Who is who in the case of the porn actress who can bring Trump to justice

The

could be titled, paraphrasing the title of a hit Hollywood movie from the late eighties,

.

To the list, it is enough to add a few lawyers, those who have built the case for or against the porn actress and, in the opposite sense, Donald Trump.

The soap opera, which has been going on for years, may end with the first indictment of a president in US history, accused of paying black money to Daniels to buy her silence about an alleged extramarital affair.

Stormy Daniels, the victim

In July 2006, porn actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie G. Clifford, met tycoon and reality star Donald Trump at a Nebraska golf club.

The one who 10 years later would be the 45th president of the United States cajoled Daniels by promising to appear on

, her program on NBC.

The adventure, which Trump denies, was followed by a couple of meetings.

Of the television promise, it was never heard from again.

Advised with unequal success by agents and publicists and deceived by her own lawyer, the actress, who is now 44 years old, tried to make the adventure profitable by offering the story to various media starting in 2011, when Trump expressed his intention to run for president.

But it was not until October 2016, in the last stretch of the campaign that led him to the White House, when Daniels had the most appropriate opportunity.

published the transcript of a tape in which the Republican rudely described how he fondled women and the scandal encouraged Daniels to contact, among other means, the

.

His editor, David Pecker, a close friend of Trump and in charge of shielding his image, notified him and the Republican put the matter in the hands of his lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Stormy Daniels, at a porn film contest in Berlin in October 2018. Markus Schreiber (AP)

Three days after the tape was released, the actress signed a $130,000 confidentiality agreement with Cohen that threatened her with severe financial penalties if she spoke.

The signing took place in the parking lot of a porn film set in California.

But in 2018, with Trump already in the White House, the actress appealed to the courts to annul it, based on the fact that the president never signed it (Cohen did, who also advanced the money).

From the legal scrutiny of that contract emerged the investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, which is trying to determine whether Trump's reimbursement to Cohen, recorded as "legal expenses" in the books of the Trump Organization, violated campaign financing regulations.

Daniels has since led a low-key career as an actress, reality show host and producer, as well as writing a memoir,

.

Although the revelation of the case coincided with the start of Me Too, she abjured the movement after an attempt to benefit from favorable public opinion in the face of the wave of complaints of abuse of women by powerful men in the film industry.

Her status as a porn actress did not help;

on the contrary, she discredited her as much as her purpose to make the story profitable.

A couple of memorable phrases remain from the account of her affair with the Republican: the description of Trump as "an insecure clown" and the qualification of the sexual relationship they had as "the least impressive" of Daniels' life.

Michael Cohen, the witness for the prosecution

Lawyer Michael Cohen, 56, the son of a Holocaust survivor, idolized Trump — he went so far as to say he was willing to put a bullet in his place — but in 2018 he became his bitter enemy after the bribe payment was aired. to Daniels.

What step between one extreme and the other is the great unknown of the case.

The relationship between the two dates back to 2006, when Cohen caught the attention of the magnate by ardently defending his interests at a meeting of the community of owners of one of his condominiums.

He was soon hired by the Trump Organization, where he became responsible for some of its companies.

But his main function was to anticipate Trump's whims and wishes and interpret the instructions he gave him, that is, to wash all the dirty laundry,

, to shield the image of the soon to be candidate for the White House.

Pecker testified before the grand jury in late January.

Michael Cohen, upon leaving the Manhattan District Attorney's Office on March 13.

Yuki Iwamura (AP)

Cohen worked to protect his boss until January 2018, when, as a result of a complaint by a pro-transparency group called Common Cause before the electoral board for the payment of the bribe, he had to start giving explanations: first, exonerating Trump and assuring that he had done it on his own, that is, lying.

Then, after his break with the tycoon theoretically for not paying the hefty bill for his defense, telling the truth,

truth, from the hand of his new lawyer, a well-known Democrat.

In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to violating election finance rules and pointed the finger at Trump.

Already in prison, he began to collaborate with justice.

Since January he has gone to the prosecutor's office twenty times.

