No. of Recommendations: 17
They still have to prove that when Trump decided to make or cause the false entry in the business records, he did so with the intent of committing, aiding, or concealing the scheme. Mere knowledge is not enough.
That evidence is present.
There is audiotape of Cohen speaking to Trump describing the process of setting up a shell company to originate the payment to:
* not have the payment coming from the Trump campaign
* not have the payment coming from The Trump Organization entity
* not have the payment coming from Donald Trump's personal accounts
There are multiple checks signed directly by Donald Trump on Trump Organization accounts paying $30,000 monthly installments back to Cohen over the course of a year to spread out his repayment to Cohen to compensate Cohen for his $130,000 outlay + tax gross-up. This proves Trump was aware of the repayments being made (and had monthly reminders to refresh his memory) and that they were coming from Trump Organization accounts and reflected in Trump Organization books.
There is a written document explaining how the original $130,000 fee was grossed up so Cohen's repayment could be laundered as business expenses of The Trump Organization, thus triggering New York State accounting fraud charges for treating the "expense" as income rather than regular "expense."
The second-degree removed structure of the payment and repayment were kept out of the Trump Campaign and Donald Trump's personal account to delay or avoid completely any discovery of the payment prior to the election. Trump has been quoted by multiple witnesses, not just Cohen that all he wanted to do was prevent disclosure of the story until after the election. "If I lose, I don't care. If I win, I'll be President and I will have control to prevent any consequences."
David Pecker's testimony also provides as related proof of federal campaign finance violations because his arrangement to catch and kill possible negative stories itself was not illegal per se but WAS a valuable non-cash contribution that was not reported by the Trump campaign that was directly aimed at influencing the election. Pecker also cited multiple conversations that these efforts were not aimed at avoiding offense to wife Melania's innocent sensibilities but were PURELY related to aiding Trump's campaign.
This is really not complicated or subtle.
WTH
