The indictment states that Trump, reeling from the October release of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which he boasted about grabbing women's genitals, ordered Cohen to pay Daniels, who was trying to come forward with her claims that they had a sexual encounter at a 2006 celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe, California.
News reporters, fans, and demonstrators flocked to Trump's arraignment five days after the indictment. The same courtroom and cauldron will host his trial. After Trump's New York indictment, others followed quickly.
Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with storing secret papers at Mar-a-Lago inside 70 days. Smith charged Trump in Washington, D.C., 54 days later with trying to disrupt the 2020 election before the Jan. 6, 2021, rebellion. Trump was charged with racketeering and other election subversion crimes by Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis two weeks later.
The New York case has moved quickly, but Trump's other criminal matters are unlikely to be tried before November. The Atlanta case has been stalled by charges of misconduct against the senior prosecutor, the Washington case by a Supreme Court appeal on an unproven immunity matter, and the Florida case by many unresolved motions.
Partly it's just that there are fewer practical obstacles to making the case move along, and maybe in some degree, this is a simpler case,” said New York City Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law professor Alex Reinert. Trump frequently requested the New York trial be delayed. This week, his lawyers were denied three times by a state appeals court to postpone the lawsuit.
The case's allegations of large payments to stifle an election-year sex story are similar to the Justice Department's failed prosecution of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who was charged with campaign finance crimes for hiding his pregnant mistress during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary with nearly $1 million secretly provided by two wealthy donors.
Defense counsel said the money was to hide the affair from his cancer-stricken wife, not increase his election chances. A jury deadlocked on five counts and acquitted Edwards on one. Jeremy Saland, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney turned criminal defense lawyer, said Bragg must believe he has a stronger case against Trump because to the case's size.
He has to be going into the courtroom believing he has the goods,” Saland added. “Or else, for the psyche of America, it could be catastrophic—that a former president is prosecuted in a case that falls flat on its face, and even if not true, appears like a sham.”
He stated that if true, the charges would constitute “significant misconduct of somebody who was vying to be at the time the leader of the free world.” To those who say, “Come on, it’s just hush money,” he replied, “that we hold our elected officials to a higher standard and we subject them to more scrutiny, and rightfully so.”
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