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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s 34-count felony indictment of former President Trump is unquestionably historic, unprecedented and even tectonic. Yet everyone seems to be dumping on the indictment as a nothingburger.
After carefully reading the indictment, however, I believe Bragg has a better than even chance to win the case before a New York jury.
The indictment charges business records fraud. It is not unprecedented, as business records fraud is a “commonplace” prosecution in New York district attorneys’ offices.
What is unprecedented is Trump’s sordid conduct in allegedly paying off a porn actress, a former Playboy model and a Trump Tower doorman to “catch and kill” (in Watergate lingo, cover-up) sexual misconduct in the run-up to a close national election.
The indictment is a bare-bones pleading, parroting the language of the hoary provisions of §175.10 of the New York Penal Law. It’s not what those of us in the trade call a “speaking indictment” that gives a narrative of the crime worthy of a detective novel.
Here’s how the 34 counts break down: 11 counts for falsifying invoices; 12 counts for falsifying general ledger entries; 11 checks for falsely characterizing the reimbursements to Michael Cohen for the Stormy Daniels payoff as a legal retainer.
It is apparently the shopworn practice in white-collar crime cases in the Manhattan district attorney’s office to file a separate document called a “statement of facts” that puts more flesh on the bareboned charges. If the indictment is the still life, the statement of facts is the landscape. This one is riveting. Bragg alleges that:
“From August 2015 to December 2017, [Trump] 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. In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York. The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme.”
The 13-page statement fleshes out the indictment – it’s about an effort to interfere with an election – and elaborates the other crimes Bragg believes he can prove Trump committed or concealed to enhance the false records charges into felonies.