Although the prosecutor's office deplores his excessive media exposure, with frequent interventions to "publicly defend himself" from what he describes as a campaign of harassment by Trump's entourage, investigators consider him a consistent witness.

Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor

When Alvin Bragg was elected Manhattan District Attorney in the 2021 Democratic primary, the

it was languishing despite attempts by his predecessor, fellow Democrat Cyrus Jr. Vance, to push it forward.

The resignation of the two main investigators in February 2022 did not herald an early end either, but rather a probable filing of the case.

That is why Bragg, 49, could not imagine that his arrival at the prosecution would place him in an unprecedented situation, from a legal point of view: assess the solidity of the charges that support the probable accusation.

When he announced his candidacy in 2019, his program had nothing to do with the president's unfinished business, but rather a new approach to crime, promising to balance public safety and fairness.

Alvin Bragg, District Attorney for Manhattan, leaving his office last Wednesday.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez (AP)

Bragg's emphasis on the law and political cleanliness stems from his time as a federal prosecutor in New York, where he focused on public corruption and white-collar crime, and later at the New York Attorney General's Office, where led a unit focused on police accountability.

Bragg feels uncomfortable with the more political aspects of his work, and he has made it explicit again this week, when responding to a request for explanations from Republican congressmen, who accuse him of abuse of authority.

Imputing Trump would catapult Bragg onto the national scene, but the process is beset with doubts, even from putative allies, about the strength of the case and the advisability of presenting it.

Trump has targeted the Democrat, to prop up his theory that he is the victim of a political manhunt.

As a consequence of all this, the scrutiny on Bragg is greater today than on the alleged crime committed by Trump in 2016.

Michael Avenatti, the criminal lawyer

The fame of the lawyer Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' representative in her case against Trump, overflowed like foam thanks to the ingenuity of the actress, who placed all her trust in him in 2017, on the eve of the case breaking out.

Her appearances on cable television when she pitted Daniels against Trump portrayed him as a shark, brash and aggressive and with an appreciable command of the headlines.

She grew so much that she even entertained the idea of ​​running in the Democratic primaries to try her luck in the White House race, until her

.

In 2019 Avenatti, 52, was arrested by the FBI for extortion and bank fraud.

In 2022, a Manhattan court found it proven that he had stolen $300,000 of a publishing advance from Daniels for his memoir after forging his signature.

Michael Avenatti, with Stormy Daniels, in April 2018 in New York.

Craig Ruttle (AP)

In just six months, and thanks to Daniels, the Californian Avenatti acquired international fame while placing the litigation at the center of the country's political debate.

But her legal expertise proved scant: A defamation suit by Daniels against the president, who had previously insulted her, was dismissed, and the judge ordered her to pay $293,000 in legal costs, nearly the same amount Avenatti stole from her client.

He was sentenced to four years in prison last June, after a process in which he represented himself.

The actress broke her relationship in 2019, and regretted many times that he treated her like a fool during the time that she was her client, delaying her about the destination of the missing

and underestimating her, as well as questioning her sanity.

For the reading of the ruling, Avenatti requested to be able to wear one of his expensive tailored suits, but the judge dismissed his request and the lawyer had to appear, like all the inmates, in the orange jumpsuit of the convicts.

Karen McDougal, the silenced model

Karen McDougal, 'Playboy' model, in an undated image.Getty Images

model

, Karen McDougal was 35 years old in 2006 when she had a relationship with Trump that lasted a year and that he has always denied.

Like Daniels, McDougal also tried to monetize the story, but the Republican's reputation had been shielded by Cohen and Pecker, the publisher of the

.

Pecker had been using the tabloid to boost Trump's presidential run, publishing positive stories about the candidate and pejorative stories about his rivals.

In 2016, McDougal hired the same attorney she had previously helped Daniels with.

The lawyer knocked on the door of the

to pitch the sale of an exclusive, but Pecker told Cohen and Trump asked his friend to shut down the matter, the publisher told federal prosecutors.

A $150,000 payment to McDougal by the

, for the rights to an exclusive that was never to be published even though the woman, now 52, ​​was promised two covers, buried the threat and McDougal became a headline. footer of the case.

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