WHO IS THE VICTIM OF TRUMP’S BOOKKEEPING? The trial of Donald Trump, in which a Democratic prosecutor in Manhattan seeks to jail the former president for a maximum of 136 years for bookkeeping offenses that allegedly hid a plot to steal the 2016 election, is now in a one-week break before closing arguments, jury instructions, and deliberations. A verdict seems likely next week.

The jury instructions are hugely important, but more on them later this week when we have the transcript of discussions between the prosecution, defense, and Judge Juan Merchan. Right now, it’s worth considering the damages allegedly done by Trump’s alleged crime. What are they?

The problem with the bookkeeping offense, for Trump’s opponents, is that there aren’t any victims. You know the story. Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen negotiated and paid for a $130,000 nondisclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels, the porn star with whom Trump may or may not have had a sexual encounter in 2006. (At various times, both sides have denied it happened.) Trump then reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000, plus money for other legal services Cohen performed, plus a bonus, plus $60,000 that Cohen embezzled from Trump, making a total of $420,000. Trump made the payment in 12 installments in 2017. The payments were recorded under the heading “legal expenses” in Trump Organization books, which doesn’t seem particularly crazy since Cohen was Trump’s lawyer.

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But Alvin Bragg, the elected Democratic district attorney of Manhattan, thought it was a crime. Really. There is, in fact, a crime on the books in New York for falsifying a company’s records. It is a misdemeanor with a two-year statute of limitations, which in this case expired in 2019. Any reasonable person might conclude that that would be the end of that. In addition, it might seem a little nitpicky to charge a former president of the United States with a misdemeanor over bookkeeping. And then there was the victim question: Who suffered because of this? The answer is nobody. 

So Bragg was faced with the possibility of charging the former president with a crime that was a) expired, b) relatively unimportant, and c) victimless. He fixed all three of his problems by coming up with a new theory. It held that a) Trump fixed the books for the purpose of committing another crime, which would extend the statute of limitations. Then, b) even though the other crime was also a misdemeanor, it could be used to upgrade the bookkeeping charge to a felony, making it important enough to charge a former president. And c) the other crime that the bookkeeping offense was allegedly designed to cover up was: a plot to corrupt the 2016 election! That way, there was not only a victim — there were millions of victims, meaning those millions of people who voted in 2016 unaware that Trump was secretly undermining the entire democratic process by categorizing the payments to Cohen as “legal expenses” as opposed to, say, “hush money” in the Trump Organization books.

In one move, a case that even anti-Trump types thought was flimsy and ill-considered — they were almost embarrassed that it was the first indictment of a former president because they favored other more momentous charges, like special counsel Jack Smith’s 2020-Jan. 6 indictment — in one move, the lowly Bragg case became … big. When the other cases got bogged down in legal wrangling, Bragg saw his window of opportunity. The trial began in April and promises to produce a verdict by the end of May. Democrats hope they can begin calling the Republican candidate a “convicted felon” before the first debate in June.

But the “other crime,” the one that shows that Trump fixed the 2016 election, remains murky. And it is the one that created alleged victims of the whole enterprise. In opening arguments, prosecutor Michael Colangelo — he is the former No. 3 at the Biden Justice Department who joined Bragg’s lowly county prosecutor’s office for the purpose of trying Trump — said the former president “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.” As the jury listened, Colangelo pounded on the idea of a Trump-led conspiracy to steal the election. 

The conspiracy was so consequential, Colangelo suggested, that Trump might have stolen the entire election by labeling those bookkeeping entries as “legal expenses.” “We will never know,” Colangelo told the jury, “if this conspiracy was the difference-maker in a close election.” Of course, by saying that, Colangelo was hinting that Trump’s alleged misdemeanor just might have been the thing that determined the 2016 presidential race. 

Prosecutors found their victim. It is you, the voting public, for whom bookkeeping entries concerning the nondisclosure agreement between Trump and Daniels might have altered the course of the nation. In that way, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office tried to turn an outdated misdemeanor into one of the greatest crimes in history.