As former President Donald Trump attends his criminal trial in New York where he faces 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records tied to a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, his daughter-in-law, RNC co-chair Lara Trump, claims the presumptive GOP nominee is being “held hostage” in a Manhattan courtroom due to “an accounting error.”
On her podcast (video below), Lara Trump said: “You have to think of the fact that this is a case where they’re alleging that there was some sort of accounting error. There was someone who wrote down in an accounting ledger the wrong information, and that is why they’re holding hostage Donald Trump.”
Lara Trump: You have to think about the fact that this is a case where they’re alleging that there was some sort of an accounting error . There was somebody who wrote down in an accounting ledger the wrong information pic.twitter.com/fzymfYRAPh
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 19, 2024
The RNC’s co-chair’s choice of words — “held hostage” — echoes the controversial rhetoric her father-in-law uses to describe incarcerated Jan 6 rioters. It’s a position and phrasing that other Republican lawmakers have adopted to imply that the prosecutions of the insurrectionists are the work of a politicized justice system — the same system Lara Trump asserts is “holding” Donald Trump hostage. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) uses the same language below.
Contrary to what Lara Trump claims, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is not prosecuting the former President of the United States for “an accounting error.” Bragg presented evidence to a grand jury that indicted Trump on falsifying business records, not accounting errors.
[Investopedia is helpful here, clarifying the distinction: “An accounting error is an error in an accounting entry that was not intentional. An accounting error should not be confused with fraud, which is an intentional act to hide or alter entries for the benefit of the firm.”]
Under New York law, “a person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” Bragg alleges Trump “violated election laws to carry out an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 election, by buying and suppressing negative information about him.”