The key figures in the Trump hush money case - including ex-Playboy model

Donald Trump is expected to surrender himself to authorities after being indicted on criminal charges related to alleged hush money paid to an adult film actress.

Here we take a look at the key figures in the case, which could result in the first-ever criminal prosecution of a former US president.

Stormy Daniels

The porn actress was paid $130,000 (£105,000) to keep quiet about what she described as an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe in 2006.

The former US president denies having had sex with her.

Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid the money in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

It came after her representative said she was willing to make on-the-record statements to the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper or on television confirming a sexual encounter with Trump.

Read more:
Who is Stormy Daniels?

Karen McDougal

Ms McDougal is a former Playboy model who said she had a 10-month affair with Trump in the mid-2000s.

She was paid $150,000 (£121,000) in 2016 by the parent company of the National Enquirer for the rights to her story about the alleged relationship.

The story never ran after the newspaper supressed it until after the election.

American Media Inc has acknowledged that its payments to Ms McDougal were done specifically to assist Trump’s election bid and were made “in concert” with his campaign.

The former president denies any affair.

Donald Trump expected to surrender after being indicted – follow live updates

Michael Cohen

Cohen is a lawyer by training who worked for the Trump Organisation from 2006 to 2017 and served as the former president’s fixer.

He once proudly proclaimed he would “take a bullet” for Trump.

Cohen took the lead in arranging the payment to Ms Daniels, passing it through a corporation he established for the purpose.

He says he was then reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the payment and related bonuses as “legal expenses”.

A few months earlier, Cohen had also arranged for the publisher of the National Enquirer to make the similar $150,000 payment to Ms McDougal for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with Trump.

Cohen made recordings of a conversation in which he and Trump spoke about the arrangement to pay Ms McDougal through the tabloid publisher.

At one point, Trump said: “What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”

Read more:
Michael Cohen begins three-year jail term

Allen Weisselberg

The long-time chief financial officer at the Trump Organisation, Mr Weisselberg made key decisions in how the company kept its books, but did not appear to be cooperating with the hush money investigation.

During testimony before Congress in 2019, Cohen said it was Mr Weisselberg who decided how to structure his reimbursement for the payment to Ms Daniels. Cohen said Weisselberg paid the money out over 12 months “so that it would look like a retainer”.

Federal prosecutors gave Weisselberg limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for his grand jury testimony in their investigation of the payments.

David Pecker

Mr Pecker is the National Enquirer’s former publisher and a long-time friend of Trump’s.

He met with Cohen during Trump’s 2016 campaign and said the Enquirer’s parent company would help buy and bury potentially damaging stories about Trump’s relationship with women.

Mr Pecker, who was the Enquirer’s chairman and chief executive at the time, agreed to keep Cohen apprised of any such stories. In June 2016, he alerted Cohen that Ms McDougal’s lawyer had approached the publication seeking to sell her story about an alleged affair with Trump.

The Enquirer’s owner at the time, American Media Inc, then agreed to pay Ms McDougal $150,000 for “limited life rights” to the story of her alleged relationship with the former president.

Federal prosecutors decided in 2018 not to prosecute American Media in exchange for its cooperation in the campaign finance investigation that led to Cohen’s guilty plea and prison sentence.

Alvin Bragg

Manhattan’s first black district attorney, Mr Bragg could become the first prosecutor anywhere to bring a criminal case against a former US president.

The Democrat inherited an investigation of Trump when he took office in January 2022.

Mr Bragg grew up in Harlem during the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic, where he says he was held at gunpoint six times – three times by police.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, he previously worked as a federal prosecutor, chief deputy state attorney general, civil rights lawyer and law school professor.

Joseph Tacopina

A Brooklyn-born lawyer known for his sharp suits and celebrity clientele, Mr Tacopina is the public face of Trump’s defence team.

Trump is just the latest big name to turn to Mr Tacopina, whose past clients have included the rappers Meek Mill, Jay-Z and A$AP Rocky and baseball great Alex Rodriguez.

In recent weeks, Mr Tacopina has been making the former president’s case on TV news shows, questioning Mr Bragg’s investigation and motives, challenging Cohen’s credibility as a star witness and suggesting Trump was extorted.

But before he started representing Trump, he had previously said the payment to Ms Daniels appeared to be “illegal” and a “potential campaign finance issue”.

Susan Necheles

Ms Necheles is a New York City defence lawyer who represented Trump’s company at its tax fraud trial last year and has been working behind the scenes on the former president’s criminal defence, meeting with prosecutors in an attempt to head off potential charges.

In the past she served as counsel to the late Genovese crime family underboss Venero Mangano, known as Benny Eggs, and defended John Gotti’s lawyer, Bruce Cutler, in a contempt of court case in the early 1990s.

Matthew Colangelo

Mr Bragg hired Mr Colangelo in December to lead the investigation.

They previously worked together on Trump-related matters as senior officials at the office of New York attorney general Letitia James.

During his tenure with the attorney general’s office, Mr Colangelo worked on a lawsuit that resulted in the closure of Trump’s charitable foundation for misusing funds.

He was also part of a wave of state litigation against Trump administration policies, resulting in dozens of lawsuits that challenged everything from diluted environmental standards to changes to US mail service ahead of the 2020 election.

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