Trump is not guilty on 34 felony counts of misrepresenting business records
The first former US president to face charges of felony obstruction to a porn star: a thrilling motorcade before a divided nation
Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers were startled by the reports that he would be facing a lot of felony counts, rather than the misdemeanors they had been expecting.
Mr. Trump was indicted last week on charges connected to a hush money payment to a porn star — becoming the first former American president to face criminal charges.
He surrendered to the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Tuesday afternoon and later appeared before a judge for his indictment, where he entered a not guilty plea.
In a remarkable spectacle playing out before a divided nation, Mr. Trump’s 11-vehicle motorcade arrived just before 1:30 at the district attorney’s office, part of the towering Manhattan Criminal Courts Building. Special accommodations were made for the former president after he was in custody. He spent only a short time in custody.
Mr. Trump was visibly angry as entered the courtroom. He was accompanied by his legal adviser, Boris Epshteyn, and the lawyers handling this case, Todd W. Blanche, Susan R. Necheles and Joseph Tacopina. Mr. Trump declined to speak before or after the hearing, and immediately left to fly back to his home in Florida.
Mr. Blanche, speaking outside the courthouse after the arraignment, said the former president was upset over the charges but determined to prevail. “He’s frustrated. He’s upset. But, I can tell you what you need to know. He is driven by something. He said that it wasn’t going to slow him down.
Amid fears of protests and Trump-inspired threats, the events at the courthouse were highly choreographed by the Secret Service, the New York City Police Department, court security and the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has been investigating Mr. Trump for nearly five years. As helicopters circled overhead, the streets outside the courthouse were crammed with the press corps and hundreds of demonstrators, with supporters and critics of the former president assembling at a nearby park, where they screamed at each other from across metal barricades placed to keep the peace.
One of them involved the National Enquirer, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump, paying $30,000 to a former Trump Tower doorman who claimed to know that Mr. Trump fathered a child out of wedlock. The claim was determined to be false by the publication.
In 1998 Karen McDougal was Playboy’s playmate of the year, she wanted to sell her story of an extramarital affair with Mr. Trump during the campaign. She sold the rights to her story to the National Enquirer for $150,000, and used their power to suppress her story.
The prosecution has its star witness in Mr. Cohen, who is the ex-lover of Mr. Trump. He pleaded guilty to federal crimes involving the hush money and served more than a year in prison, which Mr. Trump’s lawyers will likely use to attack his credibility.
While serving as the commander in chief, Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen, and that’s where the fraud kicked in, prosecutors say. Internal records show that Mr. Trump’s company had classified the payment to Mr. Cohen as legal expenses. Yet there were no such expenses, the prosecutors say, and the retainer agreement was fictional as well.
Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing, as well as any sexual encounter with Ms. Daniels, and has lashed out at Mr. Bragg with threatening and at times racist language. His posts in the run-up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol have been similar.
The indictment is the start of a new phase for Mr. Trump, who will run for president for a third time. The Republican nomination race will be in a new territory since he leads most polls.
Mr. Bragg is the first prosecutor who has ever held elected office, and he is already in the political spotlight with his charge of Mr. Trump.
Federal prosecutors are separately scrutinizing Mr. Trump for his actions surrounding his electoral defeat and his handling of sensitive documents. The prosecutor in Georgia is nearing the end of an investigation into whether Mr. Trump tried to reverse the election result in that state.
The idea of a gag order for Mr. Trump was one of many that his advisers were aware of after he took a shot at Mr. Bragg and Justice Juan Merchan. There is no indication so far that the judge plans to do so.
Greene’s Secret Garden Revisited: “How to escape ruin in public life, and where to stay if you want to remain in public service,” says Richard Steele
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican who is closely aligned with Mr. Trump, held a rally at the park across from the courthouse. Speaking through a megaphone, she denounced the Democratic Party, though her words were often drowned out by protesters — and counterprotesters — blowing whistles and chanting. After speaking for about five minutes, she was ushered out of the park by the police.
It is a shorthand for a practice where a person tries to get another person to use cash or goods to keep quiet.
In terms of its origins, most scholars attribute the two-word phrase to Richard Steele, a politician, playwright and journalist who often wrote about morality and how people should conduct themselves in respectable society.
Jefferson wrote that he’d given James Thomson Callender money “from time to time” and that the man was suffering under persecution.
But Callender was now telling people that the gifts were actually payments for writing articles defaming John Adams and George Washington as well as others exposing an extramarital affair involving Alexander Hamilton.
About a year later, Callender wrote an article publicizing Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman on his estate, and the existence of their children.
On March 21, 1973, Richard Nixon — president No. 37 — was recorded discussing hush money payments related to the Watergate cover-up — although whether the phrase was actually uttered on some of the recordings was central to several legal battles.
“To escape ruin in the eyes of those who have trusted me in public life — where I have never betrayed — I will, if you demand it as the price — retire at the end of my term, and never come back to [Marion, Ohio] to reside,” Harding wrote to Carrie Fulton Phillips, his longtime lover, in a 31-page letter dated Feb. 2, 1920.
If FultonPhillips believed he could be more helpful by having a public position and influence, that is what he would do. I will pay you $5,000 per year in March each year, so long as I am in public service.”
She paid him the money so that he wouldn’t reveal their affair while he was president. In today’s dollars, that would be the equivalent of nearly $260,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator.
In her book, Britton explained how she had a years long relationship with the man who later became known as the Surgeon General of the United States. She told how they came to an agreement with the politician to have her sister and brother-in-law adopt the child.
“I produced a small piece of paper on which my sister had entered necessary monthly expenses,” Britton wrote. “He agreed to the amount, saying if such a arrangement would make me happier than would an arrangement that he had suggested… He was in agreement with it.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/05/1168044396/hush-money-history-presidents-trump
DNC Anomalies and Theoretical Insights on the DNC-Momentum Problem in the 21st Century
He and John Dean III talked about collecting money to help pay off the men who broke into the DNC headquarters.
