FTA——Bragg’s argument for Trump’s guilt is that Trump caused records pertaining to the “hush money” payment, e.g., invoices, checks, ledgers, etc., which were falsely marked “legal payment,” to be maintained in the Trump Organization’s (“TO”) business records, thus he made false entries in the TO’s business records.
Trump’s defense argues that the records at issue were not “business records” of the TO because: 1) Trump’s payments to Cohen were made from personal or trust accounts and, hence, involved private records; and 2) the records were, unlike accounting books, not held to reflect the TO’s “condition or activity” and, accordingly, did not constitute “business records” under the statute.
Judge Juan Merchan, the presiding judge, has sided with Bragg. According to Merchan, the fact that Trump’s checking records were “personal . . . and not the books and records of a business entity is of no legal consequence.” Merchan reasoned that “[Trump] and the Trump Organization are intertwined to such a degree that it is of no legal relevance” that Trump made payments from personal funds. Merchan suggested that Trump’s personal and trust records “became” TO records once they were scanned into the corporate records system.
Whether Cohen’s invoices and Trump’s checking documents “became” TO records, in my judgment, is of little significance as to whether Trump violated Art. 175.10. There is a much clearer answer as to why Trump is innocent of the charges against him. Let me explain.
The Words of the Statute
Let’s return to the statutory language: “A person is guilty of falsifying business records . . . when . . . he . . . [m]akes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.” I have emphasized two words in the statute— “entry” and “the”—because Trump’s team has yet to raise the exculpatory impact of these words. The word “entry” is a noun that means, per the Oxford Dictionary, “an item written or printed in a diary, list, ledger or reference book.”
In accounting parlance, an “entry” is “the record of any transaction found in a bookkeeper’s journal.” The statute at issue, notably, penalizes a false “entry” made “in” a “business record,” which is defined as “any writing or article [or computerized data] . . . kept . . . for the purpose of evidencing or reflecting [a business’s] condition or activity.” In short, as used in Art. 175.10, the term “entry” literally means a written or typed-in item added to paper or computer records. An obvious example of “making” a “false entry” is where an accountant inputs phony deductions in a corporation’s QuickBooks account.
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. Merchan suggested that Trump’s personal and trust records “became” TO records once they were scanned into the corporate records system.>>> yes they are saying the mere scanning of Trumps checks are automatically business records not just communication. Businesses scan everything and not all scans are GL entries.