Is there a crime if someone intends to commit one but doesn't?
No.
That is one of three potential elements of § 175.10...
intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.
... so no, a crime not even needs to be committed. Just the intent to commit one or to aid or conceal one.
As far as Bragg saying there was a crime, the was. Illegal campaign. Cohen was convicted of that and sent to jail for that, among other crimes. That has been adjudicated.
And instead of reporting that $130K payment to Stormy, Trump
concealed that illegal payment by reporting it as "legal services."
Ok, so, what cohen did was a crime, he made a NDA payment to keep the incident out of the news, but just because cohen was convicted of something, doesn’t mean trump is also guilty of something.
Again, Trump says the payment was to keep from embarrassing his family and the false entry into the business record, that was an internal record, could have been to conceal it for business purposes, which isn’t a crime. It’s going to take a court case to try this issue to see if indeed Trump violated campaign finance laws.
Now, you may believe that he did…hell, I might even believe that he did, but what we think has no bearing on what the law says.
Bragg says Trump was trying to conceal a crime..Trump says he was trying to conceal it from his family…
As they say in the law…innocent until proven guilty.
Also, because this was an internal record, how can there be intent to defraud, or to conceal anything from the public since these documents would have never been made to the public had it not been for Bragg.
The affair was known, cohen was convicted, the trump organization made a note in its internal ledgers about then repayment to cohen.
Where do they get he was trying to conceal a crime? From whom?
Now, if they want to go after trump for making a hush money payment, they can do that, but several have already passed on that. However, if the internal record was never meant to be seen by the public, then no concealment has taken place…until Bragg brought it out.