Actually the charges were based on how an expense was posted in 2017.
No one pretends that the alleged sex was a crime or the payment for nondisclosure.
Their whole crime is that Trump misclassified the expense as a legal expense. His accountant classified it that way because it was paid to a lawyer as part of a bill for many legal services and testified in detail that he had not consulted with Donald Trump about the bill but had handled it like any other bill from Cohen. Cohen was still doing ongoing work for Trump at that time and there were monthly bills.
That was in 2017.
Trump and the accountant state that Trump had no idea about the way the account entries were logged and it is hard to see what other classification could have been selected.
DOJ says it was classified that way to bury it to avoid negative publicity affecting the election. Of course the election was over. The release of records by the FEC doesn’t occur until way after the election so there was no way it could have affected the election.
Thanks
1. Trump was NOT running his businesses in 2017. His kids were. THE CHECKS were signed electronically.
2. I have done accounting/bookkeeping since 1957-—am 84.
3. I would have posted a legal bill as such any time...especially when that same lawyer had done lots of prior work for me. AS I understand-— COHEN did NOT ITEMIZE any of his invoices—like you get at Home Depot, etc.
PICKING APART every invoice is called “TRYING TO PICK THE FLY CRAP OUT OF THE BLACK PEPPER” in Accounting.