“A scheme to buy and suppress negative information” about Donald Trump before the 2016 election, with falsified financial statements in which payments were recorded, not just the one to porn star Stormy Daniels. This is the fulcrum of the allegations (Pdf 1 and Pdf 2) divided into 34 charges against Trump, made public after the hearing in the Manhattan court in New York.
Manhattan Attorney Alvin Bragg says the former president was involved in a conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election. The ‘plan’ “to promote the candidacy” involved payments recorded through the falsification of company financial statements used.
“We cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct,” Bragg says, defending his decision to indict Trump for falsifying company records “with the intent to defraud and cover up another crime.” All the charges against Trump are for falsifying documents. The statement attached to the indictment said the forgery was made “to conceal criminal conduct” and “to withhold information from the public during the 2016 presidential election.”
In fact, also in the statement, what is called a “scheme” to suppress negative news and scoops for Trump and his electoral campaign is denounced.
This design would include the payment of $ 130,000 ordered by the defendant to the porn star Stormy Daniels – who is expected to testify in the trial – with which the former president had an affair in 2006 to eliminate information that would have damaged his electoral campaign. Bragg recalls that instead of claiming the payments to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen were for the money paid to Stormy Daniels, Trump argued that they were “fictitious legal services”.
The Manhattan prosecutor’s office has also included in the indictment the story of another woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who says she had an extramarital affair with the former president. In fact, the documents do not mention her name but speak of “woman 1”, woman 1, who “was paid 150 thousand dollars not to mention the alleged sexual relationship” by American Media Inc, the company that owns the tabloid National Enquirer.
According to the indictment, the editor-in-chief and CEO of the National Enquirer approached Cohen bringing the Stormy Daniels case to light: the woman claimed to have had a relationship with the tycoon about 10 years earlier.
Cohen, according to the indictment, negotiated a secret payment with the woman to “ensure silence” from Daniels “and prevent the disclosure of harmful information in the final weeks before the 2016 presidential election”. Trump, however, allegedly ordered Cohen to suspend payment of Daniels for as long as possible.
“He told” his lawyer at the time “that if they could delay paying until after the election, they could avoid paying altogether, because by then it wouldn’t matter if the story went public.”
In the indictment against Trump, there is also the payment to “the Trump Tower concierge who was trying, between October and November 2015, to sell information regarding an alleged illegitimate child of the accused”. The ‘doorman’ was paid $30,000 by American Media Inc, which owns the tabloid National Enquirer.
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