The “People v. Donald Trump » | Sex, money and the election

(New York) The refrain is known: the Stormy Daniels affair, marked by sex and money, is the least “serious” of the four which earned Donald Trump indictments. But she is also the one the former president hates the most, because she will shed harsh light on scabrous aspects of his life. Not to mention the possibility that the chorus is completely wrong. On the eve of the opening in New York of the first criminal trial of a former President of the United States, let’s dissect the case.

The encounter

In July 2006, at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Stormy Daniels, a 27-year-old porn actress whose real name was Stephanie Clifford, met Donald Trump. The latter, who is 33 years her senior, invites her to his hotel suite for dinner and makes love to her after the meal, according to the actress’ account. Donald Trump, whose wife Melania is in New York, where she has just given birth to her son Barron, will never admit to having had this alleged sexual relationship.

The stratagem

In August 2015, two months after the launch of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump participated in a meeting with Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer, and David Pecker, CEO of American Media Inc (AMI), parent company of National Enquirer. The three agree on a stratagem called in English ” catch and kill ”, intended to prevent the publication of stories that could harm the candidate. In late 2015, AMI gave Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin $30,000 to ensure he wouldn’t sell a (false) story to a media outlet that Trump had a child with a woman from household. In June 2016, AMI paid $150,000 to Karen McDougal, former playmate of the magazine Playboyso that she remains silent about the romantic affair she claims to have had with Donald Trump in 2006.

The panic

At the beginning of October 2016, one month before the presidential election, panic gripped the Trump camp. THE Washington Post has just published a video produced by the show’s team Access Hollywood where Donald Trump boasts in crude terms of being able to grab women by sex with complete impunity. And now the boss of AMI, David Pecker, comes back saying that a porn actress is trying to sell her story concerning a sexual relationship with Donald Trump to the highest bidder. Michael Cohen, the candidate’s personal lawyer, agreed with Stormy Daniels’ representative to guarantee the actress’ silence by paying her $130,000 for the exclusive rights to her story. Trump promised Cohen that he would reimburse him for this payment, made 12 days before the presidential election.

The accusation

Donald Trump faces 34 counts of first-degree falsification of business records in New York. Each of the counts relates to a document that was falsified to make the payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels appear as legal fees. These include 11 checks, 11 false invoices and 12 false accounting entries. Each of the charges carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison and a fine of $5,000.

The crime

However, to obtain a guilty verdict, Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg must not only prove that Donald Trump falsified or had commercial documents falsified. He must also prove that the falsifications were intended to cover up another crime. In charging documents, Alvin Bragg accuses Donald Trump of having “orchestrated a scheme with others […] by identifying and purchasing negative information about it in order to suppress its publication and promote [ses] electoral prospects. In order to implement this illegal project, the participants violated electoral laws, and more specifically the laws that govern electoral financing. Explained Alvin Bragg in a radio interview: “It’s not about money for sex. […] It involves conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and lying in New York business records to cover it up. »

Defense

In a brief filed last September, Donald Trump’s lawyers described the indictment against their client as “a disjointed collection of politically motivated and legally flawed accusations”, which followed an “investigation winding, interrupted and wandering which lasted five years and which resulted in inexplicable and unconstitutional delays”. Before the jurors, they are expected to argue that their client had no criminal intent in giving the green light to the payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels. Far from wanting to influence the outcome of the election or circumvent electoral financing laws, he only sought to avoid embarrassing his family, the former president’s lawyers should add. The latter should also not fail to attack the credibility of Michael Cohen, one of the main witnesses of the prosecution, who has already pleaded guilty to a charge of perjury in a case which earned him a prison sentence three years in 2018.

Witnesses

In addition to Michael Cohen, the suit’s list of potential witnesses includes Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, the playmate of PlayboyDino Sajudin, the doorman of the Trump Tower, David Pecker, the CEO of AMI, Dylan Howard, the editor-in-chief of National Enquirer, and Hope Hicks, White House communications director under Donald Trump. Hope Hicks’ testimony, if it occurs, could represent a strong point in the trial. According to an affidavit from an FBI investigator, Hicks was involved in phone and text exchanges with Trump, Cohen and others involved in the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels. “Based on the timing of these calls and the content of the text and email messages, I believe that at least part of these communications concerned the need to prevent Clifford [Stormy Daniels] to express themselves publicly, particularly in the wake of the history ofAccess Hollywood “, said the FBI investigator.

The jurors

Donald Trump will be tried by a jury composed of American citizens aged at least 18 and living in New York County, a jurisdiction which corresponds to the borough of Manhattan. According to the most recent U.S. Census, the county is 52.2% female, 45.5% white, 26.2% Hispanic, 18.7% black, 13.3% Asian and 3.6 % of people of diverse ethnic origins. During the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden won 86.7% of the vote against Donald Trump’s 12.3%. During the selection of the 12 jurors (to which will probably be added 6 alternate jurors), the former president’s lawyers, like the prosecutors, will have the chance to exclude a certain number of potential jurors whose profile does not help their case. cause. They will therefore prefer a construction worker or a TV viewer. Fox News to a Columbia University professor or a pro-choice activist.

The judge

Born in Bogotá, capital of Colombia, Juan Merchan grew up in the borough of Queens and completed his law degree at Hofstra University in 1994. After serving as a prosecutor in Manhattan for five years, he was appointed a judge in Family Court by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2006 and promoted in 2009 to his current position, where he gained a reputation as a fair, attentive and unflappable judge. In 2022, he sentenced Allen Weisselberg, former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, to five months in prison after his guilty plea in the criminal trial against Donald Trump’s company. The latter has not stopped attacking him since.

The punishment

Even if he is found guilty by the jury and sentenced to prison, Donald Trump will retain his freedom during the lengthy appeal process that will follow. But a guilty verdict in this case does not guarantee a prison sentence, given that the former president has no criminal past. His trial is expected to last about six weeks, according to the judge.