Why Stormy Daniels is making a comeback Switzerland is the Mecca for Leopard 2 – and could train Ukrainians

In the countless scandals surrounding Donald Trump, his affair with Stormy Daniels occupies a special place. The porn star claims to have had sex with Trump shortly after the birth of his youngest son. To prevent this affair from going public before the election, Stormy was silenced by then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen with a $130,000 hush money. The ex-president himself denies ever having sex with Stormy.

The hush money didn’t prevent the affair from becoming public knowledge, but only after Trump took up residence in the White House. For months she dominated the headlines. No wonder: Stormy revealed the most intimate details about Trump’s sex life, such as how he likes to be spanked on the ass with magazines, that his (small) penis is shaped like a mushroom and that his skills as a lover are manageable .

Not only were Stormy’s revelations embarrassing, they would soon have legal repercussions. Cohen’s office and home were searched by the FBI, smartphones and banknotes were seized because the porn star’s hush money violated the funding laws that must be followed during an election campaign. Trump had not declared the payments to Stormy as campaign donations, but as legal fees.

Despite overwhelming evidence, Cohen pleaded guilty in the subsequent criminal trial and was sentenced to three years in prison. He served one year, he was allowed to spend one year in his apartment due to Covid, and one was waived for good behavior. Cohen has since become a bitter opponent of Trump and has published two books exposing his ex-boss’s mafia-like dealings.

What remains unclear, however, is that Trump was never investigated. And this despite the fact that Cohen had always stated that he had acted “in coordination and at the orders” of the ex-president. There is also a check signed by Trump, with which he transfers $ 130,000 to Cohen. The lawyer had previously advanced this amount to Stormy.

Finally, in the case against Cohen, Trump is even called an “unindicted co-conspirator” and listed as “individual 1”. Despite this, the otherwise ruthless prosecutors of the Southern District of New York have put the case against Trump on hold. Critics see Trump’s Attorney General William Barr’s machinations behind it.

Now, however, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has picked up the thread again. The New York Times has revealed that he appears to have assembled a grand jury. This panel, composed of randomly selected lay people, makes it clear whether or not charges can be brought in a particular case.

Bragg would have already suggested David Pecker as a witness to this grand jury. The former publisher of the scandalous “National Inquirer” newspaper and Trump buddy played a key role in the case. For his part, Michael Cohen says he has had 14 contacts with the district attorney’s office in the past two weeks.

It’s amazing that Bragg is now preoccupied with Trump’s possible crimes in New York. Once in office, he put his predecessor Cyrus Vance’s case against Trump on the back burner. Mark Pomerantz, a highly respected mob hunter, has therefore resigned in anger. His view of things will appear in book form next week.

Meanwhile, Bragg has scored an important victory against Trump. He managed to get his finance director, Allen Weisselberg, convicted of tax fraud. Weisselberg is currently serving a three-month sentence at New York’s notorious Rikers Island Prison.

In addition, Bragg can rely on research from Letitia James, the New York State Attorney General. That has been determined in a civil suit against the Trump family for financial irregularities.

The reopening of the Stormy Daniels case is more than inconvenient for Trump. He’s ramping up his campaign and he’s got plenty of other things on his mind. The stream of campaign money appears to be drying up. He has raised just under $10 million since Nov. 15, a meager result by his standards. Mike Murphy, a former Jeb Bush election strategist, told the New York Times, “It looks like Trump’s ATM has gone from a Ferrari to a lawnmower.”

Also annoying for Trump is that he is increasingly being beaten in opinion polls by Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor focuses on the Corona map and repeatedly emphasizes that the lockdown was much less strict in his state than elsewhere. He hits the ex-president on his sore point. Trump would like to boast as the father of the corona vaccine, but this makes him unpopular with the numerous vaccine opponents in his party.

Meanwhile, a slew of other potential presidential candidates within the Grand Old Party (GOP) are betting that Trump and DeSantis will tear each other apart — and a smiling third party could win the race. There are now more than a dozen possible alternatives to Trump and DeSantis. Nikki Haley threw in the hat. While the former UN ambassador once swore she would never run against Trump, pledges of allegiance have a short half-life in the Trump camp.

The sensible in the ranks of the GOP have realized that a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is an accident waiting to happen. The ex-president’s chances of winning the election again in 2024 are currently estimated to be close to zero. But Trump still has great potential for destruction. Polls show that about a quarter of Republican voters would vote for him even if he lost the party and ran as an independent. Trump has it in his hands to deliver the final blow to rivals of his own party at any time.

The GOP’s race management is in a quandary – and they know it. As “The Atlantic” magazine reports, senior Republicans are therefore fervently praying that one of two things will happen: Either Trump is convicted by a court and therefore can no longer participate – or he dies. Given that the heavily overweight, 76-year-old Trump eats extremely unhealthy, this cynical hope is not entirely unfounded.