $130,000 payment effectively became an improper donation to Trump’s campaign, under the theory that it benefited his candidacy by silencing Daniels.
Will it be a difficult case to prove?
Convicting Trump or sending him to prison will be a challenge. On one hand, the former president’s lawyers will certainly attack Cohen’s credibility by citing his criminal record. On the other hand, the case may also depend on an untested legal theory.
According to legal experts, New York prosecutors have never before combined the charge of falsifying business records with a violation of state election law in a case involving a presidential election or any federal campaign. As this is uncharted territory, it is possible that a judge could reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor.
Even if the charge is upheld, it amounts to a low-level crime. If Trump is ultimately convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of four years, although prison time is not mandatory.
How did Trump react to being indicted?
Trump responded in a statement, calling the Manhattan grand jury’s vote “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history.”
What happens now?
Trump will have his fingerprints taken and be photographed, and will go through the other routine steps of a traditional criminal process in New York.
While it is standard for defendants arrested on criminal charges to be handcuffed, it is unclear if an exception will be made for a former president. Most defendants are handcuffed behind their backs, but some white-collar defendants considered less dangerous have their hands restrained in front.
It is almost certain that Trump will be accompanied at all times by armed agents of the U.S. Secret Service. They are legally required to protect him at all times.
Trump’s lawyers, who is running for president for the third time, said he will surrender and is likely to be indicted on Tuesday. After that, it is almost certain he will be released on bail, because the charges will likely only include non-violent criminal charges, so the defendant does not need to remain in custody while the trial takes place.
Source: The New York Times