The Manhattan district attorney’s case against Donald Trump centers around allegations that the former president orchestrated illegal “catch and kill” payments in a scheme to suppress negative stories about him during the 2016 election that continued while he was in office, according to the indictment against him unsealed Thursday.
Trump, 76, is facing a total of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, which each carry a maximum sentence of four years behind bars. Taken together, the ex-president faces a whopping 136 years behind bars, but if convicted at trial and actually sentenced to jail, the time would likely be far less.
Prosecutors are hinging their case on three instances of Trump allegedly employing “catch and kill” tactics, where he, his then-lawyer Michael Cohen and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg conspired to keep potential sex scandals from coming to light.
The illegal activity allegedly started in 2015 when the CEO of American Media Inc. (AMI) at the time, David Pecker, agreed to act as the “eyes and ears” for Trump’s presidential campaign and to alert Cohen before a negative story was published, according to the statement of facts filed by prosecutors.
A few months later, around December 2015, AMI paid a former Trump Tower doorman $30,000 to prevent him from going public with allegations that the real estate mogul had fathered a child out of wedlock, the court document states.
After learning the story wasn’t true, prosecutors said AMI wanted to release the doorman from his contract but were told by Cohen to wait for the election to end, the filings allege.
In another instance, AMI allegedly paid a woman, likely former Playboy model Karen McDougal, $150,000 “in exchange for her agreement not to speak out about the alleged sexual relationship” among other things, the court docs claim.
AMI falsely characterized the charges, prosecutors said, and only agreed to the deal after a conversation with Trump and Cohen and with “the understanding” that the two would reimburse the company.
Prosecutors then pointed to Cohen’s infamous $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, who was claiming she had an affair with Trump in 2006.
Cohen paid Daniels on behalf of Trump through a shell company as a way to keep her quiet, and records of his reimbursements were also purposefully falsified, prosecutors alleged.
Notably, the payments to Cohen from Trump continued while he was president, the court docs allege.
Sometime in January 2017, Weisselberg and Cohen — whom prosecutors call “Lawyer A” in the filing — met to make a repayment plan for a total of $420,000.
Cohen needed to be repaid the $130,000 for Daniels and a $50,000 payment for “tech expense.”
Because he would have to pay taxes on the falsely classified payments, prosecutors allege Weisselberg decided to pay him double — or $360,000 — plus a $60,000 bonus.
Trump subsequently paid Cohen back “for the illegal payment through a series of monthly checks, first from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust … and then from the Defendant’s bank account,” prosecutors outline in the statement of facts filed with the court.
“Each check was processed by the Trump Organization, and each check was disguised as a payment for legal services rendered in a given month of 2017 pursuant to a retainer agreement.”
Those payments were “false New York business records” because there was no retainer, prosecutors said.
Trump pleaded not guilty in court to all the charges, which were brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and marked the first time a current or former US president has been indicted and arraigned for a crime.
Both AMI and Cohen have copped to their guilt in the payoff scheme.
In a 2018 non-prosecution agreement with the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the company admitted it never intended “to publish the story or disseminate information about it publicly,” prosecutors claim.
That same year, Cohen pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the hush-money payments, and is serving as one of the prosecution’s star witnesses in the case against Trump.
Weisselberg is serving a five-month prison sentence after being convicted of tax fraud.
Former Brooklyn prosecutor Adam Uris told The Post that Trump’s indictment is “interesting because in a way it shows a lack of creativity by the DA’s Office.
“The full statement that they are trying to make is that he used these shady, underhanded tactics to kill negative press, but there is no crime for that,” the attorney explained.
“Instead, they are charging him for the business records.”
That Trump slept with Daniels or paid people to keep quiet isn’t illegal, Uris said: “What is a crime is not reporting that information correctly and falsifying your taxes when it comes to that.”
“The devil is in the details,” he added.
“He is being charged for really bad accounting.”
