Fox News Digital has compiled the most sensible questions about the case ahead of its launch Monday at 10 a. m. in Lower Manhattan.
According to early reports, the U. S. Supreme Court was skeptical of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove former President Trump from the state’s No. 1 vote on Thursday. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Dubbed the “secret cash case,” the origins of the lawsuit can be traced back to October 2016, when Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to former porn actress Stormy Daniels to allegedly hush up his allegations about an alleged extramarital affair she had allegedly had with the then-real estate agency. Trump denied having an affair with Daniels.
Stormy Daniels speaking to the media. (Phillip Faraone/Getty Images)
The case is also expected to include two other payments, adding a $30,000 payment to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed Trump fathered a child out of wedlock, and a $150,000 payment through a tabloid editor to an ex. Playboy style named Karen McDougal, who also claimed she had an affair with Trump and sold her story to the tabloid. Trump has also vehemently denied the allegations.
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Michael Cohen, former private lawyer for U. S. President Donald Trump, right, stands outside in a federal courthouse in New York on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023. Photographer: Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Prosecutors say the Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen and fraudulently recorded the invoices as fees.
“During the election, Trump and others used a catch-and-kill formula to identify, buy, and bury negative data about him and his election prospects,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said last year. “This conduct, resulting in dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, adds up to attempts to violate state and federal election laws. “
It is noted that “catch and kill” systems are used through media outlets and publishing companies to buy the rights to a person’s story in an effort to bury the information.
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Bragg announced Trump’s indictment in April 2023 on 34 counts of first-degree falsification of records.
The charges stem from checks that reimbursed Cohen over a roughly 12-month period for paying Daniels in 2016. Cohen was arrested in 2018 and pleaded guilty to campaign finance and lying to Congress. He was sentenced to three years in criminal prison and has since been released. .
Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor, but prosecutors are running to prove that Trump falsified records with the intent to commit or conceal a second crime, which would be a felony.
Former President Donald Trump, on Super Tuesday election night at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. , Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Trump scored a series of Republican victories for the No. 1 presidency Tuesday as he nears his party’s nomination. Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The charges against Trump carry more than a decade in prison, if convicted of those charges.
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Legal experts across the country have opined that Trump is unlikely to be sentenced to a lengthy criminal sentence if convicted, speculating that the 45th president would get parole or a criminal sentence of up to 4 years if convicted via jury, Fox News has reported in the past. Reported.
Charges of falsifying business records are misdemeanors in New York, and prosecutors opened a case arguing that Trump falsified business records to cover up the crime, making falsifying records a crime. Legal experts said prosecutors would argue that Trump’s alleged moves were aimed at covering up the crusade’s finances. Crimes.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks at a news conference on Thursday, March 7, 2024, in Manhattan, N. Y. (Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images).
Legal experts who spoke to Fox News Digital expressed skepticism that the U. S. Attorney’s Office is linking the case to crusading financial crimes, and Zack Smith, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said prosecutors are looking to “essentially turn what would be misdemeanor fees into felonies. “
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“Some of the accusations he intends to make are false accusations against Donald Trump. They are misdemeanors, unless they were committed as part of some other crime, simply to cover up some other crime. And in this case, as I perceive it, Alvin Bragg is saying that the other crime was a violation of federal crusade funding. So we only have one state prosecutor prosecuting a case opposed to Donald Trump, based on a federal crime that the federal government, the Breakdown of Justice itself, has rejected. to process. Smith told Fox News Digital in an interview earlier this month.
In 2019, the Justice Department “effectively concluded” its investigation into Trump’s payments. In 2021, the Federal Election Commission, the company guilty of enforcing crusade funding legislation, announced that it had dropped the case because Trump had violated election law by paying Daniels.
Former FEC member Hans Von Spakovsky told Fox News Digital in a separate interview that the FEC and Justice Department have refused to pursue the case, but that a local prosecutor is running to prove Trump violated federal law.
