By The New York Daily News
Twelve days earlier than Donald Trump gained probably the most astonishing upsets within the historical past of the American presidency, his fixer wired $130,000 to a porn star’s lawyer.
The furtive Oct. 27, 2016, fee got here on the peak of the election cycle — someday earlier than the FBI director advised Congress he was reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton — and anxious an alleged tryst a decade earlier.
Stormy Daniels, an grownup movie star from Louisiana whose actual title is Stephanie Clifford, had privately described having intercourse with Trump at a charity golf match occasion in 2006, months after the start of the long run president’s youngest son.
Trump wished to close Daniels up, the fixer, Michael Cohen, would later testify.
The fee appeared to work. Trump beat Clinton and have become the forty fifth president. At one level throughout Trump’s presidency, Daniels apparently signed an announcement saying she neither had a sexual affair with him nor obtained a hush cash fee.
But Cohen and Daniels would each change their tales. Daniels later offered graphic accounts of Trump pursuing her in a lodge suite in 2006 after which having intercourse together with her.
Cohen, pleading responsible in 2018 to a battery of felony costs, mentioned Trump had ordered the fee to Daniels to salvage his presidential marketing campaign, a possible crime.
Now, Trump — who denies having intercourse with Daniels — finds himself out of the White House and in authorized peril, with the fee anticipated to be on the heart of a case that on Thursday produced the primary indictment of a former U.S. president.
Here’s a glance again on the occasions that led to this historic second.
July 2006
Daniels meets Trump at a golf occasion in Lake Tahoe, Nev. He is 60; she is 27. He asks her to come back to dinner at his suite, in keeping with her account, and she or he agrees. He wears silk pajamas and slippers, and so they have intercourse, she has mentioned. “It was not romantic,” she later says in court docket.
July 2007
Daniels meets Trump once more, this time in a bungalow on the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, the place they watch “Shark Week,” and he discusses placing her on his present “The Celebrity Apprentice,” she has mentioned. “He made me sit and watch an entire documentary about shark attacks,” she will later inform CBS News. They don’t have intercourse.
May 2011
Daniels provides a prolonged interview with a gossip journal during which she describes assembly Trump and having intercourse with him 5 years earlier. After the interview, Daniels passes a polygraph check, in keeping with InContact journal. CBS News will later report that the journal’s writer agreed to pay $15,000 for the interview however pulled the story when Cohen threatened to sue.
October 2016
A Fox News reporter, Diana Falzone, information a narrative detailing an alleged affair between Trump and Daniels, in keeping with a 2018 CNN report. The Fox News report just isn’t printed. Daniels’ lawyer, Keith Davidson, is claimed to be hawking Daniels’ story to The National Enquirer.
Oct. 27, 2016
Cohen funnels $130,000 to Davidson by a shell firm.
Oct. 28, 2016
Daniels indicators a nondisclosure settlement carrying pseudonyms.
Nov. 8, 2016
Trump is elected president.
2017
The Trump Organization pays Cohen $420,000 all through 2017 in month-to-month installments of $35,000 checks.
Jan. 9, 2018
InContact publishes a transcript of its years-old interview with Daniels. The journal says that Daniels’ account of the affair was supported by one in all Daniels’ mates and by her former husband.
Jan. 12, 2018
The Wall Street Journal publishes a bombshell report saying that Cohen organized a $130,000 fee a month earlier than the 2016 election to safe Daniels’ silence on the alleged affair. Cohen points an announcement saying that Trump “vehemently denies any such occurrence,” and a separate assertion, signed by Daniels, saying that she didn’t have a sexual affair with Trump.
Feb. 13, 2018
Cohen offers an announcement to information shops acknowledging that he paid Daniels $130,000, however saying the cash was unrelated to the 2016 marketing campaign.
March 6, 2018
Daniels information a lawsuit in California arguing that the nondisclosure settlement needs to be declared legally nugatory as a result of Trump didn’t signal it.
March 25, 2018
CBS News publishes an interview with Daniels during which she asserts she had intercourse with Trump in 2006. Daniels says Trump advised her through the encounter that she reminded him of his daughter and that she spanked him with {a magazine} that featured him on the quilt.
April 9, 2018
FBI brokers sweep Cohen’s workplace. Asked if he knew of the nondisclosure settlement, Trump tells reporters, “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney.”
May 2, 2018
Rudy Giuliani, newly added to Trump’s authorized workforce, tells Fox News that Trump repaid Cohen for the fee to Daniels, however that the funds are “perfectly legal” as a result of “that money was not campaign money.”
Aug. 21, 2018
Cohen pleads responsible to eight felony costs, together with marketing campaign finance violations, in Manhattan Federal Court. He says he labored at Trump’s route to repay two ladies who mentioned that they had intercourse with Trump — Daniels and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy mannequin.
December 12, 2018
Cohen is sentenced to a few years in jail.
Nov. 2, 2021
Alvin Bragg is elected Manhattan district legal professional, positioning the Harvard-educated Democrat from Harlem to succeed the retiring Cy Vance Jr.
January 2023
The Manhattan district legal professional is claimed to be presenting proof to a particular grand jury about Trump’s connections to funds to Daniels.
March 9, 2023
The New York Times studies that Bragg’s workplace has invited Trump to testify earlier than the grand jury, a sign that an indictment is probably going.
March 15
Daniels meets with prosecutors within the Manhattan district legal professional’s workplace, her lawyer says.
March 17
Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina tells the Daily News that the previous president will give up if he’s indicted in New York.
March 18
In a social media put up, Trump inaccurately predicts he will likely be arrested in New York three days later, and urges his supporters to protest and “TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
March 24
Trump writes on social media that there will likely be “death and destruction” if he’s arrested. White powder is claimed to be found in an envelope marked “Alvin” on the district legal professional’s mail room in decrease Manhattan.
March 27
David Pecker, the previous National Enquirer writer, is noticed on the district legal professional’s workplace and apparently testifies earlier than the grand jury for the second time.
March 30
The Manhattan grand jury votes to indict Trump.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”