by Sharon Rondeau
(Mar. 18, 2023) — In a post on TruthSocial Saturday morning, 45th President of the United States and 2024 presidential candidate Donald J. Trump protested the “leak” from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office that he will be arrested this coming Tuesday over a payment he made indirectly to adult-film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
Daniels claims she and Trump had an affair over a decade ago, which Trump denies. However, he has admitted making the payment of $130,000 to his then-personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who wired it to Daniels’s attorney in October 2016 as an agreement to retain rights to the story about Trump Daniels intended to tell through a magazine outlet.
According to CBS News on Friday, Cohen used his own money to make the payment but was reimbursed by the Trump Organization an agreed total of $420,000 “to be paid in monthly installments for 12 months” in 2017.
In 2018, Cohen was convicted of tax evasion, lying to Congress and for “paying hush money” in the form of “illegal campaign contributions” to Daniels and another woman to protect Trump. He was incarcerated through 2020, when he was released out of concerns for contracting COVID-19. Cohen was briefly sent back to prison after allegedly violating the terms of his parole and released in 2021.
The former Trump supporter with whom The Post & Email briefly spoke just prior to the White House release of an image purported to be a PDF of Barack Obama’s “birth certificate” has reportedly been testifying to a grand jury in the latest Trump probe, which his former client claims is politically motivated and the result of the actions of “radical left anarchists.”
“Our nation is now third world & dying,” Trump wrote in all capital letters. “The American dream is dead! The radical left anarchists have stollen [sic] our presidential election, and with it, the heart of our our [sic] country. American patriots are being arrested & held in captivity like animals, while criminals & leftist thugs are allowed to roam the streets, killing & burning with no retribution…,” a reference undoubtedly to the hundreds of people charged for allegedly carrying out an “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 as Trump was giving a speech on what he believed was the “stolen election” of November 3, 2020.
Part 2 of his commentary reads:
NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!
An attorney for Trump, Susan Necheles, reportedly characterized Trump as a “victim of extortion,” telling Reuters, “For the DA’s office to charge former President Trump, a victim of extortion, with a crime because his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, a convicted liar, paid the extortionist, would be unprecedented and outrageous selective prosecution.”
If an arrest is carried out, it will be the first time in U.S. history that a former president has been criminally charged.