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‘I NEVER HAD AN AFFAIR’: Trump denies having sex with ‘Stormy “Horseface” Daniels’ and accuses ‘radical’ Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg of focusing on his ‘hush payments’ over violent crime in New York
- Witness testimony in the case is set to begin this week in Lower Mahattan
- Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker was seen entering the building
- Daniels alleges she had a brief fling with the married Trump in 2006
Donald Trump lambasted Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a ‘radical’ prosecutor on Monday for examining alleged ‘hush money’ payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
It comes after the New York Times reported a grand jury is set to hear witness testimony this week about the former president’s alleged role in the payments, made to keep Daniels quiet during his 2016 campaign. She claims to have slept with him in 2006.
But Trump denied the affair in a forceful message on his Truth Social app and derided Daniels as ‘Horseface.’
He also accused Bragg of spending more time investigating him than going after crime in New York City, and claims the Democrat leaked the grand jury report to the press himself.
Donald Trump lashed out at reports that a grand jury has started hearing from witnesses over alleged ‘hush money’ payments
Daniels described Trump’s anatomy and circumstances of their tryst in graphic detail in her own memoir
‘With murders and violent crime surging like never before in New York City, the Radical Left Manhattan D.A., Alvin Bragg, just leaked to the Fake News Media that they are still going after the Stormy ”Horseface” Daniels,’ Trump wrote on Monday afternoon.
‘Working closely with the Weaponized Justice Department, this is a continuation of the Greatest Witch Hunt of all time. They long ago missed the Statute of Limitations, & I recently won big money against “Stormy” in the 9th Circuit – NEVER HAD AN AFFAIR. This is old news!’
His ‘big money’ line is likely in reference to a judge recently ordering Daniels to pay nearly $300,000 in Trump’s legal feels after her lawsuit against him failed. She had sued him for defamation over his denials of their alleged fling.
Meanwhile Prosecutors in Bragg’s office are laying out their ‘hush money’ case, which could potentially lead to criminal charges, according to the New York Times.
Trump has maintained his denial of the alleged 2006 affair with porn star Stormy Daniels
Daniels claims to have slept with Trump while he was married to former First Lady Melania Trump, who had given birth to their son Barron less than six months before their brief fling.
Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen previously admitted to paying $130,000 to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, to keep her silent about the alleged affair during the 2016 campaign.
Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law in 2018 and sentenced to three years in prison for arranging the payment and a nondisclosure agreement.
He told a judge at the time that they were made ‘in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.’
Trump’s former ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen admitted to paying hush money to Daniels over the matter
Now, with Trump several years out of office and running another campaign, witnesses are set to begin speaking before the New York City grand jury as prosecutors make their case for why the former president should be charged.
On Monday, among the witnesses seen arriving at the Manhattan judicial proceedings was reportedly David Pecker, former publisher of The National Enquirer.
He previously admitted to prosecutors that he worked ‘in concert’ with the Trump 2016 campaign to arrange hush money payments for Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
A statement from the Manhattan DA’s office at the time said he helped facilitate the payments so the women would ‘not publicize damaging allegations’ about Trump.
Other expected witnesses include former National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard and two Trump Organization employees, according to the Times.
It was revealed late last week that federal prosecutors had discussed charging Trump with campaign finance violations over the payments to Daniels and McDougal after he’d left office.
While Justice Department guidance cautioned against charging a sitting president, there were conversations on whether to use the evidence complied from prosecuting Cohen in 2018 to go after Trump when his term was over, according to the book “Untouchable” by CNN analyst Elie Honig.
But that was apparently derailed by the chaos of that month, including the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Honig wrote that such national crises made alleged campaign financial fouls ‘seem somehow trivial and outdated by comparison.’
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