II. The Defendant Falsified Business Records
24. Shortly after being elected President, the Defendant arranged to reimburse Lawyer A for the payoff he made on the Defendant’s behalf. In or around January 2017, the TO CFO and Lawyer A met to discuss how Lawyer A would be reimbursed for the money he paid to ensure Woman 2’s silence. The TO CFO asked Lawyer A to bring a copy of a bank statement for the Essential Consultants account showing the $130,000 payment.
25. The TO CFO and Lawyer A agreed to a total repayment amount of $420,000. They reached that figure by adding the $130,000 payment to a $50,000 payment for another expense for which Lawyer A also claimed reimbursement, for a total of $180,000. The TO CFO then doubled that amount to $360,000 so that Lawyer A could characterize the payment as income on his tax returns, instead of a reimbursement, and Lawyer A would be left with $180,000 after paying approximately 50% in income taxes. Finally, the TO CFO added an additional $60,000 as a supplemental year-end bonus. Together, these amounts totaled $420,000. The TO CFO memorialized these calculations in handwritten notes on the copy of the bank statement that Lawyer A had provided.
26.
The Defendant, the TO CFO, and Lawyer A then agreed that Lawyer A would be paid the $420,000 through twelve monthly payments of $35,000 over the course of 2017. Each month, Lawyer A was to send an invoice to the Defendant through Trump Organization employees, falsely requesting payment of $35,000 for legal services rendered in a given month of 2017 pursuant to a retainer agreement. At no point did Lawyer A have a retainer agreement with the Defendant or the Trump Organization.
27. In early February 2017, the Defendant and Lawyer A met in the Oval Office at the White House and confirmed this repayment arrangement.
28. On or about February 14, 2017, Lawyer A emailed the Controller of the Trump Organization (the “TO Controller”) the first monthly invoice, which stated: “Pursuant to the retainer agreement, kindly remit payment for services rendered for the months of January and February, 2017.” The invoice requested payment in the amount of $35,000 for each of those two months. The TO CFO approved the payment, and, in turn, the TO Controller sent the invoice to the Trump Organization Accounts Payable Supervisor (the “TO Accounts Payable Supervisor”) with the following instructions: “Post to legal expenses. Put ‘retainer for the months of January and February 2017’ in the description.”
29. Lawyer A submitted ten similar monthly invoices by email to the Trump Organization for the remaining months in 2017. Each invoice falsely stated that it was being submitted “[p]ursuant to the retainer agreement,” and falsely requested “payment for services rendered” for a month of 2017. In fact, there was no such retainer agreement and Lawyer A was not being paid for services rendered in any month of 2017.
30. The TO Controller forwarded each invoice to the TO Accounts Payable Supervisor. Consistent with the TO Controller’s initial instructions, the TO Accounts Payable Supervisor printed out each invoice and marked it with an accounts payable stamp and the general ledger code “51505” for legal expenses. The Trump Organization maintained the invoices as records of expenses paid.
31. As instructed, the TO Accounts Payable Supervisor recorded each payment in the Trump Organization’s electronic accounting system, falsely describing it as a “legal expense” pursuant to a retainer agreement for a month of 2017. The Trump Organization maintained a digital entry for each expense, called a “voucher,” and these vouchers, like vouchers for other expenses, became part of the Trump Organization’s general ledgers.
32. The TO Accounts Payable Supervisor then prepared checks with attached check stubs for approval and signature. The first check was paid from the Defendant’s Trust and signed by the TO CFO and the Defendant’s son, as trustees. The check stub falsely recorded the payment as “Retainer for 1/1-1/31/17” and “Retainer for 2/1-2/28/17.” The second check, for March 2017, was also paid from the Trust and signed by two trustees. The check stub falsely recorded the payment as “Retainer for 3/1-3/31/17.”
33. The remaining nine checks, corresponding to the months of April through December of 2017, were paid by the Defendant personally. Each of the checks was cut from the 10 Defendant’s bank account and sent, along with the corresponding invoices from Lawyer A, from the Trump Organization in New York County to the Defendant in Washington, D.C. The checks and stubs bearing the false statements were stapled to the invoices also bearing false statements. The Defendant signed each of the checks personally and had them sent back to the Trump Organization in New York County. There, the checks, the stubs, and the invoices were scanned and maintained in the Trump Organization’s data system before the checks themselves were detached and mailed to Lawyer A for payment.
34. The $35,000 payments stopped after the December 2017 payment.
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