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Dear SeekandFind - "How should the payment to Stormy Daniels be declared in order to make it NOT illegal? " As I have posted previously, in order to make the financial records 100% accurate, the accountants could have described the payments to Cohen as "Legal expenses and NDA consideration". Doing this would not allow anyone to trace the payment to Daniels, as the Trump Organization (TO) likely enters into numerous settlements and NDAs every year (e.g. disgruntled former employees, slip and fall victims at Trump hotels, etc. )
So TO could have accurately described the payments without any reputational risk whatsoever. Why didn't they do this when it would have been so easy? Because they didn't think it was WRONG to describe the payments as simply "legal expenses", or they didn't know what Cohen did with the money, or the exact amount he paid Daniels. Therefore they could not have satisfied the standard of wilfulness - they did not know what they were doing might be considered illegal. So they can't be guilty, the supposed illegal accounting entry has to be made KNOWINGLY for to be a crime. (misdemeanor). Why Trump's team didn't point this out is a mystery to me, or maybe they did point it out to the jury but the TDS took over.

Trump denies that the sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels ever took place and there is no evidence that it did--and even she denied it in the past. What happened in 2016 was extortion on her part, knowing that even a false accusation would be believed by enough voters that it would hurt Trump's chances of winning.

We still don't know that Trump knew of the payment to her before the election or had anything to do with the way the bookkeeping records with made.

RE: the accountants could have described the payments to Cohen as “Legal expenses and NDA consideration”.

So, the entire thing boils down to failure to write three words down in the record declaration: “and NDA consideration”?

Here’s a question, isn’t an NDA a LEGAL EXPENSE? if so, why the need to add those three words? Isn’t it ASSUMED to be part of the all embracing “Legal Expense” umbrella?

If an NDA is not a legal expense, why not? You need a lawyer to draft the NDA don’t you?

I’m not being pedantic, the 3 words you mentioned will affect every single business entities in the USA should they see a need for an NDA in future.

Heck, they might have to review their financial filings to see if they made the same violation as Trump did.