The long-awaited charges against Donald Trump centering on hush money payments to suppress damaging news stories ahead of the 2016 election revealed few new details about a case that prosecutors have probed on-and-off for five years
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said on Tuesday that Trump made false records in his family real estate company's books to conceal that he reimbursed his personal lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 hush money payment before the 2016 election to a woman who says she had an affair with him., and Trump's ongoing campaign to retake the presidency in 2024 has heaped additional scrutiny onto the case. Trump and his Republican allies claim the prosecution is politically motivated.
But the 34-count indictment did not get into specifics of the crimes allegedly being concealed, to the surprise of some legal experts. Cohen pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law in 2018 over the payment to Daniels, though Trump was not charged with a crime then. Bragg's predecessor also examined the hush money scheme but did not bring charges.
Bragg told reporters on Tuesday that the law does not require his office to specify the underlying crimes in the indictment. And some legal experts said it is not unusual for initial indictments to be thin on details of new evidence prosecutors presented to the grand jury in support of the indictment.
"What they've done is taken a bare bones falsifying business records indictment, and through the statements of facts, presented it as part of a conspiracy, which I think is very effective," said Adam Kaufmann, another veteran of the Manhattan DA's office.
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