The porn star, the doorman and Donald Trump’s very big day

Samantha Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. He was originally accused of paying hush money to a porn star. But now we know that criminal charges against Donald Trump run far deeper. The former US president is accused of covering up multiple affairs to give him a better chance of winning the 2016 election. Today, lawyer and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa on the 34 charges against Trump and whether his denials really stand up.

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the next president of the United States, President Donald J. Trump.

Samantha Hawley: Asha, what a remarkable day. A bit of an understatement ending with Donald Trump giving a speech at his residence at Mar-a-Lago.

Donald Trump, former US president: Thank you very much. We have to save our country.

Samantha Hawley: It was pretty much typical Trump, wasn’t it?

Asha Rangappa: So I have to be honest, I didn’t really watch his speech. I don’t watch him anymore because it’s not you know, I don’t know that he says anything really meaningful, but I suspect that he just repeated the same things that he’s been repeating, which is that these were politically motivated. Yeah. And I think, you know, personal attacks on the DA and the judge. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Donald Trump, former US president: The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.

Samantha Hawley: As you say, he said there’s nothing there at all. He accused Alvin Bragg, who’s the New York City district attorney, I guess the man who’s actually brought these charges against him as being a radical left prosecutor, that he’s out to get Trump.

Donald Trump, former US president: The radical left George Soros backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg of New York. Who campaigned on the fact that he would get President Trump. I’m gonna get him. I’m gonna get him.

Samantha Hawley: He criticises also the judge in the case also saying that, you know, he hates Trump.

Donald Trump, former US president: Have a Trump hating judge with a Trump hating wife and family whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign.

Samantha Hawley: But let’s just step back for a moment before this speech, because never before has this happened that a former president has been charged with a crime. You know, the images of Donald Trump arriving at that Manhattan courthouse were quite something, weren’t they?

Asha Rangappa: Yeah, I mean, it’s a it’s kind of a sad day for the country. You know, I think there are a lot of people who’ve been waiting for him to be held accountable. But also it’s very jarring to see that it was jarring to see the indictment when it was released, when, you know, it says the people versus Donald J. Trump. I do think it’s important, though, to put this in some historical context, because we keep referring to this as unprecedented and certainly it is. We’ve never had an American president charged with a crime, but we’ve had American presidents who were facing potential prosecution. There was Richard Nixon.

Richard Nixon, former US president: Because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.

Asha Rangappa: There was Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton, former US president: I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Asha Rangappa: And what I would say is in both of those cases, Richard Nixon, of course, stepped down from office. Bill Clinton negotiated with the independent counsel at the time to pay a fine and to have his law license suspended. And he gave a public apology. And so there were ways in which they expressed some contrition or demonstrated some, you know, acceptance of responsibility that I think helped them avert prosecutors taking that next step. And I just sometimes wonder, where would we be if Trump had accepted responsibility in any way? I don’t know that we would be where we are right now.

Donald Trump, former US president: There is no case. There is no case.

Asha Rangappa: So in some ways, what’s unprecedented is the fact that he’s been under investigation for so many different things and has utterly refused to take any sort of accountability at all and has remained intransigent in all of them.

Samantha Hawley: Asha, let’s step back now and have a look at what crimes Donald Trump is actually accused of committing. What do these 34 felony charges relate to?

Asha Rangappa: So these felony charges relate to hush money payments that were made to a woman named Stormy Daniels, with whom Donald Trump allegedly had an affair and who was going to tell her story on the eve of the election. And she had offered her story to The National Enquirer. The National Enquirer. Let Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s lawyer know and Cohen told her that he would pay her $130,000 to remain silent. So he paid her from his own funds. And then Donald Trump repaid Cohen. Now, the issue is that when Trump repaid Cohen, he didn’t just write him a check. He disguised these repayments as payments for legal services. And these were recorded in the Trump Organisation ledgers as legal fees. Every entry in that Trump organisation ledger, every check that was written and every invoice that was sent is a separate count of falsification of business records. And so this indictment charges 34 times each one for a check or an entry in the ledger or for an invoice that Donald Trump, with an intent to defraud, engaged in this falsification of records with the intent to commit another crime.

Samantha Hawley: Right and that’s the thing that’s illegal.

Asha Rangappa: That’s the elusive thing. Now, along with this indictment, is a 12 page statement of facts. The facts basically lay out a bigger scheme to bury any stories that were detrimental to him before the campaign. And so it lists one story about a doorman at Donald Trump’s office building who was going to leak a story about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock. National Enquirer buys the story. Karen McDougal, a Playboy playmate with whom Trump had an affair, was going to tell her story. National Enquirer buys her story for $150,000. So the timing of this, what Bragg is trying to convey is all of these were trying to help Trump win the election because all of these things, had they come to light, may have affected how people voted. And because of that, that’s technically a benefit to the campaign. So any value that was given for that is a campaign contribution that should have been disclosed.

