Last week, porn star Stormy Daniels testified in the New York criminal trial against former President Donald Trump. For two days, she offered salacious details about an alleged sexual encounter in 2006 at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. During her testimony, the porn star intimated that she felt pressured by a powerful man exerting his influence to have his way with her. She went on to say that the bedroom was far away from the front door, and that she couldn’t leave the room because Trump’s bodyguard was allegedly outside the door.
Is it true? During cross-examination, Trump defense attorney Susan Necheles pointed to a statement Daniels signed in 2018 denying an encounter with Trump ever took place. Necheles then pointed to another statement where Daniels denied having a sexual relationship with Trump. In part, that statement read: "I’m denying this affair because it never happened."
What about the alleged pressure? Defense attorney Necheles reminded Stormy that in yet another interview with Vogue magazine, Daniels was quoted as saying there were no threats during the alleged encounter, and she asserted that nothing was holding her in the room. Indeed, following her testimony, HBO’s Bill Maher played a clip of his interview with Stormy who said: “I wasn't assaulted. I wasn't attacked, or raped, or coerced or blackmailed.”
As varied and fascinating as Ms. Daniels’s testimony was, its’ hard to figure why it was necessary or how it is relevant to this case. The facts underlying the criminal indictment are clear and uncontested. Yes, then Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, and she in return signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement. This is not illegal, and it is a common practice in business and the law, so what's the big deal?
According to NY Prosecutor Alvin Bragg, "We allege falsification of business records to the end of keeping information away from the electorate, It's an election interference case. We allege Donald Trump and his associates repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters." Do you notice the obvious problems with this criminal theory? The alleged falsification of business records happened after Trump was elected President, so the alleged falsification clearly was not trying to ensure that outcome of an election that had already been decided.
Perhaps more importantly, what unlawful activity or crime was being concealed from the American voters? Having an affair while married is certainly immoral, but it is not unlawful. Therefore, in order the prosecution to prevail and send the former President to jail before the election, it must prove that Trump falsified business records with the intent to aid or conceal another crime, which appears to be Cohen’s alleged campaign finance violation. In August of 2018, Cohen entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors to avoid facing trial on a host of felony charges, which exposed him to 65 years of imprisonment. In count eight of Cohen’s federal indictment, he was charged with “making an excessive campaign contribution on or about October 27, 2016” in violation of campaign finance laws — better known as the Stormy Daniels payment.
Convicting Trump of soliciting an illegal campaign contribution in violation of campaign finance laws would have required proving that he "knowingly and willfully" violated the Federal Election Campaign Act. Did he? The Federal Election Commission formally looked into whether Trump had violated election law with the $130K payment to Daniels, and in May 2021 dropped the case. In addition, Biden’s own Justice Department, which has indicted Trump on a number of other unrelate charges, also affirmatively declined to charge him with any crimes relating to the payment.
Therefore, for the state of New York to win a case for which the Federal regulators and the Biden Justice Department declined to act, they must prove that Trump would have conspired with Cohen to influence an election through "unlawful means," and that suggests Trump knew the payment to Daniels was illegal. In order to do that they needed Cohen to testify that Trump did indeed know, and conspired with Cohen to violate Federal campaign laws. Will the jury believe Cohen, a disbarred attorney, convicted felon and perjurer, who admits he hates Trump and wants to see him in jail? He’s not a very good witness for the prosecution!
Here’s another problem for the prosecution. How do they prove criminal intent on Trump’s part, for it is very plausible that Trump did not think paying off Daniels was illegal. For instance, the prosecution called former Trump aide, Hope Hicks, to testify against him, yet she testified that Trump's nondisclosure agreement with Daniels aimed to shield his family from potentially damaging media exposure and not to sway the outcome of the election. In addition, It is not clear why paying one’s lawyer a lump sum for his services and costs (including the NDA payment) is not a “legal expense” or how it was supposed to be entered on a business ledger. Lawyers routinely front legal expenses for their clients and are paid after the fact. Documenting such payments as legal expenses are a common business practice, and Trump will no doubt introduce evidence that this is the case.
Although the prosecution has not yet finished its case, and the defense has not had the chance to present its evidence, we’ve seen enough. We do agree with the prosecution in one major, important aspect. This case is all about election interference, but not in the way the prosecution thinks. This is power politics at its worst. The state’s case starts with an alleged affair that happened eighteen years ago, and it could have brought its misbegotten case shortly after the alleged campaign violation was admitted by Cohen in 2018; instead, it conveniently waited six years to charge Trump until right before the Presidential election. President Biden is now out there campaigning, but the former President has been stuck in court for five weeks now and counting, and thus has been prevented from campaigning.
The prosecution’s two major witnesses are a porn star who keeps changing her story, and a disbarred lawyer who has been convicted of perjury and various other crimes. Trump attorneys called for a mistrial after Stormy’s lurid and prejudicial testimony, and we think the case should have been thrown out of court back then.
The important 2024 election should be decided in the ballot box, not in the New York courtroom.
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Stormy Daniels' salacious affair story keeps changing because encounter never happened, Trump team claims (yahoo.com)
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