Today Donald Trump will become the first former president in American history to sit at the defendants’ table in the criminal trial over the matter of the $130,000 paid to porn star Stormy Daniels and the $150,000 paid to Playboy model Karen McDougal, for the purpose of covering up indiscretions about the relationships he had with them, just weeks before the 2016 election. Money paid off the books of Trump’s holding company, the Trump Organization. In addition to falsifying corporate accounts on the money given to the two women, justifying it as legal fees paid to his former lawyer, Trump also allegedly committed the crime of illegally benefiting from their silence, and the payment was considered an undisclosed contribution to his campaign. One crime after another to try to hide an embarrassing situation that could have jeopardized his political career. There are 34 charges, attempts to postpone the hearings have failed, and this is the only proceeding that could close before the Nov. 5 vote.
DONALD TRUMP: The tycoon and 45th president was indicted in April 2023 by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on 34 counts related to the falsification of financial records of the Trump Organization to cover up a sex scandal that could have jeopardized the outcome of the 2016 election, which he later won. The investigation was initiated by Cyrus Vance, the former Manhattan District Attorney who bequeathed it to Alvin Bragg, who took his place as of Jan. 1, 2022. This was the first criminal indictment of a former president, followed by the others for Trump in two federal trials and one in Georgia.
ALVIN BRAGG: He is Manhattan’s first African American prosecutor and has already made history for indicting Donald Trump, which is unprecedented for a former U.S. president. A 49-year-old Democrat elected in November 2021, he has officially indicted Trump for paying $130,000, shortly before his victory in the 2016 presidential election, to hard-core actress Stormy Daniels. Taking office on Jan. 1, 2022, Harlem-born Alvin Bragg quickly became known for his progressive positions, drawing the ire of conservative Republicans. Bragg himself succeeded in having the Trump Organization ordered to pay $1.6 million in fines for financial and tax fraud.
MICHAEL COHEN: Vice president of the Trump Organization and Trump’s personal attorney between 2006 and 2018, Cohen became the key witness against the former president. After being federally sentenced to 3 years for paying Stormy Daniels and lying to Congress about it, Cohen began cooperating by explaining how he personally paid the $130,000, later reimbursed by Trump in the form of “legal fees.” In his long-awaited testimony-which defense attorneys have been trying hard to block-Cohen, who for years has been a sort of fixer for Trump, solving his most sensitive problems, is expected to explain how the system had been developed to suppress all negative revelations about the former president and how the payments were made, at Trump’s direct direction.
STORMY DANIELS: The porn actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, began revealing in 2016 that she had had an affair with Trump years earlier when the tycoon was newly married to Melania. According to prosecutors, she negotiated a deal with Cohen to buy “her silence and prevent the spread of negative revelations in the final weeks of the campaign.” Two years later, while Trump was in the White House, Daniels challenged the validity of the signed agreement because it lacked the signature of the person directly involved, Trump. This resulted in a legal battle that made the affair public, drawing the attention of the media and later, prosecutors, to the affair and Cohen’s role.
KAREN MCDOUGAL: Playboy actress and model, the woman claimed to have had a 9-month affair with Trump before his election as president. In her case to pay her $150,000 was American Media Inc. (Ami), which publishes the tabloid National Enquirer, for the exclusive rights to an interview that was never published. In return, the indictment alleges, McDougal “agreed not to speak to any other media about her relationship” with the tycoon.
DAVID PECKER: Publisher of the National Enquirer, and CEO of AMI until August 2020, Pecker is accused of being directly involved in the “catch and kill” operation to buy the rights to potentially dangerous interviews for Trump and then cover them up. The prosecutors’ goal is to convince jurors that Trump had organized a cover-up scheme — then falsifying his company’s financial records — not only to avoid scandal, but also to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
JUAN MANUEL MERCHAN: Born in Colombia, emigrated to New York City at age 6 and grew up in Queens, living his life within the New York court system and has acquired a reputation for integrity. He is today the most famous judge in the world. For those who like him, the 60-year-old magistrate has “the right temperament and poise” to handle such a sensational trial and is incorruptible. To Trump, he is an enemy used by Democrats: “He hates me,” he thundered, accusing him of being biased because one of Merchan’s daughters worked as a publicist on Kamala Harris’s campaign.
Appointed to the New York City court in 2006 by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Merchan moved to the criminal court in 2009; he is a veteran of the justice system, as well as the first in his family to go to college.
In 2013 he sentenced to community service a group of skydivers who had jumped from one of the World Trade Center skyscrapers then under construction, accusing them of “besmirching the memory of those who jumped from the Towers on 9/11 not for sport, but out of necessity.” Two years ago, he took on the famous case, from which the film Soccer Mom Madam was based, of a typical American suburban mom running a high-end escort business in Manhattan.
But he was also a judge in the Trump Organization trial, undoubtedly the one that brought him to prominence, which ended with former finance chief Allen Weisselberg being sentenced to five months in prison and the company being fined 1.6 million.
He has prosecuted a number of financial crime cases, but he is also appreciated for working to create the Manhattan Mental Health Court, in which defendants with mental distress issues are given the opportunity to undergo care and treatment, with supervision, instead of serving prison sentences.