Samantha Hawley: Hmm. I can see it referred to as catch and kill.

Asha Rangappa: Correct.

Samantha Hawley: They buy the rights to a story to suppress the story. And what you’re saying is because the story was suppressed and money was paid, that gave Donald Trump a better chance of winning the election in 2016.

Asha Rangappa: Correct. So it’s basically what Bragg is saying is he cheated.

Samantha Hawley: And, of course, his lawyer, Michael Cohen, he’s actually already served a prison sentence in relation to this.

Asha Rangappa: That’s right. So Michael Cohen pleaded guilty, served time for this in federal court. This was in 2018 when Trump was still president.

Robert Khuzami, former Deputy US Attorney: Cohen called guilty to two campaign finance charges, one for causing an unlawful corporate contribution and a second one for personally making an excessive personal contribution, both for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election.

Samantha Hawley: Alvin Bragg, who we mentioned before, the New York district attorney, he’s actually said about these 34 felony counts that this case is pretty much routine business in New York. It’s pretty run of the mill.

Alvin Bragg, New York District Attorney: This is the business capital of the world. We regularly do cases involving false business statements. That’s the charge that’s brought here. Falsifying New York State business.

Asha Rangappa: Yes. This charge is, quote, the bread and butter of the Manhattan DA’s office. And it’s been likened to in the US in our federal system. You know, the FBI and DOJ often charge something called wire fraud or mail fraud. It’s basically anytime you use like a telephone or or the mail to do anything, to do a deceptive scheme, you can come under federal jurisdiction.

Samantha Hawley: But but then Trump’s lawyers come out and they say this has never happened before. There’s nothing like it. Never a case like this ever before.

Todd Blanche, lawyer: You’ll never see a charge like this ever, like this case.

Joe Tacopina, lawyer: You understand it as simple as this. A state prosecutor is prosecuting a federal election law violation that doesn’t exist according to federal election law officials.

Asha Rangappa: There are all kinds of different layers of scheming going on here. And so whether it’s unprecedented or novel, we’ll have to wait and see.

Joe Tacopina, lawyer: This man’s name was not Donald J. Trump. There is no scenario we’d all be here today. Please understand that based on these charges.

Samantha Hawley: Trump has pleaded not guilty to all of these charges. His lawyers say the payment to Ms Daniels was actually made to shield his family from false allegations, and it was not related at all to the campaign. So he denies he just denies all of this.

Asha Rangappa: Right. And the intent, what you just said, his defence really gets to the heart of at least the federal campaign violation statute. Which is, that has to be the purpose that you’re trying to evade. If you have other motives, then you’re not really meeting the standard for that particular crime and that’s why he’s making that argument. What’s interesting is that in the statement of facts, there’s one paragraph that jumped out at me, which is that Bragg says that Trump tried to convince Cohen to delay paying Stormy Daniels until after the election and then after the election, they wouldn’t need to pay her. That kind of throws this. This was about personal embarrassment, claim out the window, because if Bragg can prove that, then it really underscores that this was only about the election.

Samantha Hawley: So, Asha, what comes next? How quickly will this process move along and go to trial? When will it be settled? We know that Trump likes to delay. We’ve seen that a lot, haven’t we?

Asha Rangappa: Yes, we have. And I think even otherwise, this is not law and order. So it’s not going to happen, you know, in the next week.

Samantha Hawley: Not in one episode.

Asha Rangappa: Right. Exactly. I think the timeline that I have heard from many New York prosecutors is probably a year or so before it gets to trial.

Samantha Hawley: We know that Donald Trump wants to be president again. One of the wild things about the US system is even if Donald Trump is convicted, even if he went to jail and we don’t know that, of course, and he is innocent before proven guilty. But even if that happens and he was sitting in jail, he could still run for president, couldn’t he?

Asha Rangappa: He could run for president and he could win. So I don’t know if they would need to set up an Oval Office in his jail cell or something.

Samantha Hawley: As I said, that’s quite wild.

Asha Rangappa: This is where we are here in the United States. This is this is what we think about.

Donald Trump, former US president: With all of this being said, and with a very dark cloud over our beloved country, I have no doubt, nevertheless, that we will make America great again. God bless you and God bless America.

Samantha Hawley: Asha Rangappa is a former FBI investigator and an assistant dean at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University. Donald Trump is set to appear in court again on December the 4th. You may have seen, the Liberal Party has announced it will oppose the Indigenous voice to Parliament. We had a look at whether the voice could really create a legal minefield on March the 30th. That’s in your feed. This episode was produced by Flint Duxfield, Veronica Apap, Sam Dunn and Chris Dengate, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is Stephen Smiley. I’m Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.