NEW YORK: Manhattan prosecutors investigating Donald Trump have assembled a new grand jury to announce the evidence in the past years of probe into payments made to keep the porn star Stormy Daniels quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with the former president, according to multiple news reports.
The news outlets with unnamed sources, reported that the witnesses who were laid to start testifying before the grand jury on Monday, signaling an escalation in what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has alluded to as “the next chapter” in his office’s Trump investigation.
A spokesperson for Bragg’s office declined a comment. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump made a big blasted view of Bragg as the “Radical Left Manhattan D.A.” and conveyed the information that the new grand jury was “a continuation of the Greatest Witch Hunt of all time.” Grand juries have been convened before in New York to explore and exploit the possibility of criminal charges against Trump, but to date none have issued an indictment.
The Manhattan grand jury is the latest legal threat to Donald Trump as he ramps up his presidential campaign. A special grand jury was formed in Atlanta to investigate whether Trump and his allies have committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. On the House Jan. 6 the committee voted to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Trump’s role in sparking the violent insurrection in the U.S. Capitol. The FBI also started investigating Trump’s storage of classified documents and files.
The hush-money investigation in New York involves payments of $130,000 to Daniels and $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to get over all their silence in the run-up to Trump’s 2016 election victory. Trump acted quickly in denying the carriage of affairs even with women. Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, made the payment to Daniels through his own company and said he then was reimbursed by Trump. McDougal’s payment was made through the publisher of the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer, which then squelched a journalistically frame out i.e “catch-and-kill” to help Trump to become president. The New York Times reported that the National Enquirer’s former publisher, David Pecker, was identified while entering the building where the grand jury was meeting on Monday.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges that he violated campaign finance law by arranging the payouts. He served himself about a year in prison before being released to home confinement because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal prosecutors said Trump was aware of the payouts, but they declined to charge him with any crime. Cohen’s past words convey that The Associated Press recently met with Manhattan prosecutors for 2½ hours.
The Trump Organization pronounced a conviction of a tax fraud and fined $1.6 million as punishment for an unrelated scheme in which top executives dodged personal income taxes on lavish job perks.“Now with the trial having ended, we are now moving on to the next chapter,” Bragg told The Associated Press in an interview after the tax fraud trial.
The Trump Organization in a statement suggested that Bragg, a Democrat, was trying to undermine Trump’s fledgling 2024 presidential campaign. Reviving the investigation years after federal prosecutors had decided not to bring a case is “simply reprehensible and vindictive,” the company said.
Bragg’s predecessor as district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., also looked into this issue of hush money payments before shifting the probe’s focus to the Trump Organization’s tax and business practices.