This Is Why Trump Is Guilty of 34 Felonies

Despite what the former president and his supporters say, New York law is clear. Trump broke it. And now he is guilty of 34 Felonies.

On May 30th, 2024, a jury found Trump guilty of 34 felonies relating to a scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election. As expected, he responded with the usual bellows of “witch hunt,” “rigged,” and “unfair.” He called the judge “the devil.” He even tried to spin his conviction as a personal sacrifice: “It’s my honor to be doing this, but it’s a really unpleasant thing, to be honest.” And for some reason, he brought up Mother Teresa, who was never convicted of having sex with a pornstar and paying her to stay quiet to win an election.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio chimed in with “This is exactly the kind of sham trial used against political opponents of the regime in the old Soviet Union.”

Are Trump and his supporters right? Was this all a witchhunt to persecute a political opponent? Was this a Democrat ploy to prevent a second Trump presidency? 

No. Trump violated New York law.

The Prosecutor’s Story

Over 6-weeks, the prosecutors presented a bevy of witnesses and evidence, and they pieced together the following sequence of events.  

Trump met adult film actress Stormy Daniels at a 2006 golf tournament, where the sexual encounter took place. She agreed to the encounter because Trump promised to make her a reality TV star through any means necessary. “He was going to have me cheat, and it was 100 per cent his idea.” Nothing about this is illegal, though many consider it seedy, as his wife Melania had just given birth to their son Barron. 

Trump’s problem is that he tried to make his salacious past disappear when he ran for president in 2015. He reckoned that his well-known history of being a prolific philanderer would be off-putting to Republicans. 

So he hired his good friend, David Pecker, the owner of the National Enquirer. Pecker was the first witness in the trial, during which he explained the “catch and kill” scheme. Days after Trump announced his candidacy, Pecker met him and his “fixer” Michael Cohen at Trump Tower. Pecker agreed to seek out, buy, and never publish negative stories about Trump, especially those involving women. Pecker also agreed to publish positive information about Trump and negative stories about his opponent. For these services, he would be paid a fee. 

Pecker found two stories. The first was from Playboy model Karen McDougal. Pecker paid $150,000 for her story about her sexual relationship with Trump ten years before. However, Pecker’s lawyers widely advised him that selling this story to Trump might be a violation of campaign finance laws. So he did not follow through. Then Stormy Daniels stepped forward with her story. Pecker refused to pay her. Though this was out of the public eye, Walmart, the National Enquier’s biggest distributor, would not look favorably on the magazine’s association with an adult star. Even after Cohen pushed and threatened Pecker, he refused to buy her story. 

Instead, Cohen negotiated a $130,000 payment with Daniels to sign an NDA. But Trump thought he could stall the deal until after the election. Maybe he didn’t need to pay if he won. And then the bombshell Access Hollywood tape was released on October 7th, 2016, in which Trump boasted about grabbing women. Hope Hicks, Trump’s aide, testified that this was like an explosion going off in the campaign. Trump demanded that Cohen make the deal with Daniels. If her story got out, then it would be the end of his campaign. So Cohen borrowed the money from his home equity and drew up an NDA for Trump’s go-to alter ego, David Dennison, and Peggy Peterson, aka Stormy Daniels. On November 1st, the deal was signed, Daniels could no longer legally speak about her encounter with Trump, and Trump went on to win the election. 

With the story successfully buried and Trump as president, Cohen expected to not only be reimbursed but handsomely rewarded. Instead, Trump initially refused to repay Cohen, refused to give him a prominent role in the new administration, and eventually removed him from the Trump Organization’s payroll. Understandably enraged, Cohen turned to Pecker to speak to Trump on his behalf. Trump agreed to pay Cohen fake legal fees of $35,000 a month until he was repaid in full. 

And it gets worse. During the trial, a bank ledger was entered as Exhibit 35. Prosecutors explained that it showed a $130,000 wire transfer from Michael Cohen to a corporation, who then sent it to Keith Davidson, Daniels’ lawyer. The ledger also had Cohen’s hand-written notes adding $50,000. This extra money was reimbursement for payments to Red Finch, who rigged an online poll from CNBC. This poll ranked the most famous businessmen, and Trump was upset that he was in 9th place. This means Cohen had paid a total of $180,000. Also in the margins were notes from Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s CFO. These notes said that Cohen’s reimbursement should be doubled to make up for the taxes Cohen would have to pay, as this money would be declared as income. By doing so, the payments to Daniels and the reimbursement could be kept a secret. An extra $60,000 was added to presumably keep Cohen happy and quiet. In total, Cohen was paid $420,000 in 12 monthly installments. 

So is this illegal? Yes, clearly.

The Law

These are the two most important laws relevant to Trump’s 34 felonies: 

Section 175.05: Falsifying business records in the second degree. This states that it is illegal to knowingly create false business records by entering incorrect information or altering or omitting information. Doing so is a class A misdemeanor. 

The testimonies and the evidence demonstrated Trump had falsified business records. Each check, invoice, and ledger entry is a separate charge. His payments to Cohen were fraudulent, and even Trump’s lawyers did little to dispute this. 

Section 175.10: Falsifying business records in the first degree. When a person has falsified business records with the “intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof,” then he or she can be charged with a class E felony. 

The prosecution convinced a jury that not only had Trump falsified business records on 34 separate occasions but that he had done so to both commit and conceal other crimes. This bumped the 34 charges from misdemeanors to felonies. 

The other crimes? 

1. Tax Fraud. Cohen was paid a total of $420,000. The purpose of this was to reimburse him for the payouts, which were essentially a loan to the Trump campaign. However, the payments were disguised as compensation for legal services, thus skirting tax law.
2. Federal Election Campaign Act. The maximum an individual can donate is $2,700. When Cohen paid Daniels $130,000, he did so for the benefit of the Trump campaign. Though he didn’t donate it directly to the campaign, it still counts. For example, if somebody holds a party for a candidate and pays $5,000 for balloons, this is considered a campaign donation. Trump’s lawyer tried to argue that silencing Daniels was to protect his family, though Pecker’s testimony says otherwise. The meeting between the two days after Trump announced his candidacy was held to hatch a plan to bury damaging stories and attack his opponents.   
3. Conspiracy to Manipulate an Election. Under New York Election Law 17-152, it is illegal to conspire to promote or prevent a candidate from being elected to public office through unlawful means. And what were the unlawful means? The jury had three choices:  According to the jury instructions, “In determining whether the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you may consider the following: (1) violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act otherwise known as FECA; (2) the falsification of other business records; or (3) violation of tax laws.”

The Strange Bit

The jury did not need to agree on the crimes Trump committed. When determining if he had violated Section 175.10, they could pick from tax fraud, violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act, and/or conspiracy to promote or prevent an election. Likewise, if a juror believed Trump was guilty of conspiracy to promote or prevent an election, then he or she could choose from three options: violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act, falsification of business records, and/or tax fraud. 

Yes, the logic here is self-referential and a bit confusing. 

The 12 jurors could choose different crimes. It was only necessary for all 12 to agree that one or more had occurred. And no one would know which crimes each juror picked. 

Trump’s lawyer, Emil Bove, acknowledged this was how the law worked, but knew it would not be favorable for his client. He asked the judge to make an exception. He wanted the jurors to need to agree on specific crimes. But the judge, Juan Mechan, responded with “What you’re asking me to do is change the law, and I’m not going to do that.”

So, in the end, the trial was well within New York law. Trump falsified business records to commit and conceal other crimes, earning him convictions for 34 felonies.