District Attorney Alvin Bragg is leading the first civil lawsuit against a U.S. president. But what are the chances that Donald Trump will actually be convicted?
New York - It's a key element of the criminal trial against Donald Trump in New York: Will prosecutors link the allegations against him - that he falsified his companies' financial records - to a lurid election conspiracy for which he is not charged?
The trial, scheduled to begin April 15, focuses on 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records against Trump. That would be a capital offense that could result in a sentence in New York's Riker's Island prison complex or in state prison.
Donald Trump's trial over hush money payments is agitating
The case surrounding Donald Trump has attracted a lot of attention - also because it is the first criminal prosecution of an ex-president. Also at issue is $130,000 paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
While some legal observers see the indictment as a sensible application of New York's criminal law, others see it as a legally shaky attempt to combine business fraud with attempts to keep information about Trump's behavior secret before the 2024 US election.
Prosecutor sees lawsuit against Donald Trump as “bread and butter of our work”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has defended his actions by saying the allegations against Trump were not unusual in the nation's financial capital, calling the charges the "bread and butter of our white-collar crime work." Bragg's office said it involves cases in which business owners and companies falsified records to avoid insurance payments, cover up thefts and improperly secure federal loans, including from pandemic relief programs.
Across New York State, prosecutors filed first-degree falsifying business records charges in 11,663 cases in state and superior criminal courts between 2014 and 2023, according to New York State Office of Court Administration records. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office brought those charges in 437 cases in the decade before Trump's indictment in April 2023, prosecutors said in a court filing in November. In many cases, the indictments contained additional, more serious allegations.
Donald Trump is accused of forging documents
In Manhattan, there were 42 cases during the same period in which falsifying records was the primary charge - like Trump's case - according to data from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services.
Bragg's critics say he is stretching legal doctrine in a way that could make it difficult to convince jurors to convict Trump. In New York, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor unless the prosecution can prove that the defendant acted with the intent to commit another crime; in this case, the charge can be raised to a Class E felony, the state's lowest felony.
Trump is said to have paid Stormy Daniels $130,000
According to the New York indictment, Trump transferred $420,000 to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen as compensation for paying Stormy Daniels, a porn actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. The money - $130,000 for Daniels and the additional funds for Cohen - was paid in a dozen installments and incorrectly recorded as a legal retainer in the Trump Organization's internal documents.
Prosecutors believe the entire scheme is a potential violation of federal and state election laws and state tax laws. However, Trump was not charged with any other crime in this case, so the charge of falsifying business records is unusual.
Lawyers: Payment to adult actress should protect Trump's families
"If we prosecuted every company in New York that had a false filing ... or a deduction for a crime, we would have a lot of prosecutions, and that generally doesn't happen," said Daniel Hochheiser, a New York criminal defense attorney.
Trump's lawyers have said the payments to Daniels were legal and served to protect Trump's family from embarrassing exposure. Trump, the likely Republican nominee to challenge President Joe Biden in the November election, has accused Bragg, a Democrat, of pursuing legal action against him for political reasons.
Renato Mariotti, a former federal financial fraud prosecutor, criticized Bragg last year when the charges were announced, saying the prosecutor failed to identify the other crimes that facilitated Trump's alleged business records fraud. In a recent interview, Mariotti praised Bragg for providing more details in court documents filed since then.
Trump fails in his attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed
In February, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan rejected Trump's attempt to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the charges were legally insufficient. Merchan ruled that three of Bragg's examples of other crimes Trump sought to commit by concealing payments to Cohen were "legally sufficient" to charge him with a felony.
These examples were:
The amount of Trump's payments to Daniels exceeded federal limits on campaign contributions.
The payments violated state election laws because they were aimed at helping Trump influence the 2016 election through unlawful means.
The payments to Cohen violated state tax laws because Trump paid him more than the $130,000 that was supposed to be refunded to him as compensation for having to pay taxes on the money.
How will the jury decide in the case of Donald Trump?
Mariotti said it could still be difficult to get jurors to convict Trump. “I believe that Bragg will lean very heavily on these other crimes, particularly the campaign finance crimes, and characterize them as an attempt to interfere in the 2016 election,” he said. “Although there is evidence of a different crime, and that has yet to be proven, that is ultimately not what Trump is accused of.”
Former Barack Obama White House ethics adviser Norm Eisen said Bragg's success in maintaining the case despite Trump's attempts to have it dismissed shows the legal legitimacy of the charges. “This is the most important case of book and file falsification in New York history,” said the Trump critic and prominent supporter of the four indictments brought against him. Eisen also served as co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment trial in 2019. “A series of legal successes by the public prosecutor and his team have made it clear that there are 34 very serious criminal offenses of election interference.”
Lawsuit against Trump in New York is not an isolated case
In a court filing in November, Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy said the Manhattan district attorney's office "very frequently" brings charges of falsifying business records. He cited a handful of cases before Bragg took office in which defendants were accused of falsifying business records with the intent to violate federal law.
Some of these cases illustrated how allegations of forgery are typically included in criminal proceedings with more serious allegations.
Two cases involved international banks - UniCredit Bank in 2019 and BNP Paribus in 2014. Both were the subject of extensive federal and state investigations for allegedly handling financial transactions that violated U.S. economic sanctions on doing business with foreign countries violated. These countries included Cuba, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Sudan and Syria.
Both banks pleaded guilty to violating the sanctions and agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, including for falsifying business records. Authorities said the banks falsified documents, including omitting information identifying foreign companies, to conceal financial transactions.
Prosecutor Bragg has experience with lawsuits like the one against Trump
More recent cases filed during Bragg's tenure show the same facts. Last year, Bragg charged the owner of a drywall company with insurance fraud, a Class B felony, and conspiracy and falsifying business records. The owner allegedly defrauded the state of $3 million in insurance premiums related to workers' compensation and disability benefits.
Also last year, Bragg secured the conviction of two men for falsifying business records for their involvement in an $18 million insurance fraud in which they understated their payroll to reduce insurance payments. In the same case, two other men were convicted of first-degree insurance fraud, a Class B felony.
Does Donald Trump have to go to prison? That is considered unlikely
Legal experts are divided over whether Trump would be sentenced to prison if convicted. Under New York law, a Class E non-violent felony is punishable by probation or a sentence of 1 1/3 to 4 years in state prison.
Some analysts said Trump's age, 77, and lack of a criminal record would likely preclude prison time.
New York lawyer Matthew Galluzzo, also a former Manhattan prosecutor, said Trump's chances of getting a prison sentence would increase significantly if he publicly denigrates the jury or the judge and shows no remorse for a guilty verdict.
"He risks prison if he loses badly," Galluzzo said, "and if he dismisses the trial as a 'witch hunt' and says the judge is biased and 'I did nothing wrong.' The judge might say, 'Okay, then serve 90 days in Rikers and see how you like it.'"
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on April 8, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.