The checks that led to Trump’s first criminal trial in the ‘hush money’ scandal

In the months leading up to the presidential election in 2016, Trump was faced with how to quietly bury potentially damaging stories alleging he had engaged in affairs with an adult film star and a Playboy bunny. 

A plan was hatched by his then-lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen; and David Pecker, an ally and the publisher of the National Enquirer. The supermarket tabloid would buy the rights to the stories and sit on them until after the election to prevent them from hurting Trump’s chances at winning.

The dark arts, hush-money practice was known as a “catch-and-kill.”

“So what do we got to pay for this?” Trump allegedly said in a September 2016 conversation with Cohen that was captured on tape, according to prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

That conversation allegedly set off a series of financial transactions to hide the payments to the women — porn star Stormy Daniels and one-time-Playboy Bunny Karen McDougal — that led to Trump becoming the first former U.S. president to ever face criminal charges. 

Last April, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed 34 felony charges of falsifying business records against Trump, the first of a series of criminal cases Trump now faces. He has since been charged in separate cases with inciting an insurrection, attempting to overturn an election and illegally retaining classified documents after being voted out of office.  

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has now ordered the case to proceed over the objections of Trump’s lawyers, who had sought to have the charges thrown out. The judge set a trial date of March 25 in what will be Trump’s first criminal trial.

Trump, 77, who is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican Party’s nominee for president this year, has argued that the Manhattan case — and the others he faces — are politically motivated to stop him from winning in November. He denies all the charges and says he has done nothing wrong.

The crux of the case brought by Bragg against Trump rests on his signature on a series of checks allegedly made to reimburse Cohen for payments he made specifically to buy Daniels’ silence.

Trump’s lawyers have argued that the charges rest on tenuous legal grounds and that what is alleged is simply sloppy accounting and doesn’t amount to a felony.

‘Legal services rendered’

The deal prosecutors say Trump arranged with Pecker, the chief executive of the Enquirer’s then-parent company, American Media Inc. and Cohen always faced the difficult question of who was going to pay to make potentially damaging stories go away. And the methods used changed over time.

The arrangement to suppress such stories was first reached at a meeting between Trump, Cohen and Pecker at Trump Tower in August 2015, in which Pecker agreed to “act as the ‘eyes and ears’ for the campaign by looking out for negative stories about Trump and alerting Cohen right away, prosecutors said. 

Just a few months later, a man named Dino Sajudin, a doorman at a Trump-owned building in Manhattan, approached the Enquirer claiming to have information about Trump fathering an out-of-wedlock child.

Even though the tabloid’s editors were dubious of the story — and would eventually deem it untrue — Pecker ordered them to pay Sajudin $30,000 for it, prosecutors said.

Next came Karen McDougal, a former Playboy Bunny-turned-fitness-instructor, who approached the Enquirer in June 2016, claiming to have had a months-long affair with Trump around the time his third wife, Melania Trump, gave birth to their son Barron.

Trump has denied the affair.

American Media agreed to pay McDougal $150,000 for the story, plus an arrangement for her to write a series of fitness columns for some of their other magazines. The story was then put on ice, prosecutors said.

Cohen would later set up a shell company called Resolution Consultants, LLC through which he planned to acquire the rights to the McDougal story. But American Media later decided to call the deal off and hang on to the story. 

Lastly came adult film star Stormy Daniels, who approached the Enquirer just a month before the 2016 election, claiming to have had an affair with Trump. The Enquirer’s editor-in-chief, Dylan Howard, then contacted Cohen, who negotiated paying Daniels $130,000 for her story, prosecutors said.

But this time, after consulting with Trump, it was agreed that Cohen would pay Daniels himself and that Trump would reimburse him, prosecutors said. According to court filings, Trump allegedly told Cohen to delay paying Daniels for as long as possible, even until after the election, when they may not have to pay her at all.

Cohen then set up another shell company, called Essential Consultants LLC, and took $131,000 from his own home equity line of credit in order to pay DanIels, prosecutors said. Before actually cutting the check, however, prosecutors say Cohen double-checked with Trump to make sure he would, in fact, reimburse him.

After the election, which Trump won, he instructed the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Alan Weisselberg, to pay Cohen $420,000. The payment was to cover the $130,000 Cohen paid to Daniels, $50,000 for an unrelated service, an additional $180,000 to cover any tax liabilities so Cohen could claim the payment as income, plus a $50,000 bonus.

Trump alleged criminal liability in the matter stems from a decision to list in the Trump’s Organization’s books that the payments to Cohen  — which were broken into 12, monthly checks of $35,000, each containing Trump’s signature — were for “legal services rendered.” 

Prosecutors say that was false and amounted to a felony.

The charges amount to 12 felony counts of falsifying business records for each check that was issued and 22 additional felony counts for each time the false reason for issuing the checks were entered in the company’s ledger books.

What’s next?

The Manhattan DA’s case will likely largely rely on testimony from Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to separate federal charges to his role in the arrangement. He ultimately spent time in prison on campaign-finance violations and other charges. 

Pecker and Howard, who both reached non-prosecution agreements with federal prosecutors for their cooperation in the investigation, are also expected to testify in the Manhattan district’s attorney’s case.

Bragg has also signaled that he intends to call Daniels and possibly McDougal to testify in the case.

While the “hush money” case may be the first criminal prosecution Trump will face, it is unlikely to be the last.

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to allow Trump’s prosecution in a case alleging he incited an insurrection for the Jan. 6, 2020, riots in the U.S. Capitol, to proceed immediately while they weigh Trump’s argument that he should be immune to the charges because he was president at the time.

Trump also faces separate federal charges for allegedly hatching a plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election by presenting a phony slate of electors to congress, for allegedly keeping boxes of classified documents after leaving office and state charges in Georgia for the alleged phony-elector plot.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in all cases.