Trump Pleads Not Guilty To 34 Counts Of Falsifying Business Records

In one of his posts following the arraignment, Trump continued to claim DA Bragg’s office has “no case.”

“Just lifted off for Palm Beach, Florida,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The hearing was shocking to many in that they had no ‘surprises,’ and therefore, no case. Virtually every legal pundit has said that there is no case here. There was nothing done illegally!”

Former President Trump has characterized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against him as a political attack in a series of social media posts and fundraising emails. Bragg seemed to address those attacks in a press conference on Tuesday afternoon shortly after Trump appeared in court to face the 34 felony charges for falsifying business records. In his remarks, Bragg noted his office had filed similar charges “hundreds” of other times.

“True and accurate business records are important everywhere, to be sure. They are all the more important in Manhattan, the financial center of the world,” Bragg said. “That is why we have a history in the Manhattan D.A.’s office of vigorously enforcing white collar crime. … This charge, it can be said, is the bread and butter of our white collar work.”

Bragg also addressed an issue that Trump’s attorneys and other observers have raised about the lack of charges for other underlying criminal activity.

As federal prosecutors bore down on Michael Cohen in 2018, Trump associates began to pressure the attorney not to flip, Bragg said in the statement of facts.

Per public reports, attorney Robert Costello offered to represent Cohen in April 2018, after the FBI raided the then-Trump attorney’s apartment and office.

The statement of facts describes someone, referred to as Lawyer C, taking actions that match Costello’s reported activities at the time.

Per that document, Lawyer C also emailed Cohen in June 2018, as the Trump attorney was considering whether he should cooperate with the Mueller investigation. Cohen eventually agreed to cooperate and pleaded guilty.

“The whole objective of this exercise by the [federal prosecutors] is to drain you, emotionally and financially, until you reach a point that you see them as your only means to salvation,” the email cited by Bragg’s prosecutors reads. “You are making a very big mistake if you believe the stories these ‘journalists’ are writing about you. They want you to cave. They want you to fail. They do not want you to persevere and succeed.”

Costello was among the last witnesses to appear before the Manhattan state grand jury last month, and reportedly served as a character witness against Cohen.

One of the odd things about this scheme is that Trump was reimbursing Cohen throughout the year that he held himself out as Trump’s “personal attorney.”

For Cohen, it was as much a grift as anything else: it got him a lucrative position with lobbying powerhouse Squire, Patton, Boggs, a job as a vice fundraising chair for the RNC, and the opportunity to take on illustrious clients like Eliot Broidy and Sean Hannity.

All this has been lost to memory, but throughout this, the indictment says, Trump himself was directing thousands of dollars in payments to Cohen which exceeded the value of the payment he made to Daniels.

The payments, Bragg said, went from Trump’s bank account to Cohen “for payment.”

One of the more important elements of the scheme comes from Trump’s reimbursement of Cohen.

That took place throughout 2017 via false invoices that Cohen submitted to the Trump organization. Trump signed checks in response to most of them, though his son Don Jr. and CFO Alan Weisselberg also signed a few of the checks.

Cohen demanded that he be repaid via a complicated calculation which upped the reimbursement from the $130,000 he transferred to Stormy Daniels to $420,000. That accounts for another $50,000 that covered another, unexplained expense, the doubling of that amount which would allow Cohen to commit tax fraud by claiming it as income, leaving the total at $180,000 after taxation, and then another $60,000 as a “supplemental year-end bonus,” prosecutors say.

Per Bragg, we know all this thanks to Weisselberg himself. In the best traditions of Trumpworld confidentiality, the ex-CFO allegedly “memorialized these calculations in handwritten notes on the copy of the bank statement that [Cohen] had provided.”

For Trump, the reimbursement is important: Bragg says that it shows his complicity in the false business records scheme, and pins him as the ultimate source of the money that flowed through Cohen and to the women who were paid off.

During the hearing, the judge warned Trump to refrain from social media posts that could instigate unrest, according to the Associated Press.

Trump has been sharing posts on social media for weeks now, attacking District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his office.

But Trump lawyer Todd Blanche denied the report, saying “there was not a warning.”

“The judge did not warn him, the district attorney made a statement addressing what they perceived to be — I’m not sure what the words they used — inappropriate rhetoric of some sort. … We responded and the judge just took it in. … He did not admonish the president,” Blanche told reporters gathered outside the courthouse Tuesday.

“He did not request that the president not use language. He requested that everybody involved refrain from using language thats inappropriate. … that includes the witnesses,” Blanche added.

TPM’s Hunter Walker contributed reporting.

Trump tried at first to avoid paying Michael Cohen back for the $130,000 he shilled out for Stormy Daniels’ silence.

But for David Pecker, then-CEO of AMI? Prosecutors portray Trump as uncharacteristically lavish in his gratitude towards Pecker.

During the 2016 transition, Trump met with Pecker privately at Trump Tower, prosecutors say, where he thanked him for “handling the stories” about the doorman and the woman who appears to be Karen McDougal. At that meeting, prosecutors say, Trump also invited Pecker to his January 2017 inauguration bash.

Later on, the document reads, Trump invited Pecker “to the White House for a dinner to thank him for his help during the campaign.”

Trump, known throughout his career for owing money to people and institutions of all shapes and sizes, tried to put off paying off Stormy Daniels until after the 2016 election, prosecutors said.

Why then? Because once voting was over, “it would not matter if the story became public,” the statement of facts reads.

Bragg said that Trump directed Cohen to delay making the payment to Daniels “as long as possible,” and that if they could delay until after the 2016 election, “they could avoid paying altogether.”

Attorneys for Trump and Pecker “attempted to delay making payment as long as possible,” the statement of facts reads.

Since Trump likely won’t have a real mugshot taken, his right-wing comrades keep posting fake ones online as some sort of rallying call to support the ex-president. There have been conflicting reports in recent days about whether Trump’s team thought a mugshot would help or hurt his 2024 campaign. Still, it is … unclear how circulating a defendant’s mugshot, real or fake, helps portray their innocence.