It happened first time in America's whole history, the criminal charges have been framed on a United State's President and later he got arrested. Donald Trump made the history by this.
The charges on Trump have been framed are 34 , and the maximum imprisonment of the single charge could be 4 years it's being said that he is facing the potential of 136 years of imprisonment.
If these all charges are proven in the court of judge and jury, does this mean that Donald Trump will spend the rest of his life in jail?
What are the accusations against Donald Trump?
"It's an interesting story. Donald Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records..."
"the nation is awaiting a potential criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump."
"Donald Trump arrested and charged with business fraud."
"Bringing Donald Trump down through Manhattan to the lower criminal court and arrived."
"Donald Trump on defence, though, criminally"
"They know that we will defeat them, but they're not coming after me, they're coming after you."
The story of Donald Trump's arrest, Begins with the affair, and according to Trump, that has never happened.
It has started in 2006 and Donald Trump and Melania Trump were already married. They were married for 1 year, and also the Trump was hosting a TV show.
During that, Trump met adult actress Stormy Daniels in Nevada at a celebrity golf tournament. After this, Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump began an affair.
And than fast forwarding 10 years, in 2016, Donald Trump was contesting the US Presidential Elections and Daniels tried to reveal the story of that affair to the world. She tried selling that story to the media.
The newspaper National Enquirer entered that story and the newspaper publishes celebrity gossip and entertainment news. That newspaper was owned by a media organisation American Media Inc. or AMI.
The CEO of AMI media organisation was David Pecker. It's said that David Pecker and Donald Trump were very close. So National Enquirer bought the story.,but after buying it didn't publish, The newspaper is being accused now for employing 'Catch and Kill'.
It means that,
The newspaper helped in covering up all negative news about Donald Trump.
How did they do this? that was simple, they just bought the exclusive rights to such stories from a person who was looking to publish them and they paid well for that, but after buying the rights, they didn't publish them.
It's a brilliant tactic, normally if you want someone to being quiet, we can bribe to them and being silence but that is illegal.
So, to keep them quiet, the newspaper has approached and offered them to buy the exclusive rights to the amazing stories under the appearance of publishing them, but they never published the stories and that person cannot tell his story to anyone because he gave exclusive rights to this media organisation.
An example of this is,
The story of former Trump Tower doorman, Dino Sajudin.
Dino Sajudin was employee as a doorman at Trump Tower, when you enter to a big building or a 5-star hotel, and you see some people employed to simply open and close the door, they are the doormen, this was Sajudin's job at the Trump Tower.
In the 1980s, one day he saw Trump with a unknown woman., they were going in and heading out of the Trump Tower. Not only this, Sajudin claims that story although he was married, Trump had an affair in the 1980s, and also had a child from that woman.
Sajudin wanted to expose that story to the world in 2015, and the media organisation AMI bought that story's exclusive rights. They paid $30,000 to Dino Sajudin for the rights. after the agreements were signed, they never published the story, they just killed that story forever. Interestingly, this isn't merely an accusation, rather AMI's CEO David Pecker admitted that his media organisation applied the 'Catch and Kill' tactic, another incident is about 2006-2007 when Donald Trump had another affair with another actress, Karen McDougal.
Again the story was bought by the same newspaper by paying $150,000 to that actress. and as always, they didn't publish that.
And now back to the Daniels scandal, about before a month of the elections 2016, that was also around the same time when Trump's famous 'grab them' quote was leaked.
It couldn't be wrong to say that Trump's reputation was at stake and he was running to be the President and had news of those affairs been made public, it had a big impact on the elections. Once again, this newspaper promised to pay $130,000 to Daniels, and buy the complete rights of the story about their affair.
Even as the elections were approaching, Daniels didn't received the payment and the responsibility to transfer the money had been came to Michael Cohen who was the lawyer of Trump and Michael kept delaying that payment but when Daniels tried to cancel the deal because of the non-payment, terrified Cohen through a shell company sent the money.
Donald Trump claims that the affair never happened.
So the question arises, why did they pay her?
There is the proof that money was transferred from Michael Cohen accounts to Daniels, and when Cohen was asked in the court, Michael Cohen agreed that.
