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After a string of defeats in various courts while trying to get the trial delayed, former US president Donald Trump appeared in court on April 15 on charges of him paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and falsifying business records to cover those payments.
With this, Trump became the first-ever former US president to go on trial for criminal charges. Here are some of the key people in this trial:
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee and defendant in the case has pleaded not guilty to the 34-count indictment which includes charges of accounting fraud and falsifying business records to cover up the $130,000 payment to Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, says she met Trump in 2006 at a celebrity golf tournament when she was 27, while he was 60 and has maintained the sex was consensual. Ahead of the 2016 election, Michael Cohen offered her $130,000 not to disclose the alleged affair, which she accepted, said Daniels.
Cohen, Trump’s ex-lawyer, pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges that he violated campaign finance law through the payment and said the Republican had ordered him to give the money and then arranged for him to be reimbursed.
Trump’s ex-lawyer made a similar payment to McDougal, a former Playboy model who also claimed to have had an affair with Trump. She was allegedly paid $150,000 by Cohen through the National Enquirer.
A key Trump ally, Pecker was the CEO of American Media Inc (AMI) and the publisher of the National Enquirer who helped the former president by purchasing the rights to potentially damaging stories and never publishing them. AMI paid McDougal to suppress a story about an affair.
Merchan is the judge overlooking the case and has served as a jurist in New York for nearly two decades and once as a prosecutor. He has quashed multiple efforts by Trump’s legal team to delay the trial and also imposed and expanded a gag order against the former president for repeatedly attacking his daughter, who has worked with various Democratic politicians.
Bragg, a Democrat, serves as the Manhattan DA and brought the 34-count indictment against Trump to court. He was elected as the top prosecutor in 2021, and was largely an unknown prosecutor before that and had been described as an apolitical person before he took office.