By Mayank Chhaya-
Alleged hush payments totaling $310,000 to a Trump Tower doorman, a Playboy playmate and a porn star constitute the crux of 34-count indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg that led to the arrest and arraignment of former President Donald Trump on April 4.
That the power dynamic for the 76-year-old Trump shifted starkly, albeit for a short while, became evident when while entering the court room of Justice Juan Manuel Merchan, a security officer did not hold the door for the former president. For someone for whom doors have opened either automatically or held by an obsequious minder all his life, this was a subtle if telling change.
Trump looked visibly sullen, chastened and angry in turns during the arraignment as his lawyers and the prosecution argued about various points. Contrary to some early expectations he did not make any statement to the media pool waiting outside the courtroom. Both times, while going in and coming out, he looked uncharacteristically downbeat.
While speaking of falsifying business records, the overarching charge against Trump, Bragg said a couple of times that New York being the world business capital his office takes that such crimes very seriously. However, the way the bare facts of the case were laid out on a board next to him focused on an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan a scheme was orchestrated under which three specific payments were approved of.
As part of the scheme, a #Trump Tower doorman was paid $30,000 after he alleged the former president had fathered a child out of wedlock, Karen McDougal, Playboy’s playmate, was paid $150,000 and porn star Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000, the last two claiming to have an affair with him.
McDougal and Daniels wanted to sell their stories to the media. It was expected that the tabloid National Enquirer’s owner and publisher, David Pecker would buy the story and kill it in a practice known as “catch and kill”.
However, instead he and the tabloid’s editor Dylan Howard facilitated a meeting between Daniel’s lawyers and Michael Cohen, then Trump’s high-profile fixer-attorney. Cohen paid Daniels’ $130,000, a sum that Trump as president reimbursed him. In 2018, Cohen was sentenced to a year in prison after he pleaded guilty to several charges, including violating campaign finance laws.
Hiding these three facts, the prosecution’s broad argument holds, was deliberately aimed at influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won. Bragg did use the word “conspire” as part of his explanation for indicting the former president.
Although Trump’s attorneys Joe Tacopina and Todd Blanche dismissed the charges as “boilerplate” and as motivated by politics, Bragg seemed sure that they had enough to eventually win a conviction. Trump’s attorneys also said the former president was “frustrated” by the charges.
Beyond the merits of the case and what might happen eventually, the fact that a former president was arrested, fingerprinted and arraigned for the first time in U.S. history was extraordinary. In many ways the arrest and arraignment underscored that in America the rule of law does not recognize against whom it is being acted upon. This is notwithstanding that his layers and supporters have argued that had his name not been Donald J. Trump, this indictment would not have been, a contention Bragg indirectly countered saying his office routinely prosecutes cases of business record falsification.
