An arbitral tribunal has been set up. Trump is due in court tomorrow to answer to 34 falsified documents to cover up sexual affairs.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, he paid two women to keep quiet about sexual encounters with him. Porn Star Stormy Daniels $130,000 and Karen McDougall, Ex playboy$150,000.
He also bought the silence of a former housekeeper at Trump Tower for $30,000, claiming he had information about a child Trump allegedly had out of wedlock with an employee at his skyscraper near the United Nations in New York.
Endless delays
New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg blames Trump for taking so long to charge him with financial fraud. When he took office in 2022, he created a sensation by not taking immediate action against him. Two of his assistant lawyers resigned in protest. His predecessor was preparing to do just that. It took him a year to decide to indict the former president.
Bragg's may be the only investigation Trump faces before the presidential election. Let me remind you that the pathetic Attorney General Garland took his time before indicting Trump in other criminal cases mired in delays and challenges.
Businessman Trump has managed to avoid the legal consequences of many of his illegal business dealings for decades.
Despite the prosecutor's extensive documentary evidence, the testimony of his accomplices, and a clearly favorable jury, a conviction was not secured.
Key witness Michael D. Cohen, her former lawyer and confidante, has pleaded guilty and gone to prison for buying Stormy Daniels' silence at Trump's behest. In early 2017, Cohen will testify that he discussed paying to cover up the scandal with Trump in the Oval Office of the White House.
Will Trump keep quiet?
Trump hopes to use the investigation to convince the public that Democrats are using the justice system against him.
Does he remain silent and not retaliate verbally or on social media? He will be forced to listen to lawyers for the next six weeks, portraying him as a criminal and having sex with women while his wife, Melania, cares for their two-year-old son.
On Friday, he first adopted his usual haughty air, chin thrust out like Mussolini's. But at the end of the day, Trump was very sick. He seemed to fall asleep during the morning session. A self-centered megalomaniac is not the image sociopaths want to project.
A trial may end with a jury finding it inadmissible or dismissing the case. But Trump supporters should be pessimistic. For me, a release would be, pure and simple, the most surprising result.
Trump faces — theoretically — up to four years in prison. If convicted, he could also lose his right to vote. One might wonder how a president can serve a prison sentence. Will he benefit from parole?
