Stormy Daniels Case: Donald Trump’s Trial Gets to the Heart of the Matter

After the first week of jury selection, the stage is set: 12 full jurors, seven men, five women and six alternates, are ready to try the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election in the case of hidden payments to buy the silence of a former porn star ahead of the 2016 election.

The historic trial of Donald Trump in New York will now get to the heart of the matter with embarrassing witnesses on the stand who risk shining a dark light behind the scenes of his capture of the White House.

“This will probably be the most sensational trial in American history. The stakes are virtually limitless,” says Bennett Gershman, a former New York prosecutor and law professor at Pace University in New York. The case threatens Donald Trump with conviction and possible prison time, months before he exacts his dream revenge on Joe Biden on November 5th.

The trial is taking place in high-security conditions on the fifteenth floor of a Manhattan courthouse, but a terrible tragedy already occurred on Friday when a man, believed to be a promoter of “conspiracy theories,” set himself on fire outside the building. building. The day before his suicide, the 37-year-old Florida man held a sign at the site accusing Donald Trump and Joe Biden of collaborating on a fascist coup. Very mentally unstable, he was arrested several times in 2023 for inconsistent criminal acts.

Essentially, Manhattan prosecutors must present the charges to a jury and try to demonstrate that the case goes far beyond the 34 accounting falsifications from the Trump Organization charged against the 77-year-old Republican billionaire.

According to the prosecution, these alleged forgeries concealed under the guise of “legal fees” a $130,000 payment to actress Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about a sexual relationship with Donald Trump a decade earlier while he was married to his wife Melania.

Donald Trump has always denied this connection. In his defense, the one who will speak after the prosecutors argues that these payments belong to the private sphere.

Awkward Witnesses

But prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s team intends to prove that it was, on the contrary, fraudulent maneuvers to hide information from voters in the days before the vote and the Republican’s narrow victory over Hillary Clinton.

Several witnesses are expected to reveal the underbelly of the campaign and say other embarrassing allegations were suppressed thanks to the complicity of a US tabloid that bought the information to avoid publishing it. “Every day we will hear testimony that will damage Donald Trump,” predicts Bennett Gershman.

The jury will have to meet, in particular, the judge herself, Stormy Daniels, or Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who became one of his worst enemies. It was he who paid the actress at the request of his boss, he assures, from his own funds, and has already been convicted by the courts in this case.

The defense intends to question the credibility of this witness, also convicted of lying to Congress. Donald Trump criticizes the empty case and denounces political persecution, using harsh language against the “corrupt” debate judge Juan Merchan and Alvin Bragg. Prosecutors asked the judge to sanction him for violating a ban on assaulting witnesses and jurors. This issue will be discussed on Tuesday.

Trump’s election campaign is disrupted

Donald Trump’s mandatory attendance at hearings is preventing him from campaigning properly, and his rival Joe Biden is trying to make up for the popularity deficit by plowing the ground. The Republican had to cancel a meeting in North Carolina on Saturday due to bad weather.

The stakes are all the higher because this trial may be the only one among the four criminal cases against Donald Trump that ends before the presidential election. He is accused in federal court in Washington of, among other things, of “conspiracy against American institutions” for his allegedly illegal attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.