New York — The events underlying Donald Trump’s indictment in New York — hush money payments to a porn star who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with him — took place nearly seven years ago.
Trump has denied Daniels’s claim, and his lawyer has accused Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, of extortion. “This is so unprecedented that it’s hard for me to say,” Karen Friedman Agnifilo, former Manhattan chief assistant district attorney, said when asked earlier this month whether a judge would put Trump on trial close to the election. “I think it’s tricky.”
Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has said he co-ordinated with Trump on the payments to Daniels and to a second woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also said she had a sexual relationship with him, which Trump has denied. But using state election law in that manner — and in a case involving a federal, not a state, candidate — is an untested legal theory, legal experts said, and Trump’s lawyers would be sure to challenge it.
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