A Manhattan Grand Jury has decided to indict Donald Trump on charges related to payments allegedly made to hush up an extramarital sexual encounter with porn actress Stormy Daniels. Prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s investigation focused on money paid to Daniels and the former fashion model. Playboy Karen McDougal, who was feared to go public with claims that they had had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump.
According to Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, late in the 2016 presidential campaign he paid Daniels $130,000 to buy her silence about a sexual encounter with Trump after they met at a celebrity golf tournament.
Cohen was reimbursed by Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, which also rewarded the lawyer with bonuses and additional payments recorded internally as legal expenses. Over several months, Cohen said, the company paid him $420,000.
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In early 2016, Cohen had also arranged for the tabloid’s publisher to National Enquirer he will pay the model Playboand Karen McDougal $150,000 to hush up an affair with Trump.
The fate of that investigation seemed uncertain until early March, when it emerged that prosecutor Bragg had invited Trump to testify before the Grand Jury. It was a signal that prosecutors were about to press charges.
In doing so, Alvin Bragg is taking a very different position than two previous prosecutors, who refused to take the politically explosive step of indicting Trump.
But Trump has other ongoing legal cases. A federal prosecutor in Atlanta has spent two years investigating attempts by her and her allies to interfere in Georgia’s vote count during the 2020 presidential election. And the Justice Department is investigating the storage of classified Trump documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago in Florida and his efforts to reverse his electoral defeat.
Trump, for his part, has denied any wrongdoing, repeatedly attacked the investigation and called the allegation “political persecution.”
“Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘get Trump,’ but now they have done the unthinkable – indicted a completely innocent person in an act of blatant election interference,” he said.
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In a statement his lawyers, Susan Necheles and Joseph Tacopina, said: “He did not commit any crime. We will vigorously fight this impeachment in court.”
A spokesman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg issued a statement Thursday saying the office had contacted the former president’s attorneys to “arrange for him to appear at the arraignment,” which has not been disclosed at this time. know.
It is the first time in US history that a former president has faced criminal charges.
