Misclassification of Expenses at Heart of Trump Indictment

Molly Crane-Newman
New York Daily News (via TNS)

Donald Trump was indicted Thursday by a Manhattan grand jury in the Stormy Daniels hush money probe, an unprecedented legal move that marks the first criminal charges in U.S. history brought against a former president, The New York Daily News has learned.

Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina confirmed to the Daily News Trump had been indicted. He did not immediately confirm the specific charges filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

A court source told the Daily News a grand jury foreman was in the process of handing up an indictment at about 5:30 p.m.

The grand jury had been investigating hush money payments made to porn star Daniels on the eve of Trump’s 2016 election as president, among other areas related to his business dealings.

Logistics of Trump’s surrender at Manhattan Supreme Court, where he must enter a plea to the charges, were unclear.

The hush money deal has long been public knowledge. Cohen detailed the entire scheme and Trump’s role in it during his 2018 federal case when he copped to campaign finance violations, among other crimes.

The former Trump lawyer notoriously referenced Trump in his plea as “Individual 1,” admitting that he issued the payment to Daniels “for the principal purpose of influencing” the 2016 presidential election.

Daniels’ $130,000 payoff came as the Trump campaign learned she was ready to go public with her allegations about sleeping with Trump in 2006 at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament, according to the federal case. Cohen took the money out through a home equity line of credit and had it wired to Daniels through an LLC.

Cohen said he further helped arrange for The National Enquirer’s publisher to pay Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000, who said she slept with Trump between 2006 and 2007.

In the federal case, prosecutors said Cohen “acted in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump and campaign officials to illegally pay Daniels into silence about the alleged sexual encounter to better his prospects of winning the presidency.

The feds said Trump and his company paid Cohen back for the hush money to Daniels in monthly reimbursement checks with interest, which were falsely classified as “legal expenses.”

While directly implicating him in their case, the feds ultimately declined to press charges against Trump, reportedly fearing the case would devolve into a political firestorm and pale in comparison to what he was accused of in the Jan. 6 insurrection of the U.S. Capitol.

The historic charges against Trump in his hometown come more than four years after Bragg’s predecessor Cy Vance Jr. first launched an investigation into the real estate developer and his business dealings.

The long-running probe, which made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, has seen numerous twists and turns, in 2021 spinning off criminal charges against the Trump Organization and its finance chief Allen Weisselberg for tax fraud, resulting in both of their convictions.

After revisiting the hush money deal that prompted the probe, Bragg in January revived speculation Trump could still face charges upon the impaneling of a new grand jury, summoning Cohen to his downtown offices, along with former senior Trump aides Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks.