New York prosecutors appear to be close to deciding whether Trump should face charges in connection with that payoff, in what could become the first criminal case ever brought against a former president.
The investigation centers on hush-money payments made in 2016 to two women who alleged that they had extramarital encounters with Trump, who has denied their accounts of his infidelity.
Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, “grossed up” Cohen's reimbursement for the Daniels payment for “tax purposes,” according to federal prosecutors who filed criminal charges against the lawyer in connection with the payments in 2018.Cohen pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law in connection with the payments. Federal prosecutors say the payments amounted to illegal, unreported assistance to Trump's campaign. But they declined to file charges against Trump himself.
Cohen said he had already spoken with the Trump Organization’s longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, on “how to set the whole thing up.”Today, Trump characterizes the attempts to get him to pay money to the women to keep them quiet as “extortion."Legal experts say a case could be made that Trump falsified business records by logging Cohen’s reimbursement for the Daniels payment as legal fees.
“He’s loud, he’s brash, so proving that he had specific intent to fraud, one is almost left with the idea that, ‘well, if he has that specific intent of fraud, he has it all of the time, because that’s his personality,’” said Shapiro, a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Does that mean prosecutors have run out of time? Trump thinks so. In social media posts, he insists that the statute of limitations “long ago expired,” calling the matter “old news.” “The power of the case — the surprise factor, the shock value," also fades, Shapiro said, meaning a jury might be less impressed by allegations that have been public for so long.Members of Trump's inner circle, including his former political adviser Kellyanne Conway and former spokesperson Hope Hicks, have met with prosecutors in recent weeks. Cohen, now estranged from Trump, has made several visits to prepare for his expected grand jury testimony.
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