Well, it’s still not going great for Trump.
Reports indicate Michael Cohen, the longtime ally to the former president, with whom Cohen had a less than amicable break amid an onslaught of various investigations and criminal charges, is expected to provide testimony before a grand jury in Manhattan this week. It’s the jury hearing evidence in the investigation by local District Attorney Alvin Bragg into hush money that was provided in 2016 to adult film star Stormy Daniels in connection to an affair she purportedly had with Trump. Cohen was the source for that money, and he was later reimbursed through a series of payments falsely cast in business records at the Trump Organization as for legal work.
Cohen has already provided information to investigators well over a dozen times, but he’d yet to testify before this particular jury. Over the hush money, he himself already faced a federal criminal case, in connection to which he’s completed his sentence of detention. The criminal allegations he faced concerned the violations of federal election law that prosecutors found in the arrangement. In short, the money propped up Trump’s campaign that year because of assistance with PR via trying to keep Daniels quiet, but it vastly surpassed contribution limits for campaigns for federal office. In the Manhattan case, potential allegations against Trump concerning the falsified business records could be charged as a felony if connected to a second alleged crime, like a violation of election laws in New York of the same sort that was federally alleged of Cohen.
Charges for Trump may, in fact, be imminent. Other reports have revealed how the ex-president was provided an offer to himself give grand jury testimony, something generally indicative of a looming indictment, and the suddenly consistent pace of Bragg and his team assembling other testimony before the grand jury is certainly suggestive. Others from whom they’ve heard include individuals with past involvement in the tabloid the National Enquirer and Kellyanne Conway, the longtime Trump ally who was among those who spent some time leading the Trump campaign in 2016. Cohen has said he was in touch with Conway after originally providing Daniels the money. Trump remains predictably furious about the whole thing, pointing, among other things, to allegedly complicating factors originating with the relevant statutes of limitations — something you could obviously expect that prosecutors would consider before actually filing any case.
