It was the kind of sordid story Donald Trump might have appreciated before politics: a porn actor pretending to have sex.
But on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, Trump feared that the story, which he called false, would cost him votes. So, prosecutors say, he arranged to pay Stormy Daniels to keep quiet.
Now, after years of back-and-forth before his indictment last year, Trump is scheduled to go on trial Monday in New York on state charges linked to the sex scandal he and his aides tried to cover up. hide.
Barring last-minute delays, this will be the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial. This will be an unprecedented event in American history: the first criminal trial of a former president.
It wasn’t always clear that the hush money allegations would even lead to charges — much less that he would be the first to go to trial. It is arguably Trump’s least perilous indictment, with others involving government secrets and threats to democracy.
Yet it is almost certain to be the most salacious, with expected testimony on allegations of marital infidelity, the complicity of a supermarket tabloid in a cover-up and payments orchestrated by a former loyalist Trump who now counts himself among the enemies of the ex-president.
Many details of the case have been made public since 2018, when federal prosecutors charged Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen with campaign finance crimes in connection with a scheme to bury not only Trump’s claims Daniels, but also other potentially damaging stories from Trump’s playboy past.
They then accused Trump of directing Cohen’s efforts, indirectly identifying him in court documents as “Individual-1.” Justice Department policy prohibits charging a sitting president with a crime, and nothing has come of it.
In the years since, the saga of sex, politics and cover-ups has largely faded from the headlines, overshadowed by an investigation into Russian election interference, Trump’s two impeachments and allegations that he plotted to overturn his 2020 election and allegedly hoarded classified documents after leaving office.
Former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. reviewed the circumstances of Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels and declined to take the politically explosive step of seeking indictment of Trump.
The DA’s office was so unsure about this hush money case that it became known among prosecutors as the “zombie case.” They would revisit it, then abandon it again as they pursued Trump on multiple fronts over the past five years, twice going to the Supreme Court to obtain his tax records and suing his company and a top executive for tax fraud.
Vance’s successor, Alvin Bragg, a Democrat who took office in January 2022, saw the financial silence affair differently.
The grand jury convened in January 2023. It heard from Cohen, now an outspoken critic of his ex-boss, and other witnesses, including the former editor of the National Enquirer tabloid, who helped Trump by buying stories negative and aggressively removing them. practice known as “catch and kill”.
The former president has not said what he would do if Congress sent him a bill banning abortion nationwide.
On March 30, 2023, the grand jury voted to indict Trump for falsifying his company’s internal records to conceal the true nature of payments made to Cohen to reimburse him for his work in potentially covering up stories. embarrassing. The charges are misdemeanors punishable by up to four years in prison, although there is no guarantee that a conviction would result in prison time.
Trump denies the allegations, saying it is prosecutors who are engaging in “election interference” and a “witch hunt.” He pleaded not guilty.
In a court filing, Bragg’s office framed the lawsuits as another case of Trump’s election interference, accusing the Republican of orchestrating an “extensive and corrupt criminal scheme to conceal information harmful to voters” and “undermining the integrity of the 2016 presidential election.” »
In charging documents, prosecutors spoke of a multipart scheme dating back to the early days of Trump’s 2016 campaign to suppress information alleging he had extramarital sex.
Before Daniels’ payment, prosecutors said, Cohen arranged for the National Enquirer to pay $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed she had a months-long affair with Trump. The tabloid also paid $30,000 to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child Trump had out of wedlock.
Trump, shaken by the October surprise of the unreleased 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about grabbing women’s genitals, then ordered Cohen to arrange payment to Daniels, who was campaigning to advance his claims that they had a sexual relationship during a 2006 celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe, California, according to the indictment.
Trump’s impeachment, five days after his indictment, was a spectacle drawing hordes of media, supporters and protesters. His trial will take place in the same courtroom – and in the same cauldron.
After Trump was indicted in New York, others quickly followed.
Within 70 days, special counsel Jack Smith accused Trump in Florida of keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Fifty-four days later, Smith accused Trump in Washington of trying to overturn the 2020 election in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Two weeks later, Atlanta’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis , accused Trump of racketeering and other charges in a similar election subversion case.
As the New York case moves at a rapid pace, Trump’s other criminal cases appear increasingly unlikely to go to trial before the November election.
The Atlanta case was slowed by allegations of impropriety against the attorney general, the Washington case by a Supreme Court appeal on a legally unverified immunity issue, and the Florida indictment by a series of unresolved queries.
“Part of it is just that there are fewer practical obstacles to moving the case forward, and maybe to some extent it’s a simpler case,” said Alex Reinert, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. City.
Trump also repeatedly tried to delay the New York trial. His lawyers were rejected three times this week as they tried to get a state appeals court to postpone the case.
In its allegations of high payments intended to cover up a sexual affair that occurred during an election year, the case has telling parallels with the Justice Department’s unsuccessful prosecution of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. He was charged with campaign finance crimes in connection with nearly $1 million secretly provided by two wealthy donors who helped hide his pregnant mistress during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.
Defense attorneys argued the money was intended to conceal the affair from his wife and not to increase his chances of election. Edwards was ultimately acquitted of one count while the jury deadlocked on five other counts.
Jeremy Saland, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney who now works as a criminal defense attorney, said that because of the size of the case, Bragg must believe he has a better chance of winning against Trump.
“He must walk into the courtroom thinking he’s got the goods,” Saland said. “Otherwise, for the American psyche, it could be catastrophic – for a former president to be prosecuted in a case that ends up falling flat, and even if not true, appears to be a sham.”
But he added that if the allegations were proven, it would still amount to “serious misconduct by someone who was vying at the time to become leader of the free world.” To those who say, “Come on, it’s just hush money,” he said he believes “we hold our elected officials to higher standards and subject them to greater scrutiny, and rightly so.”
NBC Chicago
