Donald Trump will claim he was trying to hide his affair with Stormy Daniels from his wife, not voters, an attorney has said.
Before the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump allegedly paid two women – Stormy Daniels and an ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal – to keep the affairs hush-hush, New York prosecutors will try to prove in the trial next month. The former President of the United States is accused of making payments to a doorman who worked at Trump Tower who alleged the Apprentice star fathered a child with another woman. Trump has vehemently denied all allegations against him in the upcoming trial.
Prosecutors claim Trump falsified records to hide payments and violated election law by withholding information from voters.
Trump has said repeatedly he is part of a political witch hunt and pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges. He says the trial is an attempt to prevent him from getting to the White House for a second term.
Daniels, a porn star, says she will testify in the trial, which is set to begin on March 25 in New York.
Attorney and professor Andrew Weissmann told Newsweek Trump will try to claim his secret payments were a bid to hide the alleged affairs from his wife Melania, saying the “factual scenario” over the payments “is relatively straightforward”.
He says this would be an attempt to counter prosecutor claims they were an attempt to hide it from voters. Weissmann added he didn’t think Trump’s attorneys will dispute the paper trail in court.
He added to the outlet: “I see the defense as being more about: ‘I wanted to keep this away from my wife. It had nothing to do with the election, it had to do with my wife’ but even there…there are very strong facts against that scenario.”
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, is expected to testify he paid Daniels $130,000 and arranged for the National Enquirer to pay McDougal $150,000. It allegedly happened while he was campaigning against Hillary Clinton for the presidency, and would have been a scandal while on the campaign trail.
