Former President Donald Trump will stand trial next week on criminal charges stemming from a $130,000 payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during her 2016 campaign. But while the “hush money” payment might be in the midst of Trump’s alleged misdeeds, the act of paying Daniels to shut down is rarely really what’s under legal scrutiny.
Trump’s indictment stems from the $130,000 payment Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen made to Daniels in October 2016 to bolster her allegations that she had an affair with Trump in 2006.
Trump then allegedly reimbursed Cohen $420,000 (adding Daniels’ payment, a separate expense, a $60,000 bonus, and enough to cover taxes on the payment) that was made through the Trump Organization, even though much of it came from Trump’s private bank account and was falsely classified as legal through a service contract.
The $130,000 paid through Trump and Cohen to silence Daniels is not illegal in and of itself: The “gag” agreements that both sides make consensually, in which one party will pay cash to prevent the other party from disclosing information, are in fact perfectly legal in and of themselves,” Tess Wilkinson-Ryan told Slate. Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania.
Secret cash notes may be illegal if they are intended to cover up a crime or if it is a consensual agreement, as in the case of blackmail or bribery, Wilkinson-Ryan ed.
In Trump’s case, he is not accused of making the payment or returning it, but he has only been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business documents, for the fact that his repayments to Cohen were allegedly disguised as legal payments.
Although hush money is not inherently illegal, some prosecutors have argued that the way it was paid to Daniels (through Cohen, just before the 2016 election) was a financial crusade crime: Cohen pleaded guilty to violations of the federal financial crusade in 2018, after the Justice Department alleged that Daniels’ payment was a donation to the Trump campaign that exceeded the legal limit on political contributions.
The alleged crime Trump is accused of, falsifying business records, is sometimes classified as a misdemeanor under New York law, but is elevated to a felony when committed to facilitate some other crime. That’s what prosecutors claim here: All 34 charges opposing Trump are classified as misdemeanors, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argued that the allegedly falsely classified bills were made to cover up other crimes, adding Cohen’s crusade financial crimes and alleged tax matters, as prosecutors claim. The bills presented to Cohen were falsely characterized as a source of revenue than rebilling.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the fees he is opposed to and called the case a “witch hunt. “His lawyers argued in court documents that Trump’s refund checks to Cohen were not illegal, writing that “Trump cannot be thought to have falsified the Trump Organization’s business records by paying his private attorney for his private bank accounts. “
Trump’s felon trial is expected to begin Monday with a variety of juries and last about six weeks. Each felony Trump is charged with carries a sentence of up to 4 years per felony and a $5,000 fine, though legal experts say it’s unlikely Trump will be sentenced to felon as a first-time felon.
The payment to Daniels is not the only “silent money” payment made by the Trump campaign in 2016, though it is the only one directly related to the felon’s case. American Media (AMI), which publishes the National Enquirer, also allegedly paid $30,000 to a doorman to cover up the story that Trump fathered a child out of wedlock, even after it was found to be false, and paid $150,000 to engineer Karen McDougal to “capture and kill” his allegations of an affair with Trump. AMI Executive Director David Pecker discussed the bills with Trump and Cohen, prosecutors say, and struck a blanket deal with them to hide negative stories during the campaign, but Trump did not pay for any of those bills. It was reported that AMI came close to transferring the rights to McDougal’s story to Cohen. and make him pay the $150,000 payment, but in the end he didn’t do it at the last minute. McDougal and Pecker are likely to testify at Trump’s trial.
Trump was indicted in March 2023 for his role in the “financial hush” scheme, following a year-long investigation through the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office that began in 2018. Since then, it has been one of four criminal cases that the former president now faces, along with two federal instances and some other state cases in Georgia, although it is the first of the instances to go to trial, with no date yet set for the trial in the other instances. Cohen was sentenced to 3 years in prison for his role in the “hush” scheme and other crimes. He entered the crime in May 2019 and finished his previous sentence in November 2021. Although in the past he was known as Trump’s “fixer,” the former lawyer has since opposed the former president and is now even considered one of his harshest critics.
Trump is not the first politician to face fees similar to hidden cash in an alleged case. Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has been charged with violating crusade funding laws after the Justice Department claimed he conspired to get political donors to pay a woman he was with. to have an affair, in an effort to prevent a sex scandal from harming their crusade. In this case, as in Trump’s, the alleged crime was not paying secret cash, but rather how the cash was paid. Edwards admitted to having an extramarital affair, however, he argued that the bills were not cross-contributions because they were aimed at hiding the matter from his wife and not from voters. He evaded conviction after the jury made a decision on the maximum fee.