Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Trump’s Conviction - Business or Personal?

Donald Trump speaking at a podium

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference from the lobby of Trump Tower in New York the day after being found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Butler is a husband, father, grandfather, business executive, entrepreneur, and political observer.

We have all been exposed to the nationally embarrassing circus often labeled the “hush money” trial of former President Donald Trump. But I suspect most of us have not read the actual charges on which he has now been convicted. I am not going to address the claims that the whole trial was rigged or that the verdict was in the bag in some way. But I will simplify these charges and point out some interesting aspects of this travesty.


But first let me state that I am not a Trump supporter (nor am I a Joe Biden supporter). I have voted in every presidential election since turning 18. I did not vote for Trump in 2016, nor in 2020, nor will I vote for him in 2024. I also did not vote for Hillary Clinton or Biden. I think our presidential choices in recent years have gone from bad to worse, andwe deserve better.

With that in mind, consider the following distillation of the 34 counts against Trump.

“THE GRAND JURY OF THE COUNTY OF NEW YORK, by this indictment, accuses the defendant of the crime of FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS IN THE FIRST DEGREE, in violation of Penal Law §175.10, committed as follows: The defendant, in the County of New York and elsewhere, on or about [various dates ranging from February 14, 2017 through December 5, 2017], with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof, made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise, to wit, [transaction details and “enterprise” details], and kept and maintained by the Trump Organization.”

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

All 34 charges are essentially for the same activity spread out over a period of time and involving different types of records and two different organizations. Each count has identical language except for the various dates, the transaction details and the “enterprise” details.

For example, the transaction details and enterprise details of the first four counts are as follows:

  • Count one: “… an invoice from Michael Cohen dated February 14, 2017, marked as a record of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust …”
  • Count two: “… an entry in the Detail General Ledger for the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, bearing voucher number 842457 …”
  • Count three: “… an entry in the Detail General Ledger for the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, bearing voucher number 842460 …”
  • Count four: “… a Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust Account check and check stub dated February 14, 2017, bearing check number 000138 …”

Counts five through seven are of the identical format except that there is one Detail General Ledger entry for the invoice instead of two.

Beginning with counts eight through 10 there is a slight difference in who the records belonged to:

  • Count eight: “… an invoice from Michael Cohen dated April 13, 2017, marked as a record of Donald J. Trump …”
  • Count nine: “… an entry in the Detail General Ledger for Donald J. Trump, bearing voucher number 858770 …”
  • Count 10: “… a Donald J. Trump account check and check stub dated June 19, 2017 …”

Counts 11 through 34 are again identical in nature. For each of nine months from April through December 2017, there is one count for an invoice from Michael Cohen marked as a record of Donald J. Trump, one count for a Detail General Ledger Entry in the records of Donald J. Trump, and one count for a check issued to pay the invoice by Donald J. Trump.

One interesting note on these charges is that they appear to correspond to 11 monthly invoices from Cohen for legal services. The groups of charges start with an invoice (11 of them, issued monthly between February 2017 and December 2017). Each of those invoices has a voucher for a Detail General Ledger entry (two vouchers for the February invoice) and then each of the invoices has a check that was issued to pay the invoices. Media explanations of the transactions say they were presented as monthly retainer invoices for services but embedded in the amounts was a reimbursement for Cohen’s payment to Stormy Daniels.

Evidently the falsification involved classifying these payments as “legal services” instead of marking a portion of the payments as election-related “hush money.”

But more interesting is who these “falsified” records belonged to: the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust and Donald J. Trump the person, neither of which is a “business.” A revocable trust is simply a legal tool for organizing your personal assets and ensuring they are distributed per your instructions when you die. They are used to ensure a deceased person’s estate is not subject to the time and expense of a lengthy probate process whereby a court determines how your assets are distributed. They are a common legal tool not just for wealthy people but for anyone who has a sizable estate. Probate requirements vary from state to state but are typically required when the estate exceeds $100,000 (or much less in some states). Placing your assets in a trust can avoid the probate process. The trust will hold investments including even privately held businesses of which Trump no doubt has many. But the trust itself is not a business. Nor is Trump himself personally a business.

Each of the charges states that the records were “kept and maintained by the Trump Organization” but this is merely an administrative service provided for his benefit and which he presumably pays for. The records themselves are the records of Donald Trump and not the Trump Organization or any other business.

Perhaps the invoices themselves were issued to a Trump business. But paying such an invoice personally would suggest Trump understood they were not business expenses, and he therefore chose to pay them from personal funds.

I am no fan of Donald Trump’s morals or ethics, whether personal or business-related, but I do wonder how he can be convicted of falsifying business records based on records that are strictly personal.

Read More

Employees being let go, laid off, fired.
Getty Images, mathisworks

Part One, The Impact of Trump’s Executive Actions: The Federal Workforce

Project Overview

This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy, explaining in practical terms what the administration’s executive orders and other executive actions mean for all of us. Each of these actions springs from the pages of Project 2025, the administration's 900-page playbook that serves as the foundation for these measures. The Project 2025 agenda should concern all of us, as it tracks strategies adopted by countries such as Hungary, which have eroded democratic norms and have adopted authoritarian approaches to governing.

Keep ReadingShow less
Dictionary definition of tariff
Would replacing the income tax with higher tariffs help ‘struggling Americans’?
Devonyu/Getty Images

Trump's Tariff Chaos: Strategy or Stumble?

Few would argue with the claim that President Trump’s tariff policy is chaotic.

In early April 2025, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on all U.S. trading partners, including a 10% blanket tariff and higher rates for specific countries like China (145%) and Canada (25%). Just a few days later, however, he rolled back many of these tariffs, citing the need for "flexibility".

Keep ReadingShow less
Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society

The following is reposted with permission from his Substack newsletter, The Art of Association.

I make a point of letting readers know when I change my mind about matters that bear on the ongoing discussion here at The Art of Association. I need to introduce today’s newsletter about what the second Trump Administration entails for civil society with just such an update.

Keep ReadingShow less
USAID flag outside a building
A USAID flag outside a building.
J. David Ake/Getty Images

A Profound Distortion of Humanity’s Purpose on Earth

In the comments section of his New York Times column titled “Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True,” Nick Kristof wrote: “I think that President Trump and Elon Musk thought the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would be an easy target and could be a practice run for raiding something harder, like Medicaid. In reporting this story, I tried to put human faces on the aid cuts and appeal to readers' consciences, but I wonder whether it's more effective to appeal to the public's sense of self interest? Which arguments do you think are most effective in reaching people and changing minds?”

As a citizen advocate who has spent more than 40 years working to improve USAID, waves of grief keep coming over me due to the reckless and shameful dismemberment of the agency. Attempts by Musk and Trump to shut down USAID amount to vandalizing America’s soul.

Keep ReadingShow less