Trump indictment highlights challenges of prosecuting white-collar crime

FACULTY Q&A Former President Donald Trump's indictment on 34 charges of falsifying business records concerns behavior beginning in 2015, when then-candidate Trump took efforts to secretly keep negative stories about his past out of the national press. Most well known, Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty in 2018 to his role in paying $130,000 in "hush money” to retired porn star Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) in order to keep secret her earlier affair with Trump. "This is an unusual criminal case, to say the least,” said Will Thomas , assistant professor of business law at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "It marks the first time in history that a U.S. president has been charged with a crime. But while there will be many fraught political and constitutional dimensions to these proceedings, at its core this prosecution represents a straightforward case of white-collar crime. Thomas discusses the charges brought against Trump and what a conviction would mean for his businesses and presidential campaign. Will Trump be convicted? How strong is the case?.