Donald Trump committed 34 felony counts of forgery of business documents by bribing porn actress Stormy Daniels with $130,000 so that she would not make public the extramarital affair he would have had with her. This is how prosecutor Alvin Bragg maintains it in the indictment brief that the former president heard yesterday before Manhattan judge Juan Merchan after judicial officials took his fingerprints when processing his arrest as they do every day with any new detainee. With the big difference that on this occasion, and for the first time in history, the prisoner was a former president of the United States. Trump pleaded “not guilty” to all charges. He did it himself, and not through the voice of his lawyers.
The Republican leader and re-election candidate left for the courthouse from Trump Tower, where he had spent the night, shortly after 1 p.m. He saluted defiantly with his raised fist and, together with his lawyers, entered the caravan that took him to the courthouse in just half an hour.
“It seems so surreal! Whoa, they’re going to stop me! I can’t believe this is happening in America,†she posted on his own Truth Social network during the drive. And he remembered the motto of his movement: “MAGA!” (“Make America great again”, “Let’s make America great again”).
At 1:28 p.m., Trump was taken from the offices where his fingerprints were taken to Judge Merchan’s courtroom. He did it without handcuffs, with an angry gesture, without saying a word or answering questions, despite the fact that they had allowed him to speak.
The magistrate had imposed a discreet scenario for both the arrest proceedings and the reading of charges, with restrictions on the media. When negotiating the terms of Trump’s delivery, his defense had requested the veto of the cameras during the trial session to avoid “a circus atmosphere” while the charges were being read: an ironic argument living from the most showman president of recent years. time. But the magistrate agreed to the request in essence: he prohibited entry to the television camera room; he limited to five the number of photographers who, moreover, could only take pictures before the reading, and forced the editors to wait until the end of the act to transmit their information.
The charges against Trump stem from a $130,000 cash payment that his attorney and mediator, Michael Cohen, made to Stormy Daniels on his behalf. It was in the last days of the 2016 presidential campaign. It was about silencing the porn actress, who was considering making public her affair ten years ago with the magnate. Cohen also mediated around those dates in the payment of another $150,000, by the tabloid The National Enquirer, to the former Play Boy model for the same reason. The public prosecutor’s brief also cites McDougal’s case, but the accusations focus on Daniels’.
According to prosecutors, led by Bragg, Trump reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 bribe with “eleven checks for false purposes†disguised as professional fees. Nine of them “were signed by Trump.” And each check “was processed by the Trump Organization (his group of companies) and illegally disguised as payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a non-existent agreement.” “34 false entries were made in New York business records to conceal the covert down payment†of $130,000. “The participants in the fraud – the letter adds – took measures that, for tax purposes, mischaracterized the true nature of the refunds.”
In sum, “the people of New York allege that Donald Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified state business records to hide crimes that concealed harmful information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,†said Bragg, prosecutor. And he added: “Manhattan is home to the largest business market in the country. We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct. The trail of money and lies exposes a pattern that the people allege violates one of New York’s basic business laws.”
The public prosecutor concluded; “As this office has done time and time again, today we stand up for our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone is equal before the law.”
After the reading, the former president and his entourage left the courts. In accordance with state law, Trump was released on parole and without bail. Now, when the indictment is complete, the judge will adjourn the case until a date to be specified, perhaps in a few months, with an appointment with the Prosecutor’s Office and the defense. It is foreseeable that the lawyers will ask for the dismissal of all the charges and, as Trump suggested yesterday in his network, perhaps the transfer of the case to another jurisdiction that seems to him less adverse than Manhattan, where the Republican vote is very low.
In a preview of the speech that he would give at night, already back at his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Trump reiterated on his network his mantras about the “witch hunt” and “political persecution” that, orchestrated by Joe Biden and the Democratic formation, would explain his imputation. “Today is the day that the ruling political party arrests its main opponent for not having committed any crime,†he said in a fundraising email.
Without downplaying the charges attributed to the ex-president, politicians and lawyers of all stripes stressed and, in part, yesterday lamented the fact that the first accusation against Trump corresponds to the relatively minor case of bribery, with crimes punishable by up to four years in prison, and not to any other of the investigations that affect him for much more serious matters, such as his intervention in the coup attempt to assault the Capitol in January 2021, his attempts to falsify the 2020 elections and annul his results or that of the concealment of hundreds of confidential documents that he took to his Florida home.
Biden, through his spokesman, distanced himself from the matter. “Obviously, he’ll follow the news when he has a moment to keep up, but he’s not focused on that,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
They may be minor offences. The issue may not be a priority for the current president. But the first indictment by a US president is what it is: a political earthquake. Bombshell news.
