When a New York jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 felonies last week, it was relying on a chain of legal reasoning that involved various possible combinations of interacting statutes. That made the case against Trump hard to follow. It also raised a due process issue that Trump's lawyers are likely to highlight on appeal.
The charges against Trump involved 11 invoices, 11 checks, and 12 ledger entries that allegedly were aimed at disguising a hush-money reimbursement as payment for legal services. Shortly before the 2016 election, Michael Cohen, then Trump's lawyer, paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her from talking about her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump. When Trump paid Cohen back in 2017, prosecutors said, he caused the falsification of business records to conceal the nondisclosure agreement with Daniels.