He acknowledged about the payment and the reason, Michael Cohen was sentenced 3 years' to imprisonment and those 3 years ended recently, since some of the months were during the Covid-19 pandemic, he was under house arrest for that duration. Secretly paying someone to make them silent is known as Hush Payment and you will be amazed to know that making hush payments isn't a crime in America, now you'll ask why was Michael Cohen imprisoned. Michael Cohen wasn't put in prison because of the hush money payment, but because of these crimes.
Willful tax evasion 5 times, giving false statements to banks.
Unauthorized campaign contributions and excessive campaign contributions. The last 2 charges relates to political contributions, political donations.
Even in Trump's case, it may be morally or ethically wrong for a married person to have an affair, but legally it is not a crime in most American states.
Neither is it a crime to pay hush money, nor is it a crime to try to clean up one's image. Therefore,
What are the charges against Donald Trump?
Interestingly, he was accused of falsely recording transactions in the bank account.
The falsification of his business records happened when he tried to pay his lawyer for legal services.
Trump faces 34 charges of falsifying business records. Of those, he is alleged to have falsified invoices 11 times.
11 false cheques and cheque stubs, and 12 false general ledger entries.
Roughly speaking, when his lawyers paid hush money to Daniels to shut her up, and when Donald Trump paid his lawyer in this context, money was misappropriated.
Although his lawyer Cohen admitted in court that he did these things, Donald Trump claims that his lawyer is lying.
The things Cohen admitted to, Trump all denies. Trump was accused when he paid his lawyer to pay the hush money to Daniels, that payment was disguised as an common payment.
As a normal, legal, everyday expense, which it was not. Therefore, it is a forgery of business records.
There is another twist to the story. Under New York State law, falsifying business records is considered a crime only if it is done intentionally to cover up another crime.
This means that merely falsifying business records is not a crime because it may be a genuine mistake, but it becomes a crime when trying to cover up a major crime.
What is the primary crime in Trump's case?
We will find out once the trial and court proceedings begin, but according to experts, the main crime would be the one for which Trump's lawyer Cohen was convicted.
In addition, tax fraud is emerging as another major crime. In a leaked document, it was revealed that Cohen paid $130,000 to Daniels in 2016 to keep her quiet, and Trump paid Cohen $420,000 in 2017 for the same thing.
Donald Trump paid more than the actual payment. It is considered a case of tax fraud. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is the attorney leading this charge.
According to him, one of the main crimes is that voters were presented with false information before the elections.
'damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election,'
To increase his chances of winning the election, Donald Trump concocted this catch-and-kill plan. So that all negative news about him can be suppressed.
What'll happen next in Donald Trump's case?
There are many hurdles in trying to prove Donald Trump's guilt. First, should this case reach the Supreme Court of America, there is a high probability that Trump will walk away scot-free due to the supermajority on the Supreme Court provided by the Republicans.
A major disadvantage of the American system is that in America, Supreme Court justices are selected by the president.
So when Donald Trump was president, he picked several Supreme Court justices. And those justices are still sitting on the Supreme Court bench.
Will those judges pass a sentence against Trump?
It looks uncertain. In this context, there is insufficient independence between the judicial, executive, and legislative branches in America.
It is interesting to note, however, that in America the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of federal laws. Laws that are directly related to the U.S. Constitution.
But the highest court in any state has the final say on state laws, and here we were talking about New York state law, and this case is before a New York state court.
The second problem with proving Trump's guilt is that the crime of falsifying business records has a 5-year statute of limitations.
If someone committed this crime 5 years ago, they can not be convicted of it now, and the last payment from Trump to Cohen was in December 2017, so 5 years have already passed.
Can Trump be convicted for this crime any longer?
There is a rebuttal to this as well. Under New York law, this period can be suspended if the defendant lived outside New York.
When Trump became president, he lived in the White House for 4 years, which of course is not in New York, and since the end of his term as president, he has lived in Florida.
So technically, the 5-year statute of limitations is not triggered here. It is also interesting that Donald Trump's wife Melania Trump has not commented on this case.
Therefore, some media websites reported that Melania Trump may be ashamed of this situation and that she knew about her husband's affairs.
In response, Donald Trump claims that the whole story is a witch hunt and that he is being targeted.
He accuses the judge of being a 'Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris'
"I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family, whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris, and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign."
Trump made these statements despite being warned by Judge Merchan to refrain from making such threatening and inflammatory statements.
Recently, in January 2023, Trump was fined $1 million for, in the judge's view, continually abusing the courts for his political purposes.