Smiling Miklós;
United States; sex scandal; Democratic Party; Donald Trump; Republican Party; US presidential election; Michael Cohen; New York City; Stormy Daniels;
2024-04-24 09:34:00
although falsification of financial records is a crime in New York State’s criminal law statute, at first glance it is not an outrageous accusation against Donald Trump. However, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo and his team did everything they could on the first Monday of the trial to ensure that this 34-count little stick did not distract the attention of the jurors and Judge Juan M. Merchan from a much larger conspiracy aimed at obtaining the office of the president.
According to the indictment, weeks before the 2016 presidential election, attorney Michael Cohen paid $130,000 in bribes on behalf of Donald Trump to former porn actress Stormy Daniels, with whom his client had an affair back in 2006. The amount reimbursed to Cohen was listed as legal fees in the Trump Organization’s accounting, and the story’s slippage influenced the outcome of the presidential election in this way. This is a dirty story in which, in addition to juicy extramarital affairs and Playboy bunnies, two-bottle lawyers and tabloid luminaries also appear. For example, the doorman at Trump Tower who told the story of Donald Trump having an illegitimate child with an employee there. Or former playmate Karen McDougal, who also had an affair with the then billionaire businessman for nine months. All of these threats were “neutralized,” according to the indictment, by a certain David Pecker, a former executive at the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid magazine. According to prosecutors, he met with Trump and Cohen in Trump Tower in August 2015, and they agreed that Pecker’s company would buy the scandalous stories from the people involved in them, so that the stories would remain in the account. In the circles of the tabloid press, the method is called “catch and kill”. On Monday, the prosecution heard Pecker testify for the first time about the veracity of the mentioned stories.
The strategy of the defense, led by lawyer Todd Blanche, is based on how to destroy the credibility of the prosecution’s crown witnesses, especially Cohen, who worked as Trump’s lawyer for years. He pointed out that in 2018, Cohen was already sentenced to three years in prison for federal crimes related to tax fraud and campaign financing, so his testimony has no probative value.
As expected, the defense continues to build into its strategy the theory that the Democratic Party is trying to use the criminal prosecution of Trump as part of the campaign as a political weapon. Outside the courtroom, Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, confirmed this narrative in an interview with CNN on Tuesday. The politician, who is also a candidate for the position of vice president, said that he would vote for Donald Trump even if he were convicted, if Democratic President Joe Biden was the alternative in the presidential election. However, many voters do not share his view. A February Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll found that 53 percent of voters in key battleground states would not vote for Donald Trump if he were impeached. This will also become clear in mid-July, when the verdict is expected to be announced.
