Trump has pleaded “not guilty” to 34 charges against him in the Stormy Daniels case

that is not so Donald Trump he hoped to return to the city, a symbol of world power, which he had always wanted to conquer. This Tuesday, they shut down Fifth Avenue and the beltway that surrounds the Big Apple for him, for a historic 20-minute journey that began on the escalators of Trump Tower and ended in the heart of the palace. “This is surreal, WOW, it will stop me”he wrote on the Istina social network just before going to Court in New Yorkwhere the 34 counts he was accused of in that case were read stormy daniels. It was as if he was waiting until the last moment for the nightmare to disappear. “I can’t believe this is happening in the US!”

For someone obsessed with symbols of grandeur and power, his first criminal charge, at the age of 76, is not quite the golden line he had hoped to crown his biography from son of immigrants in Queens to president NOW. As much as his political survival depends on raising his fist, his fingerprints they are no longer with the rich and famous with whom he always wanted to hang out but among two or three million criminals that the criminal court of the state NY every year.

In order to facilitate the filing of the first indictment against the former US president, the Lower Manhattan courts canceled all other cases on Tuesday. Immigrants, art thieves, murderers, arms dealers. All saw their meetings postponed to avoid blocking the path of someone “so rich and powerful” that Braulio Cuenca, a humble Ecuadorian photographer, never expected to see enter 100 Center Street. On those steps, he sets up his wedding photography stand every day for couples entering the court to seal their love by posing. This Tuesday they kept coming, oblivious to it an anthill of the international press and protesters who burst into the block like a mob. “Trump? I heard something, but what am I going to do, this is more important to me,” said Evelyn Martínez, a Peruvian who was looking for her marriage license.

She was preparing for the most important day of her life, unaware that her wedding anniversary would go down in history as the day democracy died, according to Trump supporters, or the day it came to its senses, according to those who came to celebrate. . Only a few hundred on each side, as most New Yorkers chose to ignore the traffic jam and go about their business as usual.

possible recipe

Regardless of opinion, it was a “lousy day,” said former Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich, who lost the conservative party’s presidential nomination to Donald Trump in 2016 and has been one of his internal opponents ever since. Kasich put his hands on his head with a media circus that followed in the tycoon’s footsteps impatient since he left his Mar-a-Lago mansion on Monday to take his private jet to New York, where he spent just one night. Was it necessary to have cameras focused on the door for hours waiting for the moment to appear? MSNBC asked. Most of his fellow Republicans, he said, “just want this to go away.” And Trump’s lawyers. “We’re going to tear apart the charge sheet and make one motion after another,” Joe Tacopina, the team’s most vicious attorney, who voices his boss on camera, told CNN. The night before, the former president had added to his defense a lawyer specializing in white-collar crimes like the ones he now faces. Thus, former prosecutor Todd Blance will work closely with Susan Necheles, an attorney specializing in the representation of companies and individuals against whom fraud is being investigated.

During 20 minutes of hearingthe former president heard in court 34 charges for which he is charged, and related to the way in which he masked the accounting $130,000 in payouts to porn star Stormy Daniels, who a week before the 2016 election threatened to disrupt his campaign by telling the media about an alleged affair he had with him in 2006. That violation would have expired after two years if Trump had not lived in the White House for four consecutive years and then moved his residence to Florida. Only if the defendant has continuously lived outside the country for the first five years can the duration of the criminal offense be extended. But that will be one of the defense’s resources to ask for the case to be dismissed.

He Prosecutor Alvin Bragg, an African-American who has already been the target of Donald Trump’s racist attacks, is a methodical man who wouldn’t file a lawsuit if he didn’t know he could defend them. Thus, the lesser crime of accounting fraud became a crime considering that it was committed as the basis of a larger conspiracy.

professional troublemakers

Outside, in the streets, there was no “death and destruction” despite what Trump predicted when he wanted to stir the water. The occasion was perfect for professional troublemakers like Estefan Pérez, 30, who spoke out against the media and “whatever happens,” he added bluntly. I used to rail against Trump, but now I join him. And when did that change happen? Ever since I stopped watching the news, he said.

