Former President Donald Trump sits at the defense table with his defense team in a Manhattan court, Tuesday, April 4, 2023, in New York. Trump is set to appear in a New York City courtroom on charges related to falsifying business records in a hush money investigation, the first president ever to be charged with a crime. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Largely consistent with original anonymously sourced accounts, the 34-count indictment charges former President Donald Trump with falsifying business records related to payoffs to — and compensation for — hush money to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels.
The $130,000 that Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen funneled to Daniels wasn’t a simple check.
In the weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Cohen took out a home equity line of credit from First Republic Bank and steered it through his then-newly formed shell company Essential Consultants LLC, which in turn paid Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson, according to federal records. Federal prosecutors said that Trump Organization executives devised an equally convoluted system of making Cohen whole: Cohen tacked on $60,000 for “tech services” and an equivalent amount for a bonus, then the Trump Organization grossed up that amount to $420,000, paid out in monthly intervals of $35,000. The difference accounted for what Cohen would have to pay in taxes on the original payment.
Cohen produced checks signed by the former president and his son Donald Trump Jr. to Congress.
The federal investigation didn’t answer Trump’s bookkeeping for those payments, whether he was compensated by his company for them, and if so, how he reported them.
Read the indictment, below.
This is a developing story.
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