At the time, it was all tawdry. A reality star invited a porn actress half his age to a hotel room after a round in a celebrity golf tournament. He promised to put her on TV and then, she says, they slept together. Yet the chain of events flowing from the 2006 encounter the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, has said she had with the Donald Trump, has led to the brink of a historic development: the first criminal indictment of a former US president.
The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has signaled he is preparing to seek felony charges against Trump; Bragg is expected to accuse him of concealing a $130,000 hush money payment that Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer and fixer, made to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.
A conviction would be likely to hinge on prosecutors’ proving that Trump reimbursed Cohen and falsified business records when he did so, possibly to hide an poll law violation. It would not be a simple case. Prosecutors are expected to use a legal theory that has not been assessed in New York courts, raising the possibility that a judge
could throw out or limit the charges. The episode has been examined by both the Federal Election Commission and federal New York prosecutors; neither took action against Trump.
Trump has denied having sex with Daniels and said he did nothing wrong. The former president, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the White House, has made it clear that he will cast the indictment as a political “witch hunt” and use it to rally his supporters. On Saturday, he predicted he would be arrested on Tuesday and called for protests. The prosecutors’ chief witness would be Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations in August 2018, admitting he helped arrange the Daniels payment — and another to a former Playboy model — to aid Trump’s presidential bid at the behest of Trump. Daniels was 27 in July 2006, when she met Trump, then 60, at the celebrity golf tournament in Nevada.
He invited her to dinner. And as they chatted, he told her that she should be on “The Apprentice,” an NBC reality show.
But he never did. Daniels, still bitter, began working to see if she could sell the story of their liaison. She, however, did not fnd any takers for her story. Her luck changed in October.
On October 7, 2016, Washington Post published a tape in which Trump, on a live microphone, was recorded describing how he groped women. People around Trump understood the damage it had done to his campaign.
Meanwhile, Daniels’ representatives reached out to National Enquirer. The Enquirer, whose publisher David Pecker was a friend of Trump’s, alerted Cohen. Cohen agreed to make the payment himself and transferred $130,000 to Daniels’s lawyer. Once he was in the White House, Trump signed checks to reimburse Cohen for paying her off.
The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has signaled he is preparing to seek felony charges against Trump; Bragg is expected to accuse him of concealing a $130,000 hush money payment that Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer and fixer, made to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.
A conviction would be likely to hinge on prosecutors’ proving that Trump reimbursed Cohen and falsified business records when he did so, possibly to hide an poll law violation. It would not be a simple case. Prosecutors are expected to use a legal theory that has not been assessed in New York courts, raising the possibility that a judge
could throw out or limit the charges. The episode has been examined by both the Federal Election Commission and federal New York prosecutors; neither took action against Trump.
Trump has denied having sex with Daniels and said he did nothing wrong. The former president, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the White House, has made it clear that he will cast the indictment as a political “witch hunt” and use it to rally his supporters. On Saturday, he predicted he would be arrested on Tuesday and called for protests. The prosecutors’ chief witness would be Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations in August 2018, admitting he helped arrange the Daniels payment — and another to a former Playboy model — to aid Trump’s presidential bid at the behest of Trump. Daniels was 27 in July 2006, when she met Trump, then 60, at the celebrity golf tournament in Nevada.
He invited her to dinner. And as they chatted, he told her that she should be on “The Apprentice,” an NBC reality show.
But he never did. Daniels, still bitter, began working to see if she could sell the story of their liaison. She, however, did not fnd any takers for her story. Her luck changed in October.
On October 7, 2016, Washington Post published a tape in which Trump, on a live microphone, was recorded describing how he groped women. People around Trump understood the damage it had done to his campaign.
Meanwhile, Daniels’ representatives reached out to National Enquirer. The Enquirer, whose publisher David Pecker was a friend of Trump’s, alerted Cohen. Cohen agreed to make the payment himself and transferred $130,000 to Daniels’s lawyer. Once he was in the White House, Trump signed checks to reimburse Cohen for paying her off.