Donald Trump became the first erstwhile U.S. president always to be formally detained and heard criminal charges. Trump did not plead guilty to the 34 charges he was charged with paying for the silence of actor Stormy Daniels.
Trump spent about an hr in the building on Tuesday, where he was formally detained, his fingerprints were taken from him and the charges filed by the grand jury were revealed. A minute later, he was released and went to Florida, where he intends to address the case during his evening speech. During his arrest, the erstwhile president was not handcuffed or photographed.
The erstwhile president heard 34 allegations about the crime of falsifying business papers – each of them concerns checks that Trump wrote to his then lawyer Michael Cohen for fictional legal services. According to investigators, the checks were actually aimed at returning $130,000 that Cohen paid during the 2016 election run to porn actor Stormy Daniels. It was expected to be a payment for her silence about her alleged intimate encounter with Trump.
Although falsification of business papers is not usually treated as a crime, but as explained by the head of the Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, it is simply a crime if the intent is to hide another crime. In this case, it's about breaking the fresh York electoral law. The prosecution claims that the payment to Daniels was part of a wider Trump arrangement and the publisher of the National Inquirer tabloid, consisting of "finding" and suppressing negative stories about Trump during the campaign.
"This arrangement violated the fresh York electoral law, which says that it is simply a crime to collusion to advance a candidate through illegal means," said Bragg during a press conference.
As early as 2018, in the same case – and for taxation fraud – Cohen was sentenced by the national court to 3 years in prison, who made a payment on Trump's behalf. However, the national prosecutor did not decide to press charges against Trump herself. Similarly, Bragg himself and his predecessor Cyrus Vance did, but according to Bragg, the emergence of fresh evidence was influenced by the change of decision.
According to Yahoo News, although fresh York law provides for up to 4 years in prison for crimes that Trump has been accused of, in the case of previously unpunished people, there is almost never a prison sentence.
Former President's attorneys accused the prosecution of bias and violation of the regulation of law.
"This case, these exposed allegations, show us that the regulation of law has died in this country. (...) realize that there is no script in which if the suspect had not been named Donald J. Trump, we would have been in this place," said Trump defender Joe Tacopin at the Manhattan State Court.
According to reports from CNN journalists who observed a brief trial, justice Juan Merchan chose not to apply the Trump ban on speaking on the case, but warned both sides against inciting and utilizing an inciting language.
Just before the arrest, B. president Donald Trump Jr.'s boy posted a photograph of the judge's daughter, who was to work in Joe Biden's campaign. Prior to that, Trump claimed that the justice would “hate him”, called prosecutor Bragg a “animal”, called for protests and suggested that setting charges against him could consequence in “death and destruction”.
On Tuesday, tiny groups of Trump supporters and opponents gathered in Manhattan court, but it was without major incidents.
Trump became the first erstwhile U.S. president on Tuesday with criminal charges. However, the erstwhile president is the mark of at least 3 investigations in which he is facing more serious charges. According to media reports, close to charging him is Georgia State lawyer for his force to reverse the 2020 election result. At the same time, peculiar independent national prosecutor Jack Smith is investigating Trump's actions related to the attack on Capitol, as well as his holding hundreds of classified documents.
From Washington Oskar Górzyński (PAP)
photo by ANDREW KELLY/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock 
photo by ANDREW KELLY/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock 
photo by ANDREW KELLY/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock 
