The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is restarting a criminal investigation into alleged hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels by former President Donald Trump.
The office had already begun an investigation into Trump, but it appeared to stall earlier in the year.
But now District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team of prosecutors are trying to pursue the case against Trump, 76, from another angle.
The case revolves around a $130,000 payment Trump made to Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. The money was in an attempt to buy her silence about an alleged affair with Trump.
Trump’s former personal lawyer and mediator, Michael Cohen, has already said that he used his own funds to pay Daniels off with Trump and The Trump Organization, and then reimbursed him.
District Attorney’s Office is investigating Donald Trump’s role in a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels
Trump’s former personal lawyer and mediator, Michael Cohen, has already said that he used his own funds to pay Daniels off with Trump and The Trump Organization, and then reimbursed him. He was sentenced to three years in prison
Cohen served three years in prison after pleading guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations related to payments as part of a federal investigation.
He has always alleged how he was following Trump’s orders.
Trump has always denied having an affair with Daniels, explaining that the payment is a personal matter and not a campaign expense.
In that particular federal case, former District Attorney Cyrus Vance investigated whether Trump had broken any state laws in making the payment and whether any records held by the Trump Organization were falsified in the process.
Falsifying business records can be charged with a misdemeanor in New York. To make it a felony, prosecutors would have to prove that Trump falsified records of the hush money to help commit or conceal a second crime.
The Trump Organization was subpoenaed by the District Attorney’s Office in late 2019 for the specific records linking payments to Cohen that showed how he helped fund Daniels.
Woke Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is now considering adding new charges to Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization.
But the investigation suddenly changed focus, seeking instead to focus on Trump’s broader business practices.
Prosecutors are now looking in particular at whether Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg could be pressured to cooperate with the renewed investigation, according to the New York Times.
Weisselberg is alleged to have known of the hush money payment and has already pleaded guilty to tax fraud charges in a criminal case involving the Trump Organization currently being heard in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Weisselberg, who began working directly for Donald Trump in 1986 and with the Organization since 1973, has already admitted to accepting $1.7 million in “off-the-books” benefits.
They include items like free rent for an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, luxury cars along with private school tuition payments for their grandchildren.
The payments were made from the Trump Organization as part of a scheme to avoid income taxes.
Weisselberg has agreed to testify as a prosecution witness in exchange for a five-month prison sentence.
The District Attorney’s Office is now weighing whether to file new charges against Weisselberg in hopes of securing his cooperation once again, the Times reports.
Weisselberg recently accepted a plea deal on unrelated tax fraud charges and has yet to turn on former President Trump.
The charges would not be related to the hush payments made to Daniels and would instead involve insurance fraud and likely extend any jail time he has served.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and said he never had an affair with Daniels. Michael van der Veen, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said.
“I really don’t think they’re going to go back and do these investigations, and if there’s any truth to it, it would show a lack of judgment. The millions of taxpayer dollars that have been spent on countless investigations is a huge waste of time and money.
Under Vance’s direction, prosecutors worked on a broader case against Trump that investigated whether he had falsely inflated the value of his hotels, golf clubs and various other assets by billions of dollars to get better loan terms.
The insurance fraud charges may return to this aspect of the case and accuse Weisselberg of lying to an insurance company by using inflated figures after he said the properties had been appraised by an independent appraiser, when in fact they had not.
All values appeared in the annual financial statements that the company provided to lenders. This was also the focus of a long-running civil investigation by New York State Attorney General Letitia James.
It all adds to the general flurry of legal and political activity surrounding Trump, who last week announced he would run for president again in 2024, restored his Twitter profile and is still under investigation by a special prosecutor for the September 6 insurrection. from January.
Earlier this year, when Bragg took office as Manhattan district attorney, he seemed reluctant to indict Trump for his business practices, apparently uncomfortable with the DA’s office’s ability to prove that Trump intended to break the law. that would be necessary for the case. to succeed.
The office stated that the investigation into the Trump Organization was still ongoing, despite the departure of two prosecutors leading the investigation.
Bragg’s office has not commented publicly on this new investigation.