Trump begins to be tried for hiding payments made to the actress

The former president of the United States, Donald Trump, begins to be tried, this Monday (15), in New York, for one of the four crimes in which he is already a defendant. In total, the case has 34 charges. He is the first former president of the country to face a criminal trial.

The case to be analyzed concerns the accusation that Trump carried out accounting maneuvers to hide the payment of US$130,000, in 2016, a few months before the presidential election, so that former porn actress Stormy Daniels could hide an affair they had in 2006. The former president denies the extramarital affair.

The crime itself, however, lies in the fact that Trump, according to the prosecution, disguised the payment so that it appeared as having been made to his then lawyer, which means that he hid the amount in the campaign’s tax records.

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The accusations concern 34 falsifications of accounting documents made by the Trump Organizations to camouflage the payment. With the amount in hand, lawyer Michael Cohen passed it on to Daniels.

In the assessment of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the maneuver amounted to a “conspiracy to rig the presidential election and lie in commercial documents to cover it up.” The defense says that Trump was being extorted.

Trump will be scrutinized by a jury made up of 12 people and the trial is expected to last between six and eight weeks, so that the sentence could be known even before this year’s presidential elections, in November.

If convicted, Trump could face up to four years in prison, but according to BBC Brasil, based on experts in the legal field, it is unlikely that he will go to jail and, even if that happens, according to the law of USA, he could still run and even be president.

With agencies

(PL)