Legal experts say that Manhattan prosecutors’ case against former President Donald Trump for reportedly falsifying business records to hide hush money payments tied to the 2016 campaign is risky but not impossible.
Former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. (Photo: Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters)
Hush Money Case Against Donald Trump
Election law experts and white-collar defense lawyers aren’t sure about how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has laid out his charges including hush money case against Trump. But other experts say that Bragg’s case is plausible and that his legal theories are sound, even if they haven’t been tried yet. Cheryl Bader, who used to be a federal lawyer and now teaches at Fordham University School of Law, said that there are some risks and complications, but she also thinks there is a way to be found guilty.
Donald Trump has been accused of 34 crimes including hush money case of making up business records, which seems like a pretty clear charge at first glance. But Bragg has turned the charges, which would have been crimes on their own, into felonies. To do that, his team will have to show that the records were changed to hide or help another crime, but Tuesday’s court papers didn’t say much about how Bragg plans to show that there was another crime.
At this point in the process, prosecutors don’t have to show what they have, and there aren’t many rules about what a charge must say. But critics say that the public would have been better served by more information, given how important the case is and how it seems to be based on a new way to bring criminal charges. Robert Kelner, a defense lawyer who specializes in political and election law, said, “I’m not saying there isn’t a hint of what the other crime is.” “But you’d think you’d be very clear when you have a strange local law that says to prove one crime, you have to show he meant to commit another,” he said.
Trump Could Be Facing Criminal Charges in Georgia
The former president and leading Republican candidate for the White House in 2024 is in trouble with the law for more than just the hush money case in Manhattan. Trump could be charged with a crime in Georgia in the coming weeks or months. This could be the result of a probe by a special grand jury into his attempts to hurt the 2020 election. Special counsel Jack Smith is in charge of two federal grand jury investigations. One is looking into claims that the 2020 election will be hacked, and the other is looking into White House papers that were taken to Mar-a-Lago. Both of these investigations put Trump in a lot of legal danger.
“I think the Bragg case is the water pistol before the missile-launching F-35 attack piloted by Jack Smith with Merrick Garland as his wingman,” said Ty Cobb, a defense lawyer who represented the Trump White House in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. The prosecution’ first part of their case is to show that a number of Trump’s business records, such as bills, checks, and entries in the general ledger, are fake. Experts said that this part of the case is easy to prove.
Prosecutors will have physical proof that the checks written to Michael Cohen were wrongly recorded as being for legal fee with hush money, when he was supposedly being paid back for paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels as hush money. If Bragg only wanted to charge the man with a misdemeanor, all he would have to do is show that the records were changed with the plan to defraud, which is another pretty easy thing to do.
