Op-Ed: Trump verdict – Death by lousy accountancy

Former US president Donald Trump arrives to speak to the media at the end of the day’s proceedings in his criminal trial at Manhattan Criminal Court – Copyright POOL/AFP/File Dave Sanders

There’ll be an appeal. The GOP is reciting every word Trump said. You’d think the Bolsheviks had stormed the Winter Palace. …Or maybe not. Under all this fluff is a very mundane situation based on business records.

The trial was actually about business accounts entries. Trump sat there at the trial for weeks. He never even acknowledged the basis of the case in his many ill-advised comments. Meanwhile, his toupee seems to be aging.

The jury found against him on all counts, despite threats against practically everyone involved in the case. That’s at least one win for the rule of law.

There’s another much more insidious side to this case.

Trump’s payment of hush money was very badly botched. This is the result. He was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Most of these convictions relate to ledger entries, invoices, and checks, etc.

So far from doing nothing wrong, everything was done wrong, and badly. The problem was how the payments were put on the records. The prosecution charged that the accounts were falsified.

Paid any other way, the matter wouldn’t have any legal issues. The hush money was a person-to-person payment, but it was made by the business in a strange series of multiple payments. Why pay a secret settlement in that way? It wasn’t an unthinkable amount of money.

Put it this way – If you put your personal stuff on your separate business accounts, it’s just plain wrong. It’s lousy management of numbers, to start with. It’s also truly abysmal business accounts practice. This is real nuts and bolts absolute basic accountancy. A first-year accountancy student would know better. Anyone with business credentials should know a lot better.

Say you’re a gambler and running a business. Your bets aren’t business expenses. If you claim that they are and put them on your accounts, it’s a felony. If you deduct these so-called expenses on your tax bill, it’s tax fraud. It just gets progressively worse.

It also makes balancing your books pretty difficult. Your personal expenses also somehow have to balance after putting a six-figure sum on a different balance sheet. That’s suicidal, and another good reason for not doing that.

The takeaway from this train wreck is that Trump’s accounts have yet again landed him on the wrong side of the law, and he’s lost again.

Meanwhile, there’s no real GOP campaign 5 months out from election day. Funding for the election is looking dubious at best. A lot of money has been siphoned off into legal expenses. Apparently, that’s quite legal. If you’re also way behind in donations, however, it is at least a questionable strategy and pitiful financial management. A private jet, personal or corporate, has also been sold supposedly to also cover legal expenses.

It gets worse. This case is likely to be more than just current news. A lot more court cases are to come. This verdict is a self-inflicted injury for Trump. It was avoidable. Simply paying from a personal account would have solved the problem. Every payment will now be under scrutiny.

In the strange postapocalyptic legal desert Trump has made for himself, a lot more big money is at risk. Some of that money is already in hock to fines. The financial picture is particularly grim. The $464 million NYC fraud fine and appeal and DJT Media are still bubbling away in the background.   

There’s a much bigger and far more dangerous question – What is the actual state of Trump’s finances? Trump’s solvency has been seriously in question for some time. This constant scrabbling for money doesn’t look good. Botched payments look worse. The inability to pay bonds looks worse still.  

With any number of indictments yet to come, this could just be the start. Or the beginning of the end.