Donald Trump may be closer to become the first former president of USA accused in a criminal case in the country’s history. This possible accusation is being considered after ‘The New York Times’ advanced on Thursday that the Manhattan District Attorney ha guest a Trump a testify before a grand juryan option that is usually presented to potential defendants before filing charges against them.
That grand jury, a secretive panel, is considering whether there is enough evidence to bring a criminal case against Trump over payments made shortly before the 2016 presidential election to silence Stormy Daniels, the porn actress that assures that in 2006 he maintained a intercourse with the then real estate businessman and television star.
The latest events are the last reminder of the various legal fronts that Trump has open, who since November is also a Republican candidate seeking the conservative presidential nomination for 2024.
This specific case is legally complex and the accusation is not guaranteed, let alone a sentence. These are your keys.
Daniel’s story
In July 2006 Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels, the stage name of the porn actress and director Stephanie Cliffordthey met while Trump was participating in a celebrity golf tournament at the Lake Tahoe. According to the version she gave to ‘InTouch’ magazine in 2011, which was never published at the time, he invited her to his hotel room for dinner and they ended up having sex, sex that she described as “generic, textbook ” and then ridiculed also as “two little minutes”. It had been less than four months since Melania Trump had given birth to Barron Trump.
After that first meeting, according to Daniels, they met again on other occasions and in other places, including in Trump’s private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The former president has repeatedly denied having had sexual relations with Daniels.
The 2016 campaign
On October 8, 2016, a person in charge of the tabloide ‘National Enquirer’ he learns that Daniels is offering his story to the media. So he and David Pecker, editor of the publication, a personal friend of Trump and who in the summer had offered to the campaign of the already Republican candidate to help identify negative stories about him to suppress them, contacted Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer. They in turn put him in touch with a lawyer for Daniels. And in the days that followed Cohen agrees to a payment of $130,000 to Daniels to keep quiet.
He doesn’t immediately, and Daniels is about to reach a deal with another publication to tell his story. On October 26, Cohen transferred the money from a home equity line of credit to a start-up company, a loan he later admitted to fraudulently obtaining, and from that company the money was sent to Daniels.
On November 1, a week before the elections, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ reports that the ‘National Enquirer’ paid $150,000 to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who also claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Trump. In that article Daniels’ name is only mentioned in passing.
the revelations
On January 12, 2018almost a year after Trump’s inauguration as president, the ‘Journal’ reveals the payment to Daniels. Initially Cohen states that the money came out of his pocket and that neither the Trump Organization nor the campaign had anything to do with it. In August of that same year, however, Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges he faced, among other things, for the pago to Daniels and McDougal. And there Cohen assured that he made them “in coordination with and under direction” of Trump and “with the primary purpose of influencing elections.
The prosecution also stated that Trump then paid Cohen back in several monthly payments.accepting fake bills that listed those payments as alleged legal expenses.
The case of New York
when the democrat Alvin Bragg was chosen in 2021 to direct the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office decided to drop the presentation before a grand jury that had convened its predecesor, Cyrus Vance, to investigate Trump’s business activities. Bragg, however, intensified the investigation into the payments to Stormy Daniels and in January of this year the grand jury was formed, before which witnesses have been parading and presenting evidence and before which Trump has now been invited to testify.
It will be Bragg who must decide whether or not to impute the former president. To do so he could lean on the alleged falsification of documents that would represent the false invoices with which the money paid to Daniels was returned to Cohen. That, however, would only be a fault, but it is it would be elevated to the category of crime if it was linked to the intention of committing or hiding another crime. That other crime could be that of a improper Campaign Donation, if the payment to Daniels were considered to have functioned as such by benefiting his candidacy. It is a unprecedented combination of laws and could be challenged in legal proceedings.
It is not certain that Bragg decides to impute to Trump, although the invitation to testify before a grand jury is usually given to future defendants (who traditionally tend to refuse to testify). Nor is it guaranteed, in addition, that in the event of imputation the guilt of the former president could be proven. And even if he were convicted, it would be for a crime punishable with a maximum of four years in prison and that he is not necessarily punishable by imprisonment.
Trump response and other cases
The former president reacted on Thursday angrily through a message on your red social. He has again denied that he had a sexual relationship with Daniels and has again spoken of a political witch hunt” and denounce the alleged uas a political weapon of the Department of Justicestating that he is trying to hurt his third run for the presidency.
Trump also faces other legal problems and is expected to “imminent” that the prosecutor’s office in Fulton County (Georgia) announce whether you have decided to follow the recommendation of another grand jury there and file indictments in a case looking into whether the former president or his circle tried to interfere in the state’s 2020 presidential election. under investigation by the Department of Justice for him irregular handling of classified documents and for his role in the storming of the Capitol.