DONALD TRUMP; HUSH MONEY; INDICTMENT
22 MARCH 2023
All indications are that the 45th President of the United States is going to be indicted over apparent hush money payments made prior to the 2016 presidential election.
In this BALANCER, we look at the rules which the Manhattan District Attorney says Trump broke, and what all the sides involved say did and didn't happen.
INTRODUCTION
Donald John Trump is arguably the most controversial president the United States has ever had.
He banned Muslims from entering America, he ruminated about injecting disinfectant to combat COVID-19, he still insists he won the 2020 election when there is no proof he did - and that's just scratching the surface.
Opponents have long wanted him to face some sort of reckoning (remembering he's already been impeached, twice) and now it seems to be happening.
But like the American gangster and crime boss Al Capone - who was charged with 22 counts of tax evasion, and convicted for five - it may be something comparatively benign which brings down the former president.
Here are key players in the hush money payments:
STORMY DANIELS: ADULT FILM ACTRESS
- Daniels says she met Donald Trump at a charity golf tournament in July 2006, and that they had sex one time in his hotel room.
- Ten years later, she was paid $130,000 by Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen to remain quiet about their encounter. This was in October 2016 - just before the U.S. presidential election.
- It was only in January 2018 that news of the payment emerged, when the Wall Street Journal broke the story a year after Trump took office.
- Daniels gave an interview to In Touch Weekly in 2011 detailing her encounter with Trump (who was then host of The Apprentice and not a political player), but the magazine chose not to publish it after Cohen threatened legal action.
KAREN MCDOUGAL: ACTRESS & MODEL
- McDougal says she met Donald Trump in June 2006 (a month before he met Daniels) at a party hosted by Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner.
- She says they had an affair over the next 10 months.
- In August 2016, McDougal was paid $150,000 by American Media, Inc (AMI) for the rights to her story - which it never published. AMI is the owner of the National Enquirer newspaper, which had endorsed Trump for the 2016 election. Trump was also friends with David Pecker, the CEO and Chairman of AMI.
- AMI says it paid the money to McDougal for the exclusive lifetime rights to her story about Trump, and not to "kill damaging stories" about him.
MICHAEL COHEN: FORMER LAWYER
- Cohen was Donald Trump's personal lawyer between 2006 and 2018.
- In August 2018, Cohen surrendered to the FBI. He was being investigated at the time as part of the Mueller Investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
- Cohen pleaded guilty to five counts of tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution (McDougal), and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution (Daniels).
- In his plea, Cohen said one payment was “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office” and the other was made “under direction of the same candidate” - implicating Donald Trump.
ALVIN BRAGG: DISTRICT ATTORNEY, MANHATTAN
- Previously a state and federal prosecutor, Bragg is the 37th District Attorney of Manhattan.
- The DA's office was already investigating Trump before Bragg took up the position in January 2022, but it had focused more on Trump's business practices rather than the hush-money payments.
- Bragg however refocused the investigation onto the payments - which his predecessor Cyrus Vance had decided against building a case around.
- If Trump is indicted, Bragg will become the first prosecutor - local, state, or federal - to bring criminal charges against a U.S. president.
PAYING HUSH MONEY IS NOT A CRIME
While there is a moral and ethical argument over Donald Trump having an affair, and then asking the women involved to stay quiet in exchange for money, there is no criminal argument.
The following discussion between Dan Pfeiffer, from the podcast Pod Save America, and Leah Litman from the University of Michigan Law School explains - in simple language - what Donald Trump is actually being accused of, and how the legal system can and may treat it.