The common cause of Trump and pornstar
2023.01.31 01:40
The common cause of Trump and pornstar
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – Two people with knowledge of the situation told Reuters that a grand jury is hearing evidence in New York about the role that former President Donald Trump played in making hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels while he was running for president in 2016.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office could use the findings of a grand jury to prepare for possible criminal charges against the former president.
One source told that David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified before the grand jury. The New York Times, which first reported on the grand jury on Monday, said that Pecker was seen entering the lower Manhattan building where the grand jury is assembled. Pecker did not respond when contacted for comment.
The publisher had offered to assist Trump by purchasing the rights to negative stories and not publishing them.
These actions suggest that Alvin Bragg, the district attorney, is getting closer to deciding whether or not to charge Trump.
The Times report received no response from Bragg’s office.
Before the 2016 presidential election, Daniels claimed she had a sexual relationship with Trump and received $130,000 in exchange for refraining from discussing it. However, Trump denies the existence of the relationship and stated to reporters in 2018 that he was unaware of any payment to Daniels.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, was given a three-year prison sentence in a federal court in New York for orchestrating hush payments to Daniels and another woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, who claimed she had an affair with Trump for months before he took office.
McDougal has stated that she paid American Media Inc. (AMI) $150,000 for her story, but it was never published. A practice known as “catch and kill” was used in the incident to stop a potentially damaging article from being published.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2018 that Pecker, the former chief executive officer of AMI and a longtime friend of Trump and Cohen, told prosecutors about their hush-money deals with McDougal and Daniels before Trump won the U.S. election in 2016.
