WEB DESK
Former US President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, April 4, pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal charges against him in a Manhattan criminal court. The investigation against Trump started in the 2016 hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels to conceal an alleged affair that he has constantly denied.
Trump officially became the first former US president to face criminal charges when he was arraigned on Tuesday. Earlier, he surrendered to authorities at a court in Lower Manhattan ahead of his arraignment. Trump, who is running for the Republican nomination for next year’s presidential race, has denied any wrongdoing and called the charges politically motivated. The judge set the next court hearing for December 4 and did not issue a gag order on any of the parties.
In the first-ever criminal case against a current or former U.S. leader, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleged in a “statement of facts” accompanying the indictment that Trump “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”
Each of the 34 counts in the indictment relate to entries Trump allegedly made on his corporate books recording payments made to Michael Cohen, his onetime lawyer and political fixer, to reimburse him for using his own funds to make the payment to Daniels.
Cohen pleaded guilty to offenses related to the payment to Daniels and served more than a year in prison. While once loyal to Trump, he later turned against him, testifying before the grand jury investigating the case, and is expected to be a key witness at Trump’s eventual trial.