The Manhattan jury that found Donald Trump guilty Thursday needed to unanimously find that the ex-president fudged business records with the “intent” to cover up another crime.
That crime, according to prosecutors, was running afoul of a New York state law that makes it illegal to enter into a “conspiracy” to get someone elected to public office by “unlawful means.”
Prosecutors said the conspiracy involved making hush-money payments — in order to prevent a sex scandal from hurting his chances before the 2016 election — to women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.
But jurors did not need to agree unanimously on what the “unlawful means” were, with Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan giving them three options.
They could find that the payouts breached federal campaign-finance laws by exceeding the $2,700 cap on individual donations to campaigns, but only if the payouts wouldn’t have happened anyway even if Trump wasn’t running, the judge said.
Jurors could also find he payouts violated tax law, or that more business records were “falsified” during the alleged conspiracy.
The verdict sheet jurors filled out, however, shows a check mark next to each of the 34 counts of falsifying business records against Trump, but does not detail what “unlawful means” they believed underpinned the conspiracy.
