Manhattan’s District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, is renewing his investigation into hush-money payments made to Stormy Daniels, Daily Mail reported.
Daniels is a porn star who claims to have had a one-night stand with former President Donald Trump.
Probe centers around whether illegal $130,000 payment to Daniels, made shortly before the 2016 presidential election, could be connected to Trump.
Renewed push comes after the Trump Organization was fined $1.6m last week for scheming to defraud tax authorities for 15 years.
District Attorney’s Office had previously been investigating the case, but attention shifted towards the former president’s companies.
Following the successful judgement, the Office is now refocusing on the Daniels case – Trump denies any knowledge of the payment or involvement with it.
She claims to have had a one night stand with Trump at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament in 2016, shortly after Trump’s third wife Melania gave birth to the couple’s son Barron. Trump denies he had sex with the actress.
Since the trial into the Trump Organization, subpoenas have once again started to be sent out, reports the New York Times.
A New York state judge handed down the maximum financial penalty on Friday after jurors in Manhattan found two Trump Organization affiliates guilty of 17 criminal charges including fraud last month.
Bragg has said he will follow the facts no matter the outcome although it is not certain at this stage if the investigation will lead to an indictment.
The district attorney say the recent conviction represented just ‘one chapter’ and ‘cautioned against reading ahead in the book.’
‘I have every faith that other members of the team who are working on other parts of this endeavor using the same approach will lead to a result that is just,’ he said.
The illegal $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels was made by the president’s former fixer Michael Cohen to try and silence Daniels’ claims of a one night stand in 2006, when Trump’s third wife Melania was pregnant with their son Barron, now 16.
Trump denies he had sex with Daniels, but Cohen was later convicted of making an illegal campaign contribution. Cohen served three years in prison after pleading guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations related to the payments as part of a federal probe.
He has always alleged how he was following Trump’s orders. Cohen was later reimbursed for the cash by Trump, with Bragg likely to try and say that it proves there was a conspiracy between the two men.
His office, under predecessor Cyrus Vance previously investigated Trump – but that probe appeared to come to a halt early last year.
In November, The Times suggested Bragg might be turning the screws on former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg to help him build the case.
Weisselberg has already struck a plea deal over tax charges related to freebies and donations he received while working for Trump, but has refused to turn informant against the former president. Bragg is said to hope threatening him with fresh insurance fraud charges could change that.
He has been accused of giving insurers a figure for Trump organization assets without having them properly valued.
Weisselberg started his five month sentence at Rikers Island last week after he testified as the prosecution’s star witness. He is alleged to have had knowledge of the Daniels’ hush-money payment.
Weisselberg started working directly for Donald Trump in 1986 and with the Organization as far back as 1973 has already admitted to accepting $1.7 million in perks ‘off the books’.
Daniels claims her alleged sex with Trump was ‘textbook generic.’
Bragg’s office has not commented publicly on this rejuvenated probe into Daniels.
