Trump made the deliberate decision to falsify business records again and again. Why should only one attempt be punished?
> I do think that it is a little disanalogous to speeding because it is the same thing being concealed each time.
Speeding is also kind of the same thing every time, right? Like, say you speed every morning on your way to work for a month straight. Is that different from e.g. paying somebody for months at a time, and if so, how?
With the falsification of business records, the situation does not seem as clear-cut. It is wrong because it is preventing the public or other relevant parties from having access to accurate information. I don't know if one can really make a formula to calculate how much damage is done by a given falsification, but I personally do not think I would include the number of checks or (probably) the number of invoices written in that formula. The method of payment seems mostly incidental and not essential to the wrongness of the crime. (I include the number of payments as part of the method of payment.)
If this does not clear up my position, feel free to let me know. There is more I could write to flesh it out, but I don't know if that's necessary or if it'd be overkill =)
Which differs from say the situation where somebody gets charged with Murder, Assault with a deadly weapon, Possession of a gravity knife, and Battery. That scenario it's really one act (killing somebody with a gravity knife) that becomes 4 counts. And it feels to me a bit like misjustice to charge somebody with 4 counts as opposed to the worst one.
However, if you write 10 fake checks and cash them it seems to be perfectly reasonable to charge you with 10 counts of fake check writing.
If you're found not guilty, they can't re-try you on the other charges. So they charge all of the possible charges at once -- including charges that would be logically incompatible -- and let the jury decide which ones apply.
The judge has some leeway in deciding whether your punishment should be four separate charges added up, or less than that, depending on state law. They can also have you serve you sentences "concurrently", which has a kind of elegance: if you're serving four sentences for the same action, you serve all four at once, which amounts to spending as much time in jail as the maximum.