What the New York prosecutor’s Donald Trump hush-money indictment shows | World news
Former President Donald Trump was indicted in court on Tuesday with 34 felony counts of leaking business records, as prosecutors allege he paid two women to suppress accounts of sexual encounters with him. .
Here are some highlights from the indictment and statement of facts released by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office:
34 payments
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The indictment sets forth 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, each of which carries a maximum penalty of four years in prison. Trump is not guilty.
Each count covers individual records related to payments by Trump to former personal lawyer Michael Cohen between February and December 2017, Trump’s first year in the White House.
According to Bragg, those payments were not for legal services, as they say, but they were to reimburse Cohen for paying $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence during the 2016 election campaign. Daniels said that she and Trump had an affair. in 2006, the year after he married Melania Knauss, his third wife.
Trump denied having a meeting with Daniels but has accepted the payment.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal embezzlement charges related to the payments he said he made at Trump’s direction.
Cover up
According to a separate legal document called a statement of facts accompanying the indictment, Trump falsified those records as he worked with Cohen and others to cover up several unfortunate stories that threatened his 2016 presidential bid. . Along the way, he and others violated election laws, the statement of facts said.
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Eyes and ears
According to prosecutors, tabloid publisher David Pecker met with Trump at Trump Tower in August 2015, shortly after he announced his presidential candidacy, and offered to act as “eyes and ears” for the campaign by finding stories. negative and changing Cohen before them. were published.
Pecker, who served as publisher of the National Enquirer and CEO of American Media Inc (AMI), also agreed to publish negative stories about Trump’s rivals.
AMI agreed to a non-prosecution agreement with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in 2018.
The Doorman’s story
In October or November of 2015, Pecker heard that a former Trump Tower insider was saying that Trump had allegedly had a child out of wedlock and paid $30,000 for the rights to the story. AMI later concluded the story was not true.
Karen McDougal
According to prosecutors, AMI paid $150,000 to buy the silence of a woman to remain silent about an alleged affair with Trump. That woman, who has not been named, fits the description of former Playboy model Karen McDougal, 52, who has spoken publicly about her relationship with Trump and her arrangement with AMI.
Pecker made the payment after discussions with Cohen and Trump, according to the charges, with the understanding that Trump would reimburse him.
Trump and Cohen discussed the payment in an audio recording in September 2016 and made plans to do so. But Pecker refused to accept the money after talking to his company’s lawyer.
Storm Daniels
In October 2016, the campaign was hit after the release of a video from 2005 in which Trump made negative comments about women on the TV show “Access Hollywood”.
At the time, Pecker connected Cohen with a lawyer for Daniels, who he said had an affair with Trump as well. The two sides agreed on a $130,000 payment, but Trump urged Cohen to delay writing a check until after the November election, when Daniels’ claim would not affect the outcome.