Rarely has he enjoyed as much attention with his banners as he received this Tuesday from a hungry cloud of local and international journalists eager to feed the news cycle. It was stolen by Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who also used the spotlight to distribute his catechism on racial and social equality. “This is a historic day for the United States. Until now, the weight of justice has fallen on blacks, browns and the poor. Today, both the rich and the powerful are responsible,” he emphasized.

Donald Trump will spend the next two years engaged in this process, and possibly other court cases now pending in courts in Washington DC and Georgia. The one in New York will have a hard time putting him in jail, and if that happens, he could continue to win elections and even rule from his cell. For his followers, like Michelle Bramlett (61), who drove two hours with her daughter and son-in-law to support him in this drink, he will always be a martyr who stood between the dark forces of the “deep state” and the freedom of his people. “I never thought this day would come,” he admitted, “but I’m not worried about the result. God always wins.”

Other protagonists of the case

Attribution of Donald Trump refers to an assumption irregular payment of $130,000 (about 120,000 euros) to actress Stormy Daniels so that she would not talk about the relationship they had in the middle of the presidential campaign. This delivery of money took place a few weeks before the presidential election 2016, ostensibly in order to avoid that the public disclosure of that relationship could jeopardize Trump’s aspirations to reach the White House. The prosecution claims that the money came from funds intended for the pre-election campaign, which is denied by the entrepreneur’s defense, which claims that the payment was made with its own money. In 2018, Trump admitted that he paid the money to pay the actress, but insisted that it did not come from his election machine, but from his personal checkbook. “They did not come from the campaign. They came from me. In fact, the first thing I asked was if they were coming from a campaign (so) that might have been a little suspicious,” he said at the time. However, the fact that the payment was made to avoid political influence in the election could turn it into campaign spending.

Stormy Daniels, porn star

Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was born in Baton Rouge (Louisiana) in March 1979 and many consider him a match for Trump, who used to treat him with the same sarcasm and insolence. Daniels, who has a long acting career in the world of pornography, claims that she had a brief sexual relationship with Trump during a golf course in 2006, when the former president was already married to Melania. In 2016, when Daniels was looking for a media outlet to sell his exclusive, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s lawyer at the time, gave him $130,000 in exchange for keeping the story a secret. However, their relationship came to light in 2018, and since then Daniels has been engaged in an ongoing dialectical and legal battle with Trump and has tried to exploit it, publishing a book, selling promotional items or embarking on a worldwide tour. the country baptized as “Make America Horny Again”, which could be translated as “Make America Horny Again”.

Michael Cohen, a thug lawyer who turned against his master

Michael Cohen, who in 2017 went so far as to confirm in an interview with Vanity Fair that he was “a guy who would take a bullet for president”, a year later pleaded guilty before a federal judge to violating campaign finance regulations. “petition presidential candidate”, i.e. Donald Trump. In addition, he admitted that he managed to make two payments before the presidential election, one of $130,000 to Daniels and another of $150,000 to Playboy model Karen McDougal, also to prevent her from going public with an alleged affair with Trump. Dubbed the tycoon’s “pit bull,” Cohen has been associated with Trump since 2007, when he joined the Trump Organization, eventually becoming his personal legal counsel, a position in which his dedication went beyond the practice normally expected of him. “If you do something bad (against Trump), I’m going to go after you: I’m going to grab you by the throat and I’m not going to let you go until I’m done,” he said in an interview with ABC.

Alvin Bragg, the first prosecutor to put the former president on the dock

Alvin Bragg from Democratic Party, began his tenure as New York prosecutor on January 1, 2022, following the conclusion of his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, who also gained notoriety for investigating Trump. In November 2022, it emerged that Bragg, who worked at the US attorney general’s office, had reopened an investigation into former President Trump’s role in paying Daniels, a case his predecessor dismissed. Since Trump announced last month that his impeachment was a matter of days, Bragg has received all kinds of threats, including envelopes containing white powder sent to prosecutors that were later found to be harmless. Equally, she was the target of verbal attacks and insults from Trump supporters and the businessman himself, who, after learning that the accusation was effective, criticized her on his Truth Social platform. “They just made this false, corrupt and shameful charge against me because I stand with the American people,” he wrote, “and they know I can’t have a fair trial in New York!” wrote Trump, who did not hesitate to describe the New York attorney general’s office as corrupt. .