Today, Tuesday, April 4, Donald Trump appears before the Criminal Court in New York, after he was formally charged in the case of buying the silence of a porn star in 2016, in an event that is the first of its kind for a former or current US president.
Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg, whose office belongs to New York State, formally charged the former president, who aspires to return to the White House in the 2024 elections, in the case of paying $130,000 to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, to buy her silence before Presidential elections in November 2016.
“We expect the indictment to be read on Tuesday,” Trump’s attorney, Susan Nechelis, told AFP.
A spokesman for the Public Prosecutor in Manhattan had previously stated that Trump’s lawyer had been contacted to “coordinate his surrender (…) in order for him to appear to read the accusation,” after a grand jury upheld his indictment in this criminal case, and added that the decision The charge remains sealed.
And the American CNN reported that there were about thirty charges related to violations with the aim of concealing the payment of $ 130,000 and concealing its entry in the accounts in late 2016.
“Political prosecution”
In a statement, the forty-fifth president of the United States denounced “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history.”
And he vowed that “this prosecution will backfire on Joe Biden,” the Democratic president whom Trump has been accusing for more than two years of “stealing” the election from him.
The billionaire, who has caused a coup since 2015 in the political system in the United States, resorted to his social network “Truth Social” to denounce his opponents and wrote, “They are pursuing me in a weak and shameful way because they know that I am on the side of the American people and that I cannot get a fair trial in New York,” the mostly Democratic city. from which he descends.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main rival for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, considered the impeachment “contrary to American values.”
The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, also expressed the same support, stressing that “the American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power accountable.”
Republican Senator Barry Moore, a congressman from Alabama, said Trump’s accusation would cause Americans to “question the integrity of the justice system” in the country.
Moore said the US Department of Justice was “weaponized,” calling the trial “flawed and disturbing.”
Moore told the BBC that the developments in this case “would help the former president in the Republican primaries, before reaching the White House again.”
“No one is above the law”
Stormy Daniels, who has been cooperating with the judiciary for about six years, wrote in a tweet, “I receive an amount of messages to an extent that I cannot respond to,” while her lawyer, Clark Brewster, declared that “no one is above the law.”
Democrat, Representative Adam Schiff considered that “the indictment and arrest of a former president are unique events in American history.”
The New York judiciary has been seeking for years to determine whether the 76-year-old former Republican president made false statements, which is a minor offense, or violated laws on campaign finance, a felony, by paying Stormy Daniels a sum of money so that she would not expose an affair she says he had with her in 2006, before winning the November 2016 elections.
Trump will have to appear before a Manhattan court, where a judge will read the charge sheet to him before he is briefly placed “under arrest”, photographed and fingerprinted, and will announce whether he pleads guilty or affirms his innocence.
Trump’s defense team said the former president would not appear in court handcuffed.
The main witness in the file is Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who became his sworn enemy, and he paid the amount to Stormy Daniels in 2016 and was later repaid to him.
After serving his prison sentence, Cohen cooperated with the investigation as of the end of 2018 and repeatedly testified before the grand jury.
Is Trump’s trial storm passing peacefully on America?
Will it affect his future and his ambition in a second term?
Does the trial promote the rule of law in America, or vice versa? And why?
Is the trial a “political weapon” against Trump, as the Republicans claim?
What is the impact of Trump’s trial on America’s image around the world?
We will discuss these and other topics with you in the episode on Wednesday, April 5th
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