According to the NY Times, Manhattan’s DA has warned Trump’s legal team that charges could be coming over his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter…
The Manhattan inquiry, which has spanned nearly five years, centers on a $130,000 payment to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The payment was made in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign by Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, who was later reimbursed by Mr. Trump from the White House.
Michael Cohen hasn’t testified before the grand jury yet and Trump was invited but it’s considered unlikely that Trump would agree to do so.
The Times doesn’t reveal where this is coming from but says the DA’s office refused to comment. For the record, this is a grand jury in New York so it’s not the lady who went on a media tour last month talking about how she wanted to swear Trump in. She is part of a separate grand jury in Georgia. But obviously someone is talking.
As for Trump’s team, they called this report “simply insane” and “an embarrassment to Democrat prosecutors.” While that might sound like Trumpian hyperbole, in this case I’m not sure it is. The case Bragg is attempting to bring sounds like a real long shot.
The basis of the case is a claim that Trump’s company falsified business records by claiming reimbursement payments made to Michael Cohen were legal expenses when in fact Cohen was not his lawyer at the time. Instead, Trump was allegedly repaying Cohen in installments for the $130,000 payment Cohen made to Stormy Daniels. But the business records charge would only be a misdemeanor. In order to elevate it to a low level felony, Bragg would also have to prove the falsification of records was done to conceal another crime. I’ll let the Times explain Bragg’s theory of the case:
In this case, that second crime could be a violation of New York State election law. While hush money is not inherently illegal, the prosecutors could argue that the $130,000 payout effectively became an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, under the theory that because the money silenced Ms. Daniels, it benefited his candidacy.
Combining the criminal charge with a violation of state election law would be a novel legal theory for any criminal case, let alone one against the former president, raising the possibility that a judge or appellate court could throw it out or reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor.
This sounds pretty thin. If a conservative DA were trying this convoluted theory out against former president Obama, you can imagine how the media would treat it. They wouldn’t just call it a novel legal theory, they’d trash it as a partisan witch hunt by a partisan DA. It’s pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that’s what’s going on here. DA Bragg is a) looking to make a name for himself as the guy who indicted Trump and b) counting on New York jurors to go along with whatever bull puckey he puts before them so long as it means they can get Trump.
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