Trump is accused in New York Supreme Court of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to conceal a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
The trial in New York Supreme Court centers on allegations that Trump falsified business records as part of a scheme to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment in 2016 to porn star Stormy Daniels, who says she had an extramarital affair with Trump years earlier.Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accuses Trump of using a"catch and kill" tactic to hide damaging information from voters ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
The DA alleges Trump and others violated election laws to carry out an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 election, by buying and suppressing negative information about him. To pay Daniels covertly, the DA alleges, Cohen opened a bank account for a shell company he had created specifically to facilitate the payment. He then transferred $131,000 into that account from a home equity line of credit. On Oct. 27, less than two weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen wired $130,000 to Daniels' lawyer in exchange for her silence about the alleged tryst with Trump.
Trump has voluntarily attended numerous hearings in the hush money case and his other criminal cases, generating waves of mainstream media attention that his regular campaign events no longer muster. "I think there is a substantial risk that he will be convicted and that he will face a sentence of incarceration," said Norm Eisen, a legal analyst who aided House Democrats during Trump's first impeachment, in a press briefing Thursday previewing the hush money trial.