The crime was very cut and dry. What might confusing is that the felony level escalation could be triggered by any one of several crimes and those don’t have to be committed by the same person: it could have been related to the tax evasion or attempted election influence but since Michael Cohen had already plead guilty to violating campaign finance laws as well as tax fraud, all prosecutors had to do was show that this crime was committed in part to cover up Cohen’s uncontested crimes. I doubt they’d have had trouble getting an additional conviction on election interference since it’s so clear that was his concern (c.f. Trump’s stated fears about alienating women voters) but a prosecutor is almost always going to take a given rather than having to risk something going wrong.
> The crime was very cut and dry. What might confusing is that the felony level escalation could be triggered by any one of several crimes and those don’t have to be committed by the same person
Yeah, so not cut and dry.
And the "confusing" part is required to arrive at a guilty verdict. The falsifying records charge cannot stand on it's own because the statute of limitations (2 years) has passed. Prosecutors had to engineer the charges into a felony via accusing Trump of violating NY election law (or maybe tax law?), which is anything but cut and dry.
