Hush money, catch and kill and more: A guide to unique terms used at Trump’s New York criminal trial

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial is full of terms you don’t typically hear in a courtroom.

Centering on allegations Trump falsified his company’s records to conceal the nature of hush money reimbursements, it’s the first ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president and the first of Trump’s four indictments to go to trial. It also has some unique terminology.

Here are some examples:

HUSH MONEY

DEFINITION: According to Merriam-Webster, it’s money paid so that someone will keep information secret. In other words, money that a person pays someone to hush up something.

EXAMPLE: Three payments that prosecutors say were made on Trump’s behalf to bury marital infidelity claims during his 2016 presidential campaign. They are the National Enquirer’s $30,000 payment to a Trump Tower doorman and $150,000 payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, and the $130,000 that Trump’s then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen arranged to pay porn actor Stormy Daniels.

Paying hush money isn’t illegal on its own, but authorities say the payments made to suppress stories about Trump amounted to illegal campaign contributions. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to a federal campaign violation, among other unrelated crimes. The National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., entered into a nonprosecution agreement in exchange for its cooperation with prosecutors. The Federal Election Commission fined the company $187,500, declaring that the McDougal deal was a “prohibited corporate in-kind contribution.”

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