In a 13-page court filing outlining the New York criminal case against former President Donald Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday described a years-long "catch and kill scheme" in which Trump and his associates buried negative stories about him by doling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money.
The alleged payments in the run-up to the 2016 election — to a porn star, a Playboy model and a Trump Tower doorman — didn't constitute crimes on their own, Bragg said. What did were Trump's alleged efforts to cover up the scheme, including by falsifying company records to disguise the payments as legal fees, Bragg said.
The former president's actions rose to the level of felonies, Bragg said in court documents, because they were made to further additional violations of the law. However, he only broadly suggested what those additional acts could be.
