Manhattan Prosecutors Will Begin Presenting Trump Case to Grand Jury
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg will begin presenting criminal evidence to a grand jury about Donald Trump’s hush money to Stormy Daniels....
from NYT:
The Manhattan district attorney’s decision represents a dramatic escalation of the inquiry, and potentially sets the case on a path toward criminal charges against the former president.
The grand jury was recently impaneled, and witness testimony will soon begin, a clear signal that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is nearing a decision about whether to charge Mr. Trump.
The prosecutors have also begun contacting officials from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, one of the people said. And in a sign that they want to corroborate these witness accounts, the prosecutors recently subpoenaed phone records and other documents that might shed light on the episode.
A conviction is not a sure thing, in part because a case could hinge on showing that Mr. Trump and his company falsified records to hide the payout from voters days before the 2016 election, a low-level felony charge that would be based on a largely untested legal theory. The case would also rely on the testimony of Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who made the payment and who himself pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money in 2018.
read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/nyregion/trump-stormy-daniels-grand-jury.html
from CNN:
— David Pecker, the former head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, is expected to meet with Manhattan prosecutors investigating former President Donald Trump, people familiar with the matter said, indicating the probe is escalating.
Pecker’s meeting is scheduled for this week, sources tell CNN. He was involved in an effort to stop adult film star Stormy Daniels from going public about a past alleged affair with Trump days before the 2016 presidential election.
Earlier this month prosecutors met with Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, for the first time in over a year. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance charges for facilitating the $130,000 payment to Daniels.
The district attorney’s office also reached out to Keith Davidson, who represented Daniels in the hush money deal, in recent weeks, another person familiar with the matter said.
Pecker and another associate received immunity in the federal investigation into the hush money payments in exchange for their testimony before a grand jury. He previously met with prosecutors with the district attorney’s office as far back as 2019.
read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/politics/david-pecker-prosecutors-trump/index.html
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