Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen has reportedly handed over his cellphones to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, ramping up prosecutors’ investigation into the former president’s involvement in hush-money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
The latest revelation comes as prosecutors are investigating former President Donald Trump for payments he made to Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual affair just days before the 2016 presidential election.
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Cohen was previously convicted after pleading guilty to making the payments in 2018. As part of the scheme, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 and was later reimbursed by the Trump Organization. Now, Manhattan attorneys are seeking to determine whether Trump falsified business records to list the reimbursement as a legal expense.
At the time of Cohen’s trial, federal prosecutors did not press charges against Trump due to guidance from the Justice Department that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.
Prosecutors previously considered pressing charges against Trump by tying the hush-money payments to campaign finance violations, according to the new book Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It by Elie Honig. However, they ultimately decided not to pursue charges because of the possible political consequences.
Additionally, they noted that Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the subsequent Jan. 6 Capitol riot made charges for campaign finance violations “seem somehow trivial and outdated by comparison,” Honig wrote.
Prosecutors later revived discussions about possible charges shortly before Trump left office in 2021.
Trump has long denied the affair, but the former president seemingly walked back his stance in a Truth Social post earlier this week.
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“WIth respect to the ‘Stormy’ nonsense, it is VERY OLD & happened a long time ago, long past the very publicly known & accepted deadline of the Statute of Limitations,” Trump wrote on Tuesday.
“Thanks for just admitting that I was telling the truth about EVERYTHING,” Daniels responded in a tweet.
