{"id":104610,"date":"2024-03-06T12:02:11","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T12:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/infamous-access-hollywood-tape-was-catalyst-for-stormy-daniels-hush-payment-prosecutors-say\/"},"modified":"2024-03-06T12:02:11","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T12:02:11","slug":"infamous-access-hollywood-tape-was-catalyst-for-stormy-daniels-hush-payment-prosecutors-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/infamous-access-hollywood-tape-was-catalyst-for-stormy-daniels-hush-payment-prosecutors-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Infamous &#8220;Access Hollywood&#8221; tape was &#8216;catalyst&#8217; for Stormy Daniels hush payment, prosecutors say"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/syndication.abcaudio.com\/files\/2024-03-06\/GETTY_3624_StormyDaniels.jpg\" alt><figcaption>Adult film actress Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) exits the United States District Court Southern District of New York for a hearing related to Michael Cohen, President Trump&#8217;s longtime personal attorney and confidante, April 16, 2018 in New York City. (Drew Angerer\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>(NEW YORK) &#8212; The public release of the now-infamous 2005 <em>Access Hollywood<\/em> tape before the 2016 presidential election &#8220;served as the catalyst&#8221; for Donald Trump&#8217;s hush payment to Stormy Daniels and should be admissible at Trump&#8217;s upcoming hush money trial, prosecutors argued in a court filing Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Trump&#8217;s defense team had asked the judge to keep the tape out of the trial, arguing it is &#8220;inflammatory&#8221; and of limited value.<\/p>\n<p>On the tape, Trump can be heard saying that &#8220;when you&#8217;re a star, you can do anything&#8221; to women, including &#8220;Grab them by the p&#8212;-.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I said it, I was wrong and I apologize,&#8221; Trump said after the tape surfaced about a month before the 2016 election.<\/p>\n<p>The Manhattan district attorney&#8217;s office argued the tape &#8220;bears directly on defendant&#8217;s intent and motive&#8221; for making the hush payment about three weeks later, then allegedly falsifying business records to hide the hush payment&#8217;s true purpose from voters.<\/p>\n<p>Trump in April pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 election. The former president has denied all wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Indeed, the evidence will demonstrate that the release of the Access Hollywood Tape caused a panic within the campaign about defendant&#8217;s electoral prospects and ultimately served as the catalyst for consummating the Stormy Daniels payoff,&#8221; assistant district attorney Matthew Colangelo wrote in Tuesday&#8217;s filing.<\/p>\n<p>The district attorney&#8217;s filing also opposed a defense request to keep Cohen from testifying at trial.<\/p>\n<p>The defense argued prosecutors would be suborning perjury if they called Cohen to the witness stand, but prosecutors called the argument &#8220;intentionally inflammatory and totally meritless&#8221; since Cohen would be subject to cross-examination.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In an argument that reads more like a press release than a legal filing, defendant makes the obviously unsupportable request that the Court preclude one of the People&#8217;s witnesses from testifying at trial on the ground that defendant anticipates that he will disbelieve the witness&#8217;s expected testimony,&#8221; the filing said.<\/p>\n<p>Cohen served time in federal prison for lying to Congress in 2017, but Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over Trump&#8217;s recent civil fraud trial in New York, found that Cohen &#8220;told the truth&#8221; when he testified that Trump directed him to inflate his net worth.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And it is misleading for defendant to argue otherwise without even advising this Court that Justice Engoron found Cohen&#8217;s testimony credible and truthful,&#8221; Colangelo wrote in Tuesday&#8217;s filing.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Adult film actress Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) exits the United States District Court Southern District of New York for a hearing related to Michael Cohen, President Trump&#8217;s longtime personal attorney and confidante, April 16, 2018 in New York City. (Drew Angerer\/Getty Images) (NEW YORK) &#8212; The public release of the<span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/infamous-access-hollywood-tape-was-catalyst-for-stormy-daniels-hush-payment-prosecutors-say\/\">Read More &rarr;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,31,2],"tags":[273,271,276,274,270,123,275,133,124,272,102,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lascrucestoday.com\/newstalklc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}