Andrew Kelly/REUTERS
ANALYSIS – The ex-president must answer to 34 charges before a New York court in the Stormy Daniels affair.
Correspondent in Washington
The first of Donald Trump’s four criminal trials opened Monday morning in a New York court. Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying accounting records, all relating to the payment of $130,000 to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about their brief affair before the 2016 presidential election. Paid by his factotum at the time, lawyer Michael Cohen, the sum had been reimbursed by Trump after his election, and declared as “legal expenses”. Each check and each forged document gives rise to a separate charge.
Trump thus becomes the first former American president, and the first presidential candidate to appear before a criminal court. This trial is also the only one likely to be completed before the presidential election next November. The accusations to which Trump must respond seem almost insignificant compared to the other prosecutions…
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