It is 34 counts, but still only a single crime. It is more analgous to robbing a single house once, but taking 34 items. Given how the bussiness records law are written, each false record is a seperate crime, but they were all done as part of the same scheme.
This is pretty common in criminal law. It is suprisingly difficult to commit only 1 crime.
Will be very interesting to see what the sentencing end up being, Trump really doesn't seem to have done himself any favours there by constantly attacking the judge, jury and judges family.
There were threats that a conviction would lead to violent retaliation, but to my knowledge none of those threats have been carried out. So why let new threats about his potential sentence influence that?
I would guess the logic behind going harder on repeat offenders is that they've already been punished once and didn't stop breaking the law, so we should punish them harder this time. Not sure that's super effective reasoning, but w/e.