Donald Trump was criminally charged for directing hush money payments to a porn star during his 2016 campaign. Trump must now grapple with the charges even as he campaigns for a 2nd presidential term in next year’s race. Donald Trump has denied they ever had sex and has accused Stormy Daniels of “extortion” and a “total con job.”
Here are a few facts about the case against Donald Trump.
- Donald Trump, a real estate tycoon then, met an adult film actress Stormy Daniels during a golf tournament in July 2006. Daniels was 27 at the time and Trump 60. Daniels recounts her encounter with Trump in her book “Full Disclosure”, which was published in 2018.
- In her book, Daniels said one of Trump’s bodyguards invited her to have dinner with “The Apprentice” star in his penthouse. They proceeded to have what “may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had,” she writes in an account that also includes an unflattering description of Trump’s anatomy.
- Trump has denied they ever had sex and has accused Daniels of “extortion” and a “total con job.”
- Fast forward to 2016 and Trump is the Republican presidential nominee. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen has acknowledged arranging a $130,000 “hush money” payment to Daniels in exchange for her silence about the 2006 tryst.
- The payment was revealed by The Wall Street Journal in January 2018 and forms the basis for the charges Trump has been indicted for. Trump has falsely claimed he lost to Biden due to widespread voting fraud and has called the investigation that led to his indictment a “political witch hunt.”
Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury after a probe into hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, becoming the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges . The specific charges are not yet known and the indictment will likely be announced in the coming days, the New York Times reported.
No former or sitting US president has ever faced criminal charges. Trump also faces two criminal investigations by a special counsel appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and one by a local prosecutor in Georgia.
Trump, a divisive figure in U.S. politics with support particularly among white blue-collar and conservative Christian voters, served as president from 2017 to 2021, governing as a right-wing populist. He was impeached twice by the House of Representatives, once in 2019 over his conduct regarding Ukraine and again in 2021 over the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. He was acquitted by the Senate both times.
Trump in 2018 initially disputed knowing anything about the payment to Daniels. He later acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for the payment, which he called a “simple private transaction.” In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance law violations for his role in orchestrating the payments to Daniels and McDougal and was sentenced to three years in prison. He testified that Trump directed him to make the payments.
Daniels has said she had a sexual encounter with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel in 2006 – the year after he married his current wife Melania and more than a decade before the businessman-turned-politician became president. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 rejected her bid to revive a defamation lawsuit she brought against Trump over a Twitter post in which he accused her of a “con job” after she described being threatened over publicizing her account of a sexual relationship with him. Lower courts had thrown out her suit.
