The NPR Politics Podcast - Donald Trump Likely To Be Charged Over Porn Star Hush Money

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

Former President Donald Trump has been invited to testify before a New York City grand jury — a move that is widely understood to mean Trump could soon face criminal charges related to his financial dealings and the payment of hush money to Stephanie Clifford, the adult film star also known as Stormy Daniels. His former attorney Michael Cohen previously was convicted in connection with the payment in federal court, when prosecutors alleged the payments were made at Trump's direction.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, reporter Ilya Marritz, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Giveaway: npr.org/politicsplusgiveaway Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Sarah in Denver, Colorado, where I just finished putting up 1,005 digits of pie in our house to celebrate my favorite holiday, Pie Day. This podcast was recorded at 1.09 p.m. on 3.14 Pie Day. That is Tuesday, March 14th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but hopefully you can enjoy a slice of pie with friends like we will be doing. Okay, here's the show. Well, I can't go very far. It's like 3.1415 and then I'm toast. And I can definitely eat pie. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And we are joined by reporter Ilya Meretz, who has been covering former President Donald Trump's

legal troubles for NPR. Hey there. Hi. So this is something that liberal talking heads have been predicting for at least five years, but this time it actually may happen. Donald Trump could soon be indicted in New York. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office has invited the former president to testify before a grand jury this week. And Ilya, you have been following this, and this actually means something. Being invited to testify before a grand jury, a group responsible for recommending charges, is typically a last step before a criminal indict, a group responsible for recommending charges,

is typically a last step before a criminal indictment. Is that right? Yes. In the state of New York, that would usually signal that a grand jury process is winding up, and either there will be an indictment or possibly not. We don't know precisely what this case is about, but there's been just like a flurry of activity over the last month or two. People seen going in and out of the courthouse, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway, David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer. And those names and the rumor mill are starting to help us build a picture of what the charges possibly could be. And it seems that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's likely case, if he brings it, is going to center on hush money payments made to the porn actress Stormy Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford, her real name. That happened

in the final days of the 2016 campaign. Michael Cohen, President Trump's then personal attorney, went to jail for his role in the scheme, but Trump was never held to account. And now it looks like DA Alvin Bragg may try to bring a state-level case around the same fact pattern. Mara, I remember covering this story about these hush money payments when it first came out. And it was one of these moments where you're like, wait, the president was making hush money payments or his representative was making hush money payments to an adult film actress. And yet, like so many other things, it kind of just blew over. It kind of blew over because we're in a whole different

era now and Trump has really changed, some people would say warped the rules of politics, and he was impeached by the House of Representatives twice. He wasn't convicted by the Senate, but that didn't stop him. And I think that the political ramifications of this are likely to go in two very different directions. It's possible that this will make him stronger with some of his base voters who believe that he is being persecuted. It also could add to the Republican establishment's strong desire to move past him and to see him in the rearview mirror.

I think the bottom line in terms of the political effects of these investigations involving Donald Trump is that in the end, only voters can defeat Trump, not prosecutors. So, Ilya, how has the former president's team responded to this case and the invitation to testify? They've been pretty out there. Trump has a relatively new to him lawyer, Joseph Takapina, who is very aggressive. He was on TV a few days ago with George Stephanopoulos, saying that Trump had no plans to testify before the grand jury, no plans to take up that invitation. He talked about weaponizing the justice system against Trump, saying that it's unfair. And Trump himself, you know, all through these legal travails has not been shy about posting to his social network,

Truth Social. He'll use terms like witch hunt. He has called DA Bragg and a bunch of other prosecutors racist. And he's always said that these Democratic prosecutors are out to get him. And, you know, a lot of the prosecutors who are taking a close look at Donald Trump and making his life difficult right now are elected, and they are Democrats. There's Tish James, the Attorney General of New York. There's Fannie Willis, the DA in Atlanta and Fulton County, Georgia. And there's Alvin Bragg here in Manhattan. And Alvin Bragg actually was on TV a couple days ago. Bragg says he's just following the facts and treating Donald Trump as a citizen. But nevertheless, Trump, I think, can successfully argue this is political. Can we go back to the case here? I mean, the idea of an alleged affair between a politician, not a politician at the time, and an adult film star, while scandalous, potentially. I guess the question is, what is the legal argument here? What is the theory at the root of this case?

