Throughout it all, Melania Trump has stood next to and behind her husband, Donald Trump.
During their almost two-decade romance, the billionaire has had his fair share of scandals, and his spouse has often stepped out to defend his name and reputation.
Since leaving the White House, Trump has been embroiled in multiple lawsuits, and he is being pushed by his advisers to use Melania Trump as a scapegoat to avoid further shame and humiliation in one thorny case.
Donald Trump is getting dragged into court by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office over a large sum of hush money he and his former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, paid to Stormy Daniels.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in 2016, a month before the presidential election.
The attorney gave the adult star the hefty sum to prevent her from talking about the salacious affair that she had with Trump.
Trump protected his reputation by having Daniels sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA.)
Stormy Daniels had a brief sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006 while Melania Trump was pregnant with her only son, Barron.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s office has decided to investigate the matter because he strongly believes that the $130,000 payment to Daniels was a campaign contribution.
Therefore Trump’s campaign violated campaign finance laws by not disclosing the payment to the FEC.
In 2018, Cohen was charged and subsequently pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, including a campaign finance violation for Daniels’s payment, and was sentenced to three years in prison.
According to Rolling Stone, “in order to bring felony charges, New York law requires that prosecutors prove defendants falsified records in order to cover up a separate crime.”
The District Attorney is seeking evidence that confirms that Trump did indeed reimburse Cohen the large sum in order to cover up an illegal campaign contribution.
Trump has publicly revealed that Cohen represented him in “the Stormy Daniels deal.” Trump’s new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, confirmed his client had reimbursed Cohen for the payment.
The team of lawyers representing Trump has come up with a spectacular line of defense — say the payment to Daniels was marriage-related.
The idea is to push the following explanation — Trump paid the woman he had sex with because he did not want to anger his wife.
The magazine shared: “But the argument would leave Trump facing some tough questions. Because if the payments to Daniels had nothing to do with the election, then Trump would have to explain why he was willing to spend six figures to prevent his wife from hearing about an alleged sexual encounter with a porn star — a tryst that he for years has claimed never happened.”
Members of Trump’s team told Rolling Stone that he is not thrilled by the proposal and added: “The [former] president seems reluctant about taking this approach. I hope that changes.”
In her book, Full Disclosure, Daniels wrote about her intimate moment with Trump’s manhood: “It was smaller than average, not freakishly small. It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool..like the mushroom character in Mario Kart… the encounter was the least impressive sex I have ever had.”
Stephanie Grisham, a former senior official in Trump’s White House, told Rolling Stone that the former president was very worried about the revelations made by Daniels.
She also claimed that he was fearful of how Melania Trump would react.
The former press secretary for the First Lady of the United States said: “He at one point called me, after the Stormy Daniels news broke, to ask if we [in the first lady’s office] would be responding to her allegations — and I could tell he was trying to take my temperature to see if his wife was pissed off. He never, ever called me to ask if the East Wing was going to respond to something. Never. And he never did again. It was just so out of character for him to do that that it was clear he was trying to see if his wife was pissed. Our East Wing was known at the time for putting out statements that would shock or anger the West Wing, and for this one, since it was a very personal topic, it was clear he was testing the waters.”
The former Republican president is running again in 2024.
