Trump says possible criminal charges for paying Stormy Daniels – report | Donald Trump

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Prosecutors have signaled to Donald Trump that he could face criminal charges for hush-hush payments to adult film actor and director Stormy Daniels, it was reported Thursday.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has offered the former president a chance to testify next week before a grand jury hearing evidence in the potential case, the New York Times said, citing four unidentified people. resource.

While Trump was expected to decline the offer, the fact that district attorney Alvin Bragg made the move indicates how gravely he is at risk of becoming the first former president in American history to be indicted.

The revelation also deals a new blow to Trump as he mounts a third straight bid for the White House, potentially putting his political ambitions and legal woes on a collision course.

A spokesman for Trump described the district attorney’s threat to indict Trump as “simply crazy”, adding: “For the past five years, the DA’s office has been on a witch hunt, investigating every aspect of the President’s life Trump, and they come up empty at every turn – and now this.”

Daniels, who was born Stephanie Clifford but prefers to use her stage name, said she had sex with Trump – who was married – in Nevada in 2006. She denied the allegation but her longtime fixer Michael Cohen paid $130,000 in hush money to Daniels , which Trump returned, near the end of the 2016 election campaign.

Cohen later pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations related to the payment, which he allegedly committed “in coordination with, and at the direction of” Trump.

A long-running investigation into Trump’s role in the case appears to have lost momentum and been overtaken by legal controversies over Trump’s retention of classified documents and efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

But it emerged in January that Bragg made the surprise move to impanel a grand jury to hear evidence in Daniels’ case.

Stormy Daniels. Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that at least six people had testified before the grand jury and that Cohen was expected to do so. But the paper also noted that, even if Trump were indicted, convicting him or sending him to prison would be “challenging”, as the case against him “depends on an untested and therefore dangerous theory legally involving a complex interplay of laws, all amounting to a low-level crime.” Such a conviction could result in a maximum prison sentence of four years.

Trump was the first declared candidate for the presidency in 2024 and has since been joined by Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the UN, in the Republican primary race. Most opinion polls show Trump leading potential rivals including Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Last Saturday, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Trump insulted and vilified Bragg as a “racist DA” who was being pushed by “radical left Democrats, the fake news media, and the justice department to impeach of cases. against me for now ancient, no affair story of Stormy Horseface Daniels”.

He continued: “No attraction, no affair, I call it no affair, where there’s no crime anyway. And the charges have never been brought in such a case before, and this case is being looked at by every prosecutor – they’re all looking, they’ve been looking at it for years now … and all they’re doing is they’re causing anger and problems for our country, because our people will not take this thing.”

Trump’s other legal problems continue to mount. The former president also faces investigations by the justice department’s special counsel into classified documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last summer, and his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In Georgia, the Fulton county district attorney is investigating whether Trump meddled in the state’s 2020 election. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, sued Trump and the Trump Organization, alleging it misled banks and tax authorities about the value of assets such as golf courses and skyscrapers in order to obtain loans and benefits to tax

Hugo Lowell contributed reporting

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