The former president of the United States, Donald Trump, will appear voluntarily before the authorities in New York next Tuesday. According to his lawyer, Susan Necheles, his client is “ready to fight” against the accusations, the details of which have not yet been made public. It is expected that 30 criminal charges can be read. The case, which is already taking on a historic character, marks the first prosecution of a former US president.
How a former porn star put Trump in check?
The beginning of this story dates back to the summer of 2006. At that time, according to statements offered to the American media by the former porn star Stormy Daniels -whose real name is Stephanie Clifford-, the then real estate magnate invited her to spend a night together in a Californian hotel in the Lake Tahoe area. According to this version, the two met that same day in July during a golf tournament, and when they had only passed four months after the birth of Barron Trump, the son in common with the former first lady, Melania Trump.
That night has been reviewed in the past, and there is even a photograph of the two of them with the Wicked Pictures porn studio in the background. Daniels – 27 years old at the time – says that they only had sex on that occasion, although Trump continued to call her several more times. Everything seemed to have ended in an adventure. The affair was complicated years later when Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to launch himself as a presidential candidate in 2011 and the then adult film actress wanted to sell the details of the evening to “In Touch Weekly” magazine. The magnate’s entourage reacted by vetoing the publication, and even as the 60 Minutes program would have revealed years later, Daniels would have received threats against her physical integrity by an unknown man if she dared to speak.
The 2016 campaign, the secret payment and Cohen’s role, “The fixer”.
It was only a month before the presidential elections that Trump would win over Hilary Clinton. It was at that moment that her surroundings heard the name of Stormy Daniels again, who was preparing to try to sell the story again. This is when the lawyer Michael Cohen, known in the inner circle as “the fixer”, intervenes. Cohen and Daniels reach a confidentiality agreement and the payment of $US 130,000 in exchange for their silence. The story, again, would be buried until 2018, when the newspaper “The Wall Street Journal” recounted the facts and the exactriz porn sued President Donald Trump in an attempt to annul the confidentiality contract, for which, according to her, she could have had to pay up to a million dollars.
Why would the payment constitute a crime?
In February 2018, Trump’s then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, denied making the deal. Later, he said that he did, but that he did it with personal money, not from the Republican president. He denied any involvement of the boss with him or the campaign. That version would be sustained until August of that same year, when he testified under oath that the order had indeed come directly from Trump. As evidence, Cohen produced reimbursement checks that he said the former president wrote him for covering up the Daniels story.
Legal experts in the United States agree that, since the payment was made a month before the presidential elections, there is a legal basis to consider the agreement a violation of the rules of political campaigns.
Cohen, in fact, is the only man who has paid jail time, at least so far, for the fact. Now, the Lower Manhattan District Court will hear what the former president has to say, who is expected to be accused of fiscal crimes in relation to this case. Trump will appear before the Court in New York on Tuesday under the figure of “voluntary surrender”. He will probably have to submit, like any civilian, to fingerprinting, mugshot and reading of his rights. His case is expected to be handled by magistrate Juan Merchan, who previously handled the tax fraud case against two Trump companies. He has in his power to say if it is necessary to impose a bond or any restriction on the former president.
The other investigations against Trump
In addition to this scandal, Donald Trump aspires to return to the White House under the shadow of other judicial processes.
The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the responsibility that Trump had in the assault on the Capitol, on January 6, 2021, and when an attempt was made to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory. In addition, another case tries to determine if the then president wanted to interfere in the electoral results in the state of Georgia, putting pressure on those in charge of counting the votes. In a count of cases that rises to 12 investigations, another striking one is the one that seeks to resolve whether the former president would have obstructed justice when they tried to recover classified documents from his residence in Mar-a-lago. On the business side, his emporium, the Trump Organization, was convicted in January of fines of up to $1.6 million for running a 15-year tax fraud scheme that prosecutors say the company’s top executives progressively orchestrated. .
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