The statement of facts also described how Mr. Trump paid Mr. Cohen more than Mr. Cohen had paid Ms. Daniels to cover income taxes Mr. Cohen would incur. Mr. Bragg further emphasized that point in his news conference.
His wording was ambiguous in places. At one point, he seemed to suggest that a planned false statement to New York tax authorities was just an example of the ways by which Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen purportedly violated the state law against conspiring to promote a candidate through unlawful means.
But it is also a crime to submit false information to the state government. At another point Mr. Bragg seemed to put forward an alleged plan to lie to tax authorities — an intention to say Mr. Cohen had earned income for “legal services performed in 2017” to launder what was in reality a repayment — as a stand-alone offense.
In addition to covering up campaign-finance crimes committed in 2016, Mr. Bragg said: “To get Michael Cohen his money back, they planned one last false statement. In order to complete the scheme, they planned to mischaracterize the repayments to Mr. Cohen as income to the New York state tax authorities.”
In the courtroom, the prosecutor Christopher Conroy accused Mr. Trump of causing the Trump Organization to create a series of false business records, adding that he “even mischaracterized for tax purposes the true nature of the payment.”
That prosecutors cited the possibility of planned false statements on tax filings struck some legal specialists as particularly significant, given the speculation over how bookkeeping fraud charges would rise to felonies.
“The reference to false tax filings may save the case from legal challenges that may arise if the felony charges are predicated only on federal and state election laws,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/u...aud-taxes.html
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