counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. the now unsealed indictment lays out the 34 counts. in the form of numerous entries made with, quote, intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof the indictment isn t explicit about the other crimes trump tried to conceal but it s laid out clearly in the prosecutor statement of fact as a scheme involving trump and america media incorporated ceo david pecker, noting in june 2015, defendant trump announced his candidacy for president. and soon after, in august 2015, met with lawyer a, michael cohen, and pecker at trump tower. at that meeting, pecker agreed to help with the defendant s campaign, saying that he would act as the eyes and ears of the campaign by looking out for negative stories about the defendant and alerting lawyer a,
similar monthly invoices by email to the trump organization for the remaining months in 2017 each invoice falsely stated that it was being submitted pursuant to the retainer agreement and falsely requestedpayment for services rendered for a month of 2017 well, in fact, there was no such retainer agreement, and lawyer a, cohen, was not being paid for services rendered in any month of 2017. after the twice impeached former president s arraignment, manhattan district attorney alvin bragg addressed reporters about the importance of pursuing the case against trump under new york state law, it is a felony to falsify business records with intent to defraud and intent to conceal another crime. that is exactly what this case is about 34 false statements made to cover up other crimes.
kind of in the lead-up to this arraignment. once he made his way into the courtroom, where there were no tv cameras and only the photographers at the start, that was the tone that he set and that was the demeanor that he had. i have never seen anything like it let me come to the table for a moment back to attorneys here you know, it s like when they say in boxing, you really don t know anything until you get punched in the face. then you really find out which god you serve. and i mean, donald trump has for his entire life, has someone fixing things for him. he always had a fixer. always wanted a roy cohn. he had michael cohen, allen weisselberg. he s always had someone to fix it even for donald trump who has gotten away arguably with committing a few crimes in his time over the course of his life, suddenly it s different when you re in court think about it this way you re talking about someone who went through a mueller investigation, nothing happened. impeachment number one, n
the new york d.a. s office your timeline is right, and that s really important, what s laid out in the statement of facts and the indictment august 2015, that agreement. pecker, cohen, and trump, catch and kill no negative information. why, because i m running for pr president of the united states doorman gets paid off $30,000. june 2016, karen mcdougal gets $150,000 everybody is quiet still haven t heard anything september 2015, the audiotape between michael cohen and donald trump, trump telling cohen, pay cash what do you mean this whole setup, this arrangement? just pay the cash. october 7th, 2016, access hollywood tape comes out, everything blows up. we re on the eve of the election there s drama, the evangelicals maybe getting a little nervous on october 27th, 2016, stormy daniels gets her $130 thon it was all for the purpose of being able to win and influence the outcome of the election. that s why it s so important for people to understand you want to talk about an election be
told david pecker not to publish stories until the election was over there s a lot of election related activity, a lot of election related testimony that michael cohen and david pecker will be star witnesses in the trial because of what they know and the conversations they had about holding stuff until the election was over. there s testimony from michael cohen that he goes into the white house and meets with trump in the oval to confirm that he s going to get paid back then i want to ask you, katie, specifically about this. this is a statement of fact about cohen in a pressure campaign to your point, something that doesn t seem to be charged the fbi executed a search warrant on cohen s residents and office in the months that followed, the defendants and others engaged in a pressure campaign to make sure lawyer a did not cooperate with law enforcement. on the day of the searches, lawyer a called to speak with the defendant to let him know what occurred. in a return call, he told lawy