NEW: Manhattan DA will Begin Presenting Trump, Stormy Daniels Hush Payment Case to Grand Jury
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has revived its criminal investigation into Trump’s ‘hush payments’ to porn star Stephanie Clifford, AKA, Stormy Daniels.
Trump has been accused of paying Daniels ‘hush payments’ in a scheme to silence her and stop the story about their alleged affair from being published in the National Inquirer.
Trump has denied the affair.
House Democrats previously launched the inquiry into the hush payments ahead of the 2020 election cycle as a way to bog down Trump and slow down his 2020 re-election campaign.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s predecessor previously rejected the Trump ‘hush payments’ case because it wouldn’t stand up in court.
Fast-forward a couple years and now the Manhattan DA has revived the Stormy Daniel hush payments probe to counter Trump’s 2024 White House bid
According to the New York Times, the Manhattan DA will begin presenting evidence to a grand jury on Monday.
The former publisher of the National Enquirer was seen walking into the building in lower Manhattan where the grand jury is meeting.
The New York Times reported:
The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday will begin presenting evidence to a grand jury about Donald J. Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The grand jury was recently impaneled, and witness testimony will soon begin, a clear signal that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is nearing a decision about whether to charge Mr. Trump.
On Monday, one of the witnesses was seen with his lawyer entering the building in Lower Manhattan where the grand jury is sitting. The witness, David Pecker, is the former publisher of The National Enquirer, the tabloid that helped broker the deal with the porn star, Stormy Daniels.
As prosecutors prepare to reconstruct the events surrounding the payment for grand jurors, they have sought to interview several witnesses, including the tabloid’s former editor, Dylan Howard, and two employees at Mr. Trump’s company, the people said. Mr. Howard and the Trump Organization employees, Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff, have not yet testified before the grand jury.
The prosecutors have also begun contacting officials from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, one of the people said. And in a sign that they want to corroborate these witness accounts, the prosecutors recently subpoenaed phone records and other documents that might shed light on the episode.
