Trump Trial Diary, March 19, 2024: The New York Indictment

Rereading the charging documents in the New York case as it heads to trial.

Good Evening:

“A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree,” the New York State criminal code informs us in Penal Law §175.10, “when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” Falsifying business records in the first degree, the code adds, is a class E felony.

Meanwhile, “A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the second degree,” Penal Law §175.05 explains, “when, with intent to defraud, he”:

1. Makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise;  or

2. Alters, erases, obliterates, deletes, removes or destroys a true entry in the business records of an enterprise;  or

3. Omits to make a true entry in the business records of an enterprise in violation of a duty to do so which he knows to be imposed upon him by law or by the nature of his position;  or

4. Prevents the making of a true entry or causes the omission thereof in the business records of an enterprise.

“Falsifying business records in the second degree,” the law informs interested parties, “is a class A misdemeanor.”

This is the simple pair of laws behind the New York state indictment of Donald J. Trump. No RICO. No conspiracy. No complex interaction between the Presidential Records Act and the Espionage Act. No Klein conspiracies. Just 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, each of them framed in a brief passage that reads like this: