Fact check: What are the 34 felony charges in the 2023 federal indictment of Donald J. Trump?

1. How prosecutors framed the 34-count case as a concealment plot that targeted New Yorkers and voters

Prosecutors in Manhattan described the 34 counts as part of a coordinated effort by Trump and others to falsify New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that would have been harmful to his 2016 presidential campaign, asserting that the entry-level bookkeeping was used to mask reimbursements and payments tied to Stormy Daniels and other women ^{[3] [5]}. The District Attorney’s public statements emphasized that the records were not merely inaccurate bookkeeping but were allegedly altered or recorded in misleading ways to hide the nature and purpose of payments, turning routine ledger entries into instruments to mislead investors, regulators, or voters. The indictment frames the conduct as an abuse of corporate record-keeping safeguards by treating purported campaign-related hush payments as legitimate legal or business expenses, a distinction prosecutors say converts ordinary record-keeping into criminal cover-ups ^{[1] [6]}.

2. What the 34 counts actually consist of — the indictment’s numerical breakdown

The charging documents annotate the counts to show how the alleged falsifications map to different financial documents: 11 counts tied to invoices, 11 counts tied to checks, and 12 counts tied to ledger entries, totaling 34 separate felony counts of first-degree falsifying of business records as alleged in the Manhattan indictment ^[2]. That breakdown reflects the prosecution’s approach of treating each false or misleading business record as an individual criminal count, rather than a single aggregated offense, so that multiple entries across months and different media (paper invoices, bank checks, and internal ledgers) generate the cumulative count. The annotated indictment and press materials present those discrete items to illustrate the pattern prosecutors say shows intent to conceal, rather than clerical error or a single isolated misstatement ^{[2] [7]}.

3. The alleged underlying transactions: hush payments and reimbursements to Michael Cohen

Central to the indictment is an alleged $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels and reimbursements to Michael Cohen, who reportedly facilitated the payment; prosecutors allege that Trump reimbursed Cohen and that the reimbursements were disguised in the Trump Organization’s records as legal expenses or otherwise mischaracterized to conceal the underlying purpose ^{[5] [8]}. Reporting and the annotated documents indicate prosecutors rely on a timeline of payments, invoices, and ledger entries showing that the company’s internal bookkeeping was altered over time as reimbursements were processed. The indictment ties these transactions to the 2016 campaign context by alleging the concealment was aimed at preventing potentially damaging information from reaching voters prior to the election ^{[6] [5]}.

4. Legal characterization and immediate consequences spelled out by sources

The counts brought are charged as Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree, a class E felony under New York law when the falsification is intended to conceal another crime, elevating what might otherwise be a misdemeanor to a felony when tied to an intent to cover up separate criminal conduct ^{[4] [1]}. Coverage emphasizes that these are allegations in an indictment and that criminal charges must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt at trial; commentators and official filings note the legal strategy of prosecutors to show intent by linking record alterations to an underlying scheme. The indictment’s charging decisions reflect prosecutorial judgment about which entries can be tied to criminal intent and how to allocate multiple counts across discrete documents ^{[4] [2]}.

5. Divergent framings, transparency issues, and what remains contested or omitted

Reporting varies in emphasis: some coverage focuses on the hush-money narrative and the role of Michael Cohen, while other pieces stress legal technicalities like the multiplicity of counts and the statutory elevation to felony status ^{[8] [1]}. The unsealed indictment gives prosecutors’ detailed allegations, but summaries and headlines sometimes compress complex counting decisions into simpler legal narratives, which can obscure why multiple counts exist for related transactions. Sources also underscore the presumption of innocence and note that defense responses challenge the factual and legal premises of the indictment; those defenses, and questions about prosecutorial motive or charging discretion, are central contested points that the indictment text alone does not resolve ^{[7] [4]}.