Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg launched an investigation into porn star Stormy Daniels of Trump’s secret payments

Manhattan’s awakening district attorney is said to have ‘launched’ a legal investigation into Donald Trump over hush money payments made to a porn star who claims she had a one-night stand with the former president.

Alvin Bragg is said to be investigating whether the illegal payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, made shortly before the 2016 presidential election, could be related to Trump.

The renewed momentum comes after Donald Trump’s company was fined $1.6 million last week for conspiring to defraud tax authorities for 15 years by giving executives perks like free cars, apartments and license plates. Private schools.

A New York state judge handed down the maximum financial penalty Friday after juries in Manhattan found two Trump Organization affiliates guilty of 17 criminal charges, including fraud, last month.

Trump was not tried and denied any knowledge of his executives illegally evading taxes.

In the case of Stormy Daniels, the District Attorney’s Office had been investigating the claims before, but attention shifted to the former president’s companies.

Now that a successful sentence has been delivered, the Bureau is now refocusing once again on Daniels.

Since the Trump Organization trial, subpoenas have begun to be sent out once again, reports the New York Times.

While the information being sought is unknown, it is a suggestion that the Trump investigation is gaining momentum once again.

Bragg has said he will follow the facts regardless of the outcome, though it is not certain at this stage if the investigation will lead to an indictment.

The district attorney says the recent conviction represented only ‘one chapter’ and ‘warned against reading further into the book’.

“I have full faith that other members of the team who are working on other parts of this effort using the same approach will lead to a fair outcome,” he said.

The illegal $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels was made by former mediator to the president Michael Cohen to try to silence Daniels’ claims of a one-night stand in 2006, when Trump’s third wife, Melania, was pregnant with their child. Barron, who is now 16 years old.

Trump denies having sex with Daniels, but Cohen was later convicted of making an illegal campaign contribution.

Cohen served three years in prison after pleading guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations related to payments as part of a federal investigation.

He has always alleged how he was following Trump’s orders.

Trump later reimbursed Cohen for the cash, and Bragg is likely trying to say that he proves there was a conspiracy between the two men.

His office, under the direction of his predecessor Cyrus Vance, previously investigated Trump, but that investigation appeared to stall early last year.

In November, The Times suggested that Bragg might be lobbying former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to help him build the case.

Weisselberg has already reached a plea deal on tax charges related to gifts and donations he received while working for Trump, but has refused to turn informant against the former president.

Bragg is said to be hoping that threatening him with new insurance fraud charges could change that. He has been accused of giving insurers a figure for the Trump organization’s assets without having them properly valued.

Weisselberg began his five-month sentence at Rikers Island last week after testifying as the prosecution’s key witness. He it is alleged that he had knowledge of the silent money payment from the Daniels.

Weisselberg, who began working directly for Donald Trump in 1986 and with the Organization since 1973, has already admitted to accepting $1.7 million in “off-the-books” benefits.

They include items like free rent for an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, luxury cars along with private school tuition payments for their grandchildren.

The payments were made from the Trump Organization as part of a scheme to avoid income taxes.

The case has long been a thorn in the side of the former Republican president, who has called it part of a “witch hunt” by Democrats who don’t like him or his politics.

Trump is also facing legal trouble over the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago country club in Florida in August. He is accused of having illegally classified documents there.

Trump has always denied having an affair with Daniels, explaining that the payment is a personal matter and not a campaign expense.

In that particular federal case, former District Attorney Cyrus Vance investigated whether Trump had broken any state laws in making the payment and whether any records held by the Trump Organization were falsified in the process.

Falsifying business records can be charged with a misdemeanor in New York. To make it a felony, prosecutors would have to prove that Trump falsified records of the hush money to help commit or conceal a second crime.

The Trump Organization was subpoenaed by the District Attorney’s Office in late 2019 for the specific records linking payments to Cohen that showed how he helped fund Daniels.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and said he never had an affair with Daniels.

They met at a charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe a year after he married his third wife, Melania, and were photographed together there.

Daniels claims her alleged sex with Trump was “textbook generic.”

When Bragg took office as Manhattan district attorney in early 2022, he appeared to be reluctant to indict Trump for his business practices, apparently uncomfortable with the DA’s office’s ability to prove that Trump intended to break the law, thereby that would be necessary for the case to be resolved. succeed.

The office stated that the investigation into the Trump Organization was still ongoing, despite the departure of two prosecutors leading the investigation.

Bragg’s office has not commented publicly on this new investigation into Daniels.