On Tuesday, former president Donald Trump was arraigned by a grand jury in Manhattan on 34 counts of first-degree falsification of business records. The 76-year-old pleaded not guilty to all the charges and left the criminal court after Judge Alvin L Bragg released him from custody without pre-trial restrictions.
The charges against Trump, which were thus far sealed, were released to the public on Tuesday during the hearing. Here is an overview of all 34 charges of falsification of business records against the 45th POTUS.
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The most highlighted aspect of the arraignment was the hush money payments Trump made to pornstar Stormy Daniels, to silence her ahead of the 2016 elections in which Trump was elected POTUS.
Additionally, American Media Inc, publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, paid Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 shortly after Trump became the Republican nominee for president in 2016 for exclusive rights to her story. The National Enquirer never published the story. It is alleged that the payment was actually made by Trump to silence her.
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Although there is no mention of hush money in the document released today, there are 11 instances where Trump is accused of falsifying documents with the intent to defraud, through his former lawyer Michael Cohen.
It is known that Cohen made a payment of $130,000 to prevent her from going public about a sexual encounter he had with her in 2006. The payment was initially made by Cohen in October 2016, ahead of the presidential election. Trump later reimbursed him over the next year.
The rest of the charges were related to various other payments the Trump organization made, with a range of invoice numbers the prosecutors claim Trump falsified. The first charge in the list is from February 14, 2017, while the last one is from December 5, 2017.
