The criminal case against former US President Donald Trump over a hush money payment to a porn star made headlines around the world. The district attorney’s office in Manhattan announced the indictment against Trump on Thursday. A suspect must appear in person for the reading of the indictment. Around 30 charges are to be brought against Trump – none have been officially announced so far. The case is complicated. Shortly before his election as president in 2016, Trump paid hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels. She had claimed she had sex with him. Trump denies an affair, but not that money flowed.
The payment itself is not illegal. According to the media, however, Trump is accused of having incorrectly billed them and falsifying business documents. He may have violated campaign finance laws. According to US media, Trump has been charged with 34 crimes, each of which carries a prison sentence.
An overview of the most important personalities in the case:
donald trump
The 76-year-old Republican has become the first former president in US history to be impeached. The criminal proceedings have a huge political dimension, because Trump wants to run again in the 2024 presidential election – and is currently the clear favorite in the race for the Republican presidential candidacy. The right-wing populist has rejected all allegations against himself and speaks of a politically motivated “witch hunt”. At the same time, he uses the indictment to mobilize his supporters and collect campaign donations.
Juan Merchan
Trump welcomed the New York judge responsible for the case in his own way: Merchan “hates me,” the ex-president recently wrote on his online platform Truth Social. Trump continued his attacks against the Colombian-born lawyer on the day of the indictment: The judge was “highly biased” and he and his family were “known Trump haters”.
The experienced judge should hardly be disturbed by such verbal attacks. Merchan initially worked as a prosecutor for years before becoming a judge in New York in 2006. He has held his current post in Manhattan on the so-called New York County Supreme Court since 2009. The judge knows his way around the Trump universe: last year he led a lawsuit in which Trump’s real estate empire, the Trump Organization, was fined $1.6 million for tax fraud.
Joe Tacopina
The beefy lawyer is currently constantly present on US television: the 56-year-old vigorously defends his client Trump in interviews – and sometimes becomes almost violent. In mid-March, Tacopina tried to snatch a piece of paper from the moderator’s hand during an appearance on the news channel MSNBC.
Tacopina began his legal career as a district attorney in the Brooklyn borough of New York before switching sides and becoming a criminal defense attorney. His website lists a range of prominent past clients, from pop star Michael Jackson to Fox News host Sean Hannity to rapper Asap Rocky. Tacopina is not the only defender of Trump: The ex-president is represented by a whole team of lawyers.
Alvin Bragg
Manhattan’s chief attorney general made history with the first indictment against a former US president – and is the target of massive verbal attacks from Trump and other Republicans. Before the indictment, Trump demanded that it was Bragg who had to be charged. The 49-year-old prosecutor was elected to office in fall 2021 and is a member of President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party. He has always claimed that his decisions are based solely on legal considerations and are not politically motivated.
Michael Cohen
The busy lawyer was a loyal follower of Trump for a long time and, as his cleaner, got rid of problems. “I’m the guy who protects the president and his family,” Cohen once said of himself. Before the 2016 presidential election, Cohen paid porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money to keep her from revealing an alleged affair with Trump. It is the return of the money to Cohen by the Trump Organization that is at the heart of the charges against Trump.
Cohen himself was sentenced to three years in prison by the federal judiciary in 2018 for tax and financial offenses and false testimony, including in the Stormy Daniels case. The 56-year-old is now a declared Trump critic and an important witness for the Manhattan prosecutor’s office. However, he has a credibility problem, with the Trump camp calling him a “pathological, convicted liar.”
Stormy Daniels
The porn actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims to have had an affair with the married Trump in 2006, which he denies. She received $130,000 in hush money to keep her story from going public before the 2016 presidential election. Bitter legal and verbal arguments with Trump followed.
The 44-year-old, born in Baton Rouge in the southern state of Louisiana, proved to be a sharp-tongued critic of the ex-president, but faces a lot of hostility from Trump and his supporters. Trumps himself regularly insults Stormy Daniels as a “horse face”.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
