As former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial is set to begin, legal analyst Glenn Kirschner put forward an argument on Saturday as to why a single piece of evidence could ultimately lead to his conviction.
The first of the four criminal cases currently leveled against Trump is set to go to trial on Monday, April 15, in New York City. Resulting from an investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the case has charged Trump with illegally falsifying business records in order to hide hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign in exchange for her not speaking out about an affair the two allegedly had in 2006.
Trump, the presumed 2024 GOP presidential nominee, has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and denied that the affair with Daniels ever happened. Several last-ditch efforts by the former president and his legal team to try and delay the trial start date in recent days have also proven unsuccessful.
On Saturday, Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney and frequent critic of the former president, posted a new video to his personal YouTube channel in which he dug into the upcoming Manhattan trial. In particular, he discussed the “one piece of evidence” that he believes will lead to a conviction for Trump “in a New York minute”: directions he gave his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to delay making the payments altogether.
Brendan McDermid-Pool/Getty Images
As Kirschner laid out, Trump and his legal team have claimed that the payments were made to prevent Daniels’ story from going public and causing distress for Trump’s wife, Melania. However, Kirschner highlighted one notable paragraph from the Manhattan indictment, in which Trump was found to have allegedly directed Cohen to try and delay the payments as much as possible, suggesting that they could avoid paying altogether, as once the election passed it would not matter if Daniels spoke out.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s office via email on Sunday morning for comment.
Cohen, a star witness for Bragg in the upcoming trial, served prison time after pleading guilty to eight criminal counts in August 2018, including campaign finance violations related to the alleged hush money scheme involving Daniels.
“So let’s recap: it was not about protecting Melania’s feelings, because Donald Trump said, let’s just delay the payment, that we promised to make her [Daniels], that we signed a contract pledging to make these payments to Stormy Daniels, let’s delay it until after the election, cause that way we don’t have to pay her and that way if it comes out after I’ve been elected, it won’t matter,” Kirschner said. “What happened to Melania’s feelings, Donald?”
This suggestion from Trump, as per the indictment, Kirschner described as “insult on top of injury on top of despicable conduct on top of callousness on top of corruption on top of crime.” This, he added, would make Trump “the most unpopular person in that Manhattan courtroom,” dooming his chances of avoiding a conviction.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.