Imagine buying a printer and documenting it as a business expense.

Perfectly legal.

But pretend for a moment that instead of buying a printer, you bought heroin. Now, not only are you breaking the law by purchasing illegal drugs, but you’re also committing a crime in the way you reported it as “something for the office.”

If instead of buying a printer, you bought an ice cream cone, you’ve got a “falsified business expense,” but that’s not necessarily a problem. What makes it criminal is the crime being concealed by documenting the expense as something legitimate.

If someone is going to accuse you of committing a felony because of a falsified business expense, they have to prove to the jury that you’re guilty of committing a crime that was funded by the money you reported as a legal transaction. In the case of our example, the purchase of heroin.

But if you bought ice cream, that’s not illegal and however you accounted for it is not a felony and…

…they don’t have a case.

These are the 34 “felonies” that President Trump was charged with:

These were all identified by the prosecution as falsified business records.

34 falsified business records, 34 felonies.

But remember, in order for a falsified business record to quality as a felony, it has to be proven that the money was intentionally categorized to conceal the fact that the law had been broken.

An excerpt from Manhattan prosecutors’ bill of particulars in the Donald Trump hush-money case referenced in the “Old, unused, and ‘twisty’ — meet the obscure NY election-conspiracy law that just might get Trump convicted” article printed in the Business Insider, April 27, 2024.

But what was the crime?

You can’t tell by looking at the business records, apart from the name, “Michael Cohen.”

In 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s lawyer, cut a check to Stormy Daniels in exchange for her discretion when it came to her relationship to Donald Trump, given its sordid characteristics that occurred in 2006. That same check was later categorized as an illegal contribution to Trump’s presidential campaign and Cohen wound up serving three years in prison.¹

Later, however, it was alleged that Trump tried to reimburse Cohen for the money paid out to Daniels and used a series of falsified business records in order to conceal the true nature of the payment made to the former porn star. In doing so, at least one of three crimes were committed (see sidebar):²

• Violation of State Election Law
• Tax Fraud
• Federal Election Law

But you can’t simply list 34 transactions and call them 34 felonies. You have to prove that every one of those line items was intentionally mis-categorized in order to conceal a violation of either State Election Law, New York Tax Law, or Federal Election Law.

Get ready for Part II…!