Hush-money porn star Stormy Daniels has said she fears injuries and death resulting from the indictment of former president Donald Trump.
The adult actress, who was paid $130,000 to keep quite about an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, spoke ahead of his indictment on charges that experts say carry a possible four-year sentence.
The 44-year-old said: “Whatever the outcome is, it’s going to cause violence, and there’s going to be injuries and death. There’s the potential for a lot of good to come from this. But either way, a lot of bad is going to come from it, too.”
She also said she had received personal death threats.
The New York Police Department is bracing for civil unrest.
Ahead of Trump’s appearance at 2.15pm on Tuesday at Lower Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building, metal barriers have gone up there and at Trump Tower. All officers, of all ranks, were called to duty in uniform yesterday.
Trump, 76, is to be spared the humiliation of being paraded in handcuffs after a deal between his lawyers and prosecutors.
Due to fly in from his Mar-A-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, for the court date, he was reportedly shocked by a grand jury’s decision to indict him.
One insider said: “Despite all his bravado, he is like a swan: calm on the surface, frantic underneath.”
Although the indictment last night remained sealed, it is understood Trump faces more than 30 document fraud-related charges, two sources familiar with the matter have said.
The case against the former president hinges on an untested legal theory involving a complex interplay of laws, all amounting to a low-level felony.
Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 (£105,000) to keep silent about her claimed encounter with Trump a decade earlier after meeting at a celebrity golf tournament.
Cohen is said to have been reimbursed by Trump’s company, the Trump Organisation, which rewarded the lawyer with bonuses and extra payments logged internally as legal expenses.
Over several months, Cohen said, the company paid him $420,000 (£340,000).
Earlier in 2016, Cohen also arranged for the publisher of the National Enquirer to pay McDougal $150,000 (£121,000) to withhold her story of an alleged Trump affair.
The payments were intended to buy secrecy but backfired almost immediately as details leaked.
Trump was implicated in court filings as having knowledge of the arrangements but prosecutors at the time baulked at bringing charges against him.
The Justice Department has a longtime policy against indicting a sitting president in federal court.
In bringing charges now, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is embracing a case investigated by two previous sets of prosecutors, both of which declined to take the politically explosive step of seeking Trump’s indictment.
The case may hinge on testimony from Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges arising from the hush money payments, including making false statements.
Though the maximum sentence Trump faces is thought to be four years, jail would not be mandatory.
Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, called the indictment “political persecution”.
In a statement confirming the charges, his lawyers Susan Necheles and Joseph Tacopina said their client committed no crime.
They added: “We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in court. President Trump will not take a plea deal in this case.”
Mr Tacopina added: “I don’t know if it’s going to make it to trial.
“We have substantial legal challenges.”
Fellow Trump attorney Jim Trusty predicted a motion to dismiss, citing an “impossible theory of stacking a federal crime into a state misdemeanour”.
Asked about his predecessor’s indictment, US President Joe Biden declined to comment.
Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, who MAGA supporters wanted hanging on January 6, 2021, after he refused to stop Biden’s election win from being made official, yesterday said the indictment was “nothing short of a political persecution”.
He said the American people “will see this for what it is”.
Trump has called the prosecution a witch hunt, and last week wrote an incendiary message on his website Truth Social.
He warned of “potential death & destruction” if charges were brought against him.
Referring to Trump’s infamous claim that he could grab women “by the p***y”, Ms Daniels added of his indictment: “It’s bittersweet.
“It’s also poetic; this p***y grabbed back.”