“The [FEC] has reviewed the scenario and stated that this regulation does not constitute a violation of federal law. The Department of Justice also has law enforcement authority under federal crusade funding laws, and the Department of Justice has not thought about this. Nor is it a crime. So you’re asking this local prosecutor to assert that there’s a violation of federal law, when the two federal agencies with the force to enforce that law say, “Well, no, there hasn’t been any violation of federal law. “”And look, I say this as a former FEC commissioner, my job as a commissioner is to enforce the federal crusade finance law, and that’s just not a violation of federal law,” he said.
In the case of monetary silence, Trump would not be able to forgive himself if his guilt were discovered and if he were re-elected on November 5. The Constitution states that a president’s pardoning powers “grant pardons and pardons for crimes against the United States. “”, meaning the powers can only be applied to federal cases. The question of monetary silence is a matter of state.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, 61, is presiding over the case. Merchán, originally from Colombia, has worked at the New York Supreme Court since 2009, overseeing criminal cases. In the past, he served as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. He served as a prosecutor in the 1990s and worked at the New York State Attorney General’s Office, among others.
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FILE PHOTO: A hearing by Judge Juan Manuel Merchan in New York City on March 12, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters)
Merchan has overseen high-profile cases before, adding the 2012 “soccer mommy mom” case, when a woman named Anna Gristina was accused of running a high-profile prostitution ring in Manhattan. He also presided over the Trump Organization’s 2022 felon trial involving fraudulent tax fraud and falsifying business records, and is lately overseeing a case involving Trump supporter Steven Bannon, accused of defrauding donors to build a wall along the country’s southern border.
Trump denounced Merchan on Truth Social, adding last month when he asked the judge to recuse himself and subpoenaed Merchan’s daughter and her work as a political representative for Democratic politicians.
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Judge Juan Merchan poses in his office Thursday, March 14, 2024, in New York City. A dozen Manhattans will soon be the first Americans to see a former president charged with a crime. Jury variety will begin Monday in the secret case. trial of former President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) (AP Photos)
“Judge Juan Merchan, who suffers from an acute case of Trump disorder syndrome (whose daughter represents corrupt Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, and other radical liberals, has just posted a picture of my bars, their apparent purpose, and is absolutely unlikely to get a fair trial) has now issued some other illegal ‘order’, un-American and unconstitutional, while continuing to try to take away my rights,” Trump posted on Truth Social last month after he was issued a gag order restricting what he can say publicly about the case.
A giant organization of potential jurors will gather in the courtroom this week, where they will be presented with a review of the case and asked if they can sit impartially.
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Those who prove they can’t be independent will be fired, while those who stay will be asked a series of 42 questions, which Merchan published in a letter last week, including:
The jury variety will continue until 12 New Yorkers and a handful of alternates are assigned to the jury.
Former President Donald Trump arrives at an outdoor news conference at a Manhattan courthouse on March 25, 2024, in New York City. Trump will go down in history as the first former president to be tried on a felon’s fee basis when his secret cash case with jury selection opens. The case will require the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to juggle the crusade and sit in a Manhattan courtroom for weeks to protect himself from fees involving a plan to bury allegations of marital infidelity that surfaced in his first White House crusade in 2016.
Trump has spoken out against the “secret money” scandal, adding that Saturday took place in Pennsylvania, where he held his last planned crusade before the trial that officially begins Monday.
“I will be forced to remain absolutely gagged. I am allowed to speak. They need to take away my constitutional right to speak,” Trump said in Pennsylvania, referring to the gag order that prevents him from speaking publicly about potential witnesses and jurors. .
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“I’m proud to do this for you,” he continued, calling the trial a “communist show trial” that he said is being orchestrated through the Biden administration.
Trump has denied the allegations in this case and has pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts.
The 45th president said Friday he would testify in the trial, which he called a “scam” and a “witch hunt. “
“I testify. I’m telling the fact. I mean, all I can do is tell the fact,” he told Mar-a-Lago on Friday, Fox News reported in the past. “And the fact is, there’s no case. “
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The trial will not be televised and is expected to last between six and eight weeks. Under New York law, Trump must appear in the courtroom.