NY Grand Jury Indicts Trump
Former President Indicted over Hush Money to Stormy Daniels
NEW YORK. 30 Mar 2023.
This afternoon a New York grand jury seated by DA Alvin Bragg indicted former president Donald Trump after months of testimony by more than 300 witnesses. At issue is $130,000.00 in hush money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors say the payment was an attempt to hide knowledge of their sexual relationship from voters just ahead of the 2016 election. Exact charges are usually released when the accused makes his or her first court appearance. Trump is expected to surrender early next week.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s heavily involved former lawyer, went to jail for his involvement in the Daniels matter. In his 2018 federal guilty plea, Cohen confessed to handing Daniels $130,000 in cash for the express purpose of buying her silence. It was hidden in a way that was the legal equivalent of a campaign contribution—but for more money than federal election law allows to be donated. Then, beginning in 2017, Trump’s trust cut monthly checks to Cohen to reimburse the payment. The New York Times writes:
According to federal prosecutors, the Trump Organization falsely booked the checks as payment for legal services that Mr. Cohen never provided, hiding their true purpose. Mr. Cohen testified in Congress in 2019 that Mr. Trump personally blessed the plan.
The Stormy Daniels case is the first of 19 cases to be brought against the former president, and the least significant one. In the pipeline are the rape and defamation cases of E. Jean Carroll, multiple cases brought by the families of those killed in the January 6th insurrection, and federal cases brought against Trump for caching classified files—including SCIF files—at Mar-a-Lago, lying to his lawyer about them, and retaining them even after the National Archives requested them.
Developing.