Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg may have unlocked Donald Trump’s legal war chest by linking the former president’s 34-count felony indictment for falsifying business records to the 2016 election in charging documents.
Mr. Trump has cashed in on the headline-grabbing charges, raising $4 million in the first 24 hours after the indictment was first announced and an additional $8 million leading up to his arraignment in a New York City courtroom.
According to the Federal Election Commission, campaign funds can be used to pay up to 100% of legal expenses for cases related to campaign activity.
Campaign finance laws place strict caps on personal expenditures, but legal expenses often come down to a case-by-case judgment by the FEC as to whether they are considered “personal use.” That determination comes down to the specific legal case to which the fees are applied.
Columbia Law School professor Richard Briffault said while using campaign funds to pay legal fees can be “tricky,” Mr. Trump may be in luck when it comes to his case in Manhattan.
“The question is: Is this a campaign-related expense?” Mr. Briffault, who specializes in campaign finance regulation, told The Washington Times. “It’s a hard question. But I think if the extent of what he is being charged with — and we haven’t really gotten the full theory of the indictment — is some form of election misconduct, then I think he can use it.”
Mr. Bragg’s 16-page indictment lays out 34 separate felony counts against the former president for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent of covering up payments to his former fixer Michael Cohen to conceal Mr. Trump’s alleged relationship with adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
Mr. Trump has denied the allegations.
Falsifying business records is typically a misdemeanor under New York law, but the law allows the charge to be upgraded to a felony if the records are falsified to commit or conceal another crime.
Mr. Bragg elevated the charges to felonies, but neither the indictment nor the accompanying statement of facts spells out the second crime or crimes. However, Mr. Bragg made clear that he believes the secondary crimes were related to purported election fraud in the 2016 presidential contest.
Legal analysts said it’s a heavy lift to argue that the hush money payments — which are not illegal — violated the Federal Election Campaign Act, the most analogous statute to what Mr. Bragg is arguing.
While not specifically mentioned in the indictment, Mr. Bragg said in a statement of facts accompanying the charges that Mr. Trump concealed the payments as part of a scheme to violate election laws.
“The defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the defendant’s electoral prospects,” Mr. Bragg said. “In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York.”
That link could be the key to unlocking Mr. Trump’s campaign cash to battle the charges.