And has this been tried before? Well, precisely these facts went through the justice system when Michael Cohen pleaded guilty, right? Michael Cohen, I'm sure, would have preferred not to plead guilty to his role in facilitating an illegal campaign donation, but that is what it was considered under the law, and he pleaded guilty to it. So basically, the idea is that by buying Stormy Daniels' story for $130,000, and then sitting on it in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, Trump and the people around him succeeded in stifling that story and preventing it from getting out. And they boosted his chances of becoming elected president because hearing that the

Republican candidate for president had an affair with a porn actress, putting that out there right at that critical time right before an election could harm his chances. That's the theory. And it's sort of more than a theory because Michael Cohen went to jail for it. What is theoretical right now or what is a question right now is whether a case based on local New York state laws can be built around the same fact pattern. We have federal laws that were applied here successfully. We don't know whether state laws can support similar charges, but that's what's available to DA Bragg. All right, more on that in a minute. But first, a quick break. And we're back and we're talking about a case that could potentially lead to the indictment of former President Donald Trump for something that happened way back in 2016 and that has already been prosecuted on the federal level. So why is this becoming a thing now on the state level or on the local level?

Right. So maybe just a little bit of a recap. At the time that Michael Cohen pleaded guilty, part of the fact pattern was that he facilitated this illegal campaign donation at the direction of Individual One. Justice Department didn't say who that was, but it was very clearly Donald Trump because they identified Individual One as a candidate for president of the United States. So at the time, it sort of seemed like here's this one person going to jail for a crime that he committed at the direction of another individual who was not held to account, and that's Donald Trump, the Justice Department had a policy,

still has a policy, of not pursuing criminal investigations and indictments against presidents. But what the Manhattan District Attorney did is he picked up that baton and started looking into Donald Trump. And pretty quickly, the fact pattern moved from Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen into the whole Trump business, right? The former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who preceded Alvin Bragg, he had to go to the Supreme Court twice to get records that he was seeking. He prevailed both times. And by the time Vance left office at the end of 2021, he was pretty close to bringing an indictment of Trump, but it was for a different kind of case. It was a case about business fraud and lying to banks and business partners. When the new DA came

in just over a year ago, Alvin Bragg, took a look at that case and he passed on it. But he didn't pass on the investigation as a whole. He kept that he passed on it. But he didn't pass on the investigation as a whole. He kept that going. And it led him back to where the journey began, which is Stormy Daniels and hush money. Ilya, what about the argument that Donald Trump should not be prosecuted for anything that he wouldn't have been prosecuted for as a private citizen? Now, granted, some of these things happened in conjunction with a run for president. You know, Donald Trump supporters say that he's getting different treatment, harsher treatment. Let me start by just telling you what DA Bragg has said, then I'll tell you a little bit more

about what I think may be going on here. DA Bragg has said, we're following the facts without fear or favor. The president is a citizen like anybody else. And that's true enough. But, you know, in covering this stuff, over the four years of the Trump presidency, again, and again, and again, we see the problem and the challenge of holding a president to account while he is president. I mean, we saw this in a million ways in the Mueller probe. We saw this in impeachment, and many other places. It's just incredibly tricky to do, incredibly, incredibly fraught. And there's always going to be a political dimension to it. I think the reason that this investigation that's now, you know, like five years old, one reason that's bearing fruit now is Donald Trump is no longer president.

He doesn't have the tools of the presidency to try to stymie the investigation. It's moving ahead. One thing, though, is that he's not just a former president. He is now a candidate for president again. He's running again. Recently, Trump was at the conservative political action conference CPAC, and he told reporters that he was going to stay in the race even if he is indicted. So you'll stay in the race? Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't even think about leaving. Mara, I mean, I feel like we've touched on this already, but he has never let investigations or clouds of suspicion or anything else hold him back. No, and some of Trump supporters will argue that they actually help him.

These investigations actually help him because they add to his narrative that he's being persecuted and he's a kind of martyr. I am your retribution. Remember, that's what he told CPAC. I do think that this kind of thing works both ways. It can make his core supporters even more devoted to him and more energized to support him. But the drip, drip, drip of all of these investigations also increase the desire of many Republican voters, not necessarily the majority of them, but many of them to move past Trump, that he's just too damaged. He has too much stuff going on, too many investigations, and he's lost three elections.

Tamara, there's one more dimension to this that's very practical that I'm going to be paying attention to in the weeks and months ahead. And that's, you know, Ronna McDaniel, the head of the RNC, has said that the Republican Party has been paying part of President Trump's legal bills, but they will have to stop if and when Donald Trump declares his run for president. He has now done that. So it's actually like a very real question, who is going to pay his legal bills as his legal bills mount higher and higher, presuming that DA Bragg's case moves ahead and some of these other cases move ahead. He's going to be really loitered up and it's going to be really expensive. All right, well, we're going to leave it there for today. Ilya Meritz, thank you so much.

Thank you, Tamara. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.