BREAKING: Trump Charged With the Most, Best Crimes

Former President Donald Trump has always styled himself as a brash billionaire with the most and best of everything—and his criminal indictment lived up to his hype.

Trump was slapped with 34 felony counts in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday afternoon, in an indictment that accuses him of falsifying business records in order to conceal damaging information by orchestrating hush-money payments to a woman who claims she slept with him.

Trump, who pled not guilty to all counts, is now the first former president to ever be charged with a crime. He’s also been hit with a larger number of felony counts than seemingly any of his criminally-convicted sidekicks and confidantes.  

The charges included falsifying business records in the first degree. Those records were allegedly falsified in order to cover up hush money payments to undermine the 2016 election. The indictment accuses Trump of executing a “catch and kill” scheme that kept his affairs out of the news through a series of payments that he then concealed through months of false business entries from August 2015 through December 2017.

“The People of the State of New York allege that Donald J. Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” Manhattan District Attorney Bragg said in a statement following the arraignment. “We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct. As the Statement of Facts describes, the trail of money and lies exposes a pattern that, the People allege, violates one of New York’s basic and fundamental business laws.”

Trump has always delighted in petty comparisons. On Tuesday, he got one new reason to gloat: His 34 alleged felonies tower over the number of crimes his aides and advisors allegedly committed. 

Trump’s long-serving Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty to 15 charges last year. Those crimes ranged from grand larceny to tax fraud, and Weisselberg is currently wrapping up a five-month sentence in the notorious Rikers Island prison complex. 

Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts when he caught a case, including tax evasion and orchestrating unlawful contributions to Trump’s presidential campaign. Cohen is now expected to be the prime witness against Trump at the former president’s upcoming criminal trial.

Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was charged with 18 counts of financial crimes in a case brought in the Eastern District of Virginia. Manafort was convicted on eight counts during his trial, and eventually pleaded guilty to more in a plea deal with prosecutors and received a seven-year sentence. But he was eventually pardoned by Trump. 

Trump’s company was found guilty of a mere 17 counts in a fraud trial ending late last year. 

Some prosecutors think that adding a lot of counts to an indictment helps secure a conviction, because juries may have a hard time voting “not guilty” to an extremely lengthy list of charges. 

But in a criminal trial, the severity of the charges are the primary determining factor when it comes to determining punishment and jail time, rather than the number of counts. 

During Tuesday’s arraignment, prosecutors asked Trump to refrain from making any more threats, specifically referencing Trump’s earlier social media posts that if he were indicted the result could be ‘death & destruction” and “World War III.”

“We have significant concern about the potential danger these posts pose,” said Assistant DA Christopher Conway, a prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Judge Juan Merchan said he was not close to issuing a gag order but warned Trump to stop making threatening remarks, saying he’d revisit the issue if he saw more posts like those flagged by prosecutors.Trump’s lawyers addressed the issue in a short scrum outside of the courtroom, saying Trump would not and has not made any threats and that they were litigating his case, and not addressing what he posts on social media. 

Trump slouched into the courtroom looking tired, dressed in a blue suit and floppy red tie. He spoke in monosyllabic responses to the judge, and hunched forward with his elbows on the table for much of the arraignment. At the end of the proceeding he walked out of the courtroom looking angry and glowering at the assembled reporters.

On his way to court, Trump posted to Truth Social, “Seems so SURREAL — WOW, they are going to ARREST ME. Can’t believe this is happening in America. MAGA!”

As Trump entered the courthouse, his campaign sent out a fundraising email with a new T-shirt for purchase. The shirt featured a fake mugshot of the former president, with the slogan “Not guilty.” 

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.