William Brangham:
I imply, Geoff, it got here out an unlimited quantity. I imply, it was one of many very first issues out of prosecutor Matthew Colangelo’s mouth.
He was arguing that Donald Trump engaged in and coordinated a conspiracy to deprave the 2016 election, as you are speaking about. That is the body that they need jurors to see this whole case by means of. Now, the tough half is, it isn’t what they’re charging. There is not any allegation or insinuation that they broke marketing campaign finance legal guidelines right here.
They’re speaking about prosecuting Donald Trump for falsifying enterprise data, however they need these 34 fees of what they name cooking the books to be seen in service of that bigger, extra nefarious purpose.
And prosecutors immediately took the jurors again in time to 2016. It was the tip of the presidential election, and the “Entry Hollywood” tape had simply dropped, and Donald Trump’s marketing campaign was in panic mode. After which, swiftly, the story that Stormy Daniels, the pornographic actress, had been attempting to promote for just a few months all of the sudden grew to become far more pressing to them.
And so, then, Donald Trump’s lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 of his personal cash to remain quiet and to not say something about that. Then, as soon as Donald Trump grew to become president, he repaid Cohen that cash and extra.
And it’s in that course of, that is the place prosecutors argue that the conspiracy to cowl all this up was, as a result of they argue that Trump tried to make that — these funds look like — quote, unquote — “simply run-of-the-mill authorized charges,” when, in reality, they have been in service of this hush cash.
And so Colangelo stated this was election fraud, pure and easy.