Porn Star Trump Is Paying ‘Zombie Case’ That Wouldn’t Die, Says Ex-Prosecutor In Book | Books

Donald Trump’s silent payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels is a ‘zombie affair’ coming back from the dead, writes a former New York prosecutor in a new book released as his old office considers again to file criminal charges against the former president over the matter.

People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account, will be released in the United States on Tuesday. It has been widely reported. The Guardian received a copy on Monday.

Mark Pomerantz’s book has proven controversial, not least because it comes as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg continues to investigate Trump, appointing a grand jury to hear evidence about Daniels’ payment. Bragg and Pomerantz, who have fallen out over New York State’s investigation of Trump, traded criticism in national media.

On the page, Pomerantz lists numerous matters he says New York prosecutors have considered charging Trump with, including his tax affairs, dealings with financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank and Ladder Capital, real estate transactions in Washington and Chicago and leases at Trump Tower in Manhattan. .

But he says paying Daniels has become a viable way to confront Trump.

Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, claims to have had an affair with Trump in 2006. He denies this, but in 2016, when he was running for president, his then lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to remain silent.

News of the payment broke in early 2018, when Trump was president. Trump was revealed to have reimbursed Cohen for the payment, but only Cohen paid a legal price, with his violation of the Election Finances Act contributing to a conviction and a three-year prison sentence. Trump was never charged.

In his book, Pomerantz writes that he came to view the payment as a potential money laundering offense.

“If Clifford had gotten money by threatening to tell the world she had slept with Donald Trump,” he wrote, “it seemed like extortion to me. What if it was extortion, so maybe the hidden money she received could be considered criminal proceeds, so the steps taken to conceal Trump’s identity as the source of the money were money laundering .

This, writes Pomerantz, was “a new idea, and it got me excited.” He shared his insights with other investigators, he says, and “the resurrection of the silent money facts as a potential basis for prosecution sparked a nickname for this part of the investigation…the case ‘zombie’, because she was alive, and then he was dead, and now he was alive again”.

Pomerantz writes that he thought the “zombie case” was “very strong”, as the basic facts were “easily provable”. It describes Cohen’s willing cooperation and evidence that Trump ordered Cohen to lie about the payment in the Oval Office himself.

In late February 2021, Pomerantz says, he sent a memo to the New York District Attorney, then to Cy Vance Jr, outlining the “zombie case” and his vital claim that the $130,000 Cohen paid Daniels was “dirty money”, or the proceeds of crime”.

He admits he presented “a somewhat clumsy construct”, in part because he had to prove that Trump was being blackmailed.

Cohen’s description of Trump’s reaction to Daniels’ claims helped. Pomerantz writes, “I asked what words they were using, and his response was that Trump called it ‘fucking blackmail.’ It was more than enough for my needs.

But Pomerantz says his “creative theorizing struck in [the New York district attorney’s] prudent and conservative culture”. Other investigators “weakened” his extortion theory, he wrote, in part because it would be difficult to prove that Daniels had physically threatened Trump, as required by New York law.

Pomerantz then zeroed in on Daniels’ attorney and pulled information from federal prosecutors in New York who were also looking into the case. But he said he came across “a new legal problem” which sent the “zombie case” back to its grave.

Under New York law, he writes, the money Daniels received “was to qualify as ‘proceeds of crime’ when Cohen sent it; otherwise the shipment was not money laundering. If the money only became criminal proceeds when received, the crime of money laundering has not occurred.

And so the “zombie business” was dead again.

Pomerantz describes a brief return to life, as he and his colleagues “considered an indictment containing false business documents…that would bring the ‘zombie’ theory back from the dead once again.”

But Bragg, who succeeded Vance as Manhattan District Attorney, became a lightning rod for liberals when he reportedly dropped out of indicting Trump on one of the many possible charges Pomerantz now outlines in his book. Pomerantz resigned in February 2022, accusing Bragg of acting “contrary to the public interest”.

Discussing Trump’s tax cases on Sunday, Pomerantz told CBS, “If you’re taking the exact same line and not talking about Donald Trump or a former president of the United States, would the case have been charged? He would have been charged in a second flat.

Pomerantz also called Bragg’s decision not to indict Trump a “serious failure of justice.”

Bragg told The New York Times that Pomerantz “decided to quit a year ago and sign a book deal.”

“I have not read the book and will not comment on any ongoing investigation because of the harm it may do to the case,” Bragg said.

Bragg recently secured a conviction against the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, on tax charges. Soon after, the investigation into the payment to Daniels would be underway.

Trump complained on social media about “the continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time”.

But Pomerantz’s case had again bounced from the grave.

Bragg’s office recently said it could move forward with the “zombie case.”

Nonetheless, Pomerantz said that if this were the only case the office was pursuing against the former president, it would be “a very peculiar and unsatisfactory end to this whole saga,” given that “the continuing fraud… .impregnated [Trump’s] Financial state”.

“This [zombie] the case involves serious criminal misconduct, [but] it pales in comparison to financial statement fraud,” Pomerantz wrote.