The accusation has historical dimensions. Even the details in this case are cinematic: it’s about sex, lies and open scores between old acquaintances. Three people are in focus next to Trump.
Donald Trump’s past is catching up with him. So yes. After decades of scandals and legal disputes that could not harm him, the 76-year-old now has to answer as the first ex-president in US history in a criminal case.
It’s about hush money to a porn star. But only remotely – it’s actually about the question of whether the payments might violate campaign finance rules.
The focus is on three characters: The porn actress who got everything rolling. A witness who knows Trump well and is likely to play a key role in the case. And the prosecutor taking on Trump in this difficult case.
Stormy Daniels – The woman who started it all
The 44-year-old porn actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, says she had sex with Trump in 2006, which he vehemently denies. According to her, the two met and slept together at a golf tournament weekend on Lake Tahoe in the summer of 2006 – just a few months after Trump’s wife Melania gave birth to their son Barron.
Daniels divulged spicy details of the alleged liaison in interviews and claimed that Trump and she had been in contact for months afterwards. Trump dismisses all of this as “false and blackmailing allegations”. In any case, Daniels achieved international fame through the story.
She grew up in poor and difficult circumstances in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After her parents separated, she lived as a child with her mother, who often left her alone. Daniels was abused by a neighbor when she was nine, as she later revealed in a book. In interviews, she has described how she felt as a kind of leper as a child: poor, somewhat lost, without decent clothes, smelling of cigarette smoke, with a struggling mother and no functioning family.
As a young woman, she entered the porn industry and made a career – as an actress and later also as an author and director. Her husband, the fourth, is also a porn actor. Daniels has a daughter from a previous relationship.
In 2016, in the middle of the presidential campaign, which Trump emerged victorious at the time, Daniels received hush money to stop her allegations that she had sex with the Republican. Daniels told the British newspaper The Times a few days ago that Trump now has to answer for criminal proceedings in connection with the payment: “He has done so many worse things that he should have been punished for earlier.”
Michael Cohen – Ex-Trump attorney and key witness
The lawyer worked for Trump for more than a decade and was a central figure in several affairs involving the Republican. He was often described as Trump’s “cleaner” – until the breakup between the two came. Cohen then made serious allegations against Trump in court and in Congress. The case is likely to depend significantly on Cohen’s credibility because it is the direct link between Trump and the payments. He is considered the most important witness.
The 56-year-old has admitted to paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her from speaking out about her alleged affair with Trump during the 2016 campaign. Cohen says he made payments of this nature to two women on Trump’s instructions. The second case is about Karen McDougal, a former “Playboy” model. She had also stated that she had an affair with Trump. Trump denies that too.
Cohen himself was on trial in 2018. At that time it was found that he had more than four million dollars in income untaxed. He also pleaded guilty to falsifying real estate loan numbers and making the two hush money payments on Trump’s behalf to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. In the end, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison, but was allowed to serve part of the sentence in house arrest because of the corona pandemic. He also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress.
Trump’s lawyers keep questioning Cohen’s credibility. They argue he has already been convicted of cheating and lying. If the ex-president goes to trial, it is to be expected that his defense attorneys will try to paint Cohen as a witness who cannot be trusted and who only wants revenge.
Alvin Bragg – The man impeaching Trump
The 49-year-old is Manhattan’s first black chief prosecutor. Now he’s also going down in history as the first US attorney to indict an ex-president. Bragg is thus becoming a kind of opponent of Trump and thus also an enemy of the American right.
Bragg grew up in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood in the ’80s and experienced crime firsthand: “Before I was 21, I had a gun pointed at me six times: three times by cops and three times by non-cops . I had a knife to my neck, a semi-automatic to my head, and a murder victim on my doorstep.”
After starting as a district attorney in early 2022, the family man initially came under internal pressure because he wanted to devote more resources to prosecuting serious violent crimes and less to crimes related to drugs or prostitution. He has also been criticized for being too hesitant towards Trump for not bringing charges related to the current case. In one of his few TV interviews, Bragg only stated, “I bring tough cases when they’re ready.”
Trump’s indictment has now cleared this hurdle. As a result, Bragg and his employees have been the target of all kinds of threats and insults. He swore his colleagues into turbulent weeks and months. The right paints Bragg as a Democrat who wants to get Trump out of the way for the 2024 election. Indirect campaign support for Bragg from US investor George Soros, who is hated by conservatives, gives them additional ammunition.