US: All You Need To Know About Trump-Stormy Daniels Saga

• Ms Daniels claims she and Mr Trump had sex

• She also claims she accepted $130,000 in exchange for her silence on the encounter

• She said she met Mr Trump at a charity golf tournament in July 2006

Eko Hot Blog reports that US President Donald Trump has been invited to testify over allegations that hush money was paid to ex-porn actress Stormy Daniels on his behalf to cover up an affair.

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Ms Daniels claims she and Mr Trump had sex, and that she accepted $130,000 (£100,000) from his former lawyer before the 2016 election in exchange for her silence on the encounter.

The attorney, Michael Cohen, was later jailed on multiple charges.

The former president has denied he had any such tryst with Ms Daniels since the allegations surfaced in 2018.

How the affair allegations began

Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, first described in 2011 her purported tryst with Mr Trump during a tell-all sit-down with In Touch Weekly magazine.

She said she met Mr Trump at a charity golf tournament in July 2006 and alleged the pair had sex once in his hotel room at Lake Tahoe, a resort area between California and Nevada. A lawyer for Mr Trump “vehemently” denied this at the time.

“He didn’t seem worried about it. He was kind of arrogant,” she said in response to the interviewer’s question asking if Mr Trump had told her to keep quiet about their alleged night together.

If this account is true, it would all have happened four months after the birth of Mr Trump’s youngest child, Barron.

Threat claims

But the magazine did not publish the story after legal threats from Donald Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, CBS News’ 60 Minutes programme reported, citing former employees.

Ms Daniels told CBS a man had approached her and her infant daughter in a Las Vegas car park and told her to “leave Trump alone”.

“That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom,” she claimed the man said.

She said she later accepted $130,000 in “hush money” from Mr Cohen a month before the 2016 election because she was concerned for the safety of her family.

Before the 60 Minutes episode aired, a shell company linked to Mr Cohen threatened Ms Daniels with a $20m lawsuit, arguing she had broken their non-disclosure deal (NDA), or “hush agreement”.

Ms Daniels told the CBS show she was risking a million-dollar fine for breaking the agreement by speaking on national television, but “it was very important to me to be able to defend myself”.

Cohen turns

While rumours of the affair started appearing before the 2016 presidential election, the Wall Street Journal published a piece in January 2018 about Mr Cohen’s hush money payment to Ms Daniels.

Since the payment was made a month before the presidential election, Mr Trump’s critics argued the money could amount to a campaign violation.

At first Mr Cohen dismissed the report. But in February 2018 he admitted he had in fact paid Ms Daniels the money from his own funds, though he maintained neither Mr Trump nor the campaign was involved.

Yet in August 2018 Mr Cohen testified under oath that Mr Trump had directed him to make the hush payment of $130,000 days before the election.

He provided what he said was evidence of reimbursements he had received from the president for the hush money.

Mr Trump has acknowledged personally reimbursing the payment, which isn’t illegal, but denied the affair and any wrongdoing regarding campaign laws.

Mr Cohen was jailed on multiple counts after he pleaded guilty to violating laws during the 2016 presidential election.

So what’s the latest?

A lawyer for Mr Trump – who has launched a third campaign for the White House – has confirmed prosecutors are inviting him to testify over the Stormy Daniels case.

The district attorney in Manhattan, New York City, has been investigating him for the last five years over the hush money allegations.

A grand jury is held in secret, and set up by a prosecutor to determine whether there is enough evidence to pursue charges in a case. If an indictment is issued, it would be the first criminal case ever brought against a former US president.

According to the New York Times, the offer to testify is voluntary and Mr Trump is likely to decline.

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On his social media network, Truth Social, Mr Trump called the investigation a political witch-hunt by a “corrupt, depraved, and weaponised justice system”.

Source: BBC

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