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TRUMP IS FACING OVER 30 CHARGES

HE’S INDICTED OVER STORMY DANIELS HUSH MONEY PROBE BECOMES THE FIRST EX-PRESIDENT TO FACE CRIMINAL CASE

Nicholas Cecil

AMERICA was plunged into an unprecedented political frenzy today after Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury following an investigation into hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.

The bombshell legal move meant that he became the first former president to face criminal charges, further deepening the political chasm across the United States.

Mr Trump was expected to have to travel to New York, possibly on Tuesday, where he would have his mugshot and fingerprints taken, before entering a plea at an initial court hearing. But far from killing off his hopes of a White House comeback, the indictment was predicted to energise his diehard supporters and possibly boost his chances of becoming the Republican candidate at the presidential election next year. The specific charges were not yet known as the indictment remained under seal.

CNN claimed Mr Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud, with other reports saying it would be a couple of dozen. He said he was “completely innocent” and indicated that he would not drop out of the presidential race.

Some legal experts believe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will argue Mr Trump falsified business records to cover up another crime, such as violating federal campaign-finance law, which makes it a felony, though none of this has been confirmed. Mr Bragg, who left his office yesterday flanked by

security guards, said he was co-ordinating with Mr Trump’s office for his surrender and court appearance.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she received money in exchange for keeping silent about a sexual encounter she had with Mr Trump in 2006.

The former president’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has said he co-ordinated with Mr Trump on a $130,000 (£105,000) payment to Daniels and another one to a second woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also claimed she had a sexual relationship with him. Mr Trump has denied having affairs with either woman.

He initially disputed in 2018 knowing anything about the payment to Daniels but later acknowledged reimbursing Mr Cohen for the payment, which he called a “simple private transaction.”

“No one is above the law,” Daniels’ lawyer Clark Brewster said on Twitter.

Mr Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign-finance violation in 2018 and served more than a year in prison. Federal prosecutors said he acted on Mr Trump’s direction.

Mr Cohen said he stood by his testimony and the evidence he provided to prosecutors. “Accountability matters,” he said in a statement.

Mr Trump’s lawyers Susan Necheles and Joseph Tacopina said they will “vigorously fight” the charges. The ex-president hit out, claiming the indictment was “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history”. Mr Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination according to polling, swiftly received support from a number of his potential challengers including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former vice-president Mike Pence. “This will only further serve to divide our country,” Mr Pence said. The White House did not initially comment.

But Democrats claimed Mr Trump was not immune from the rule of law.

“I encourage both Mr Trump’s critics and supporters to let the process proceed peacefully and according to the law,” said the top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, amid fears of pro-Trump violent protests.

Mr Trump is also linked to several other investigations, including into his alleged role in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021 and government documents, some of them believed to be top secret, found at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago after he left office.

Prosecutors have spent eight months investigating alleged attempts to overturn Mr Trump’s close loss in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, though it is not clear if they are looking into any involvement by him.

Mr Bragg successfully prosecuted Mr Trump’s business last year on tax-fraud charges, leading to a $1.61 million (£1.3 million) criminal penalty. Any potential trial is still at least a year away, legal experts said, raising the possibility that he could face a jury in a Manhattan court during the presidential campaign.

However, Mr Trump has escaped legal challenges numerous times. In the White House, he weathered two attempts by Congress to remove him from office, including over the assault on the Capitol, as well as a years-long probe into his campaign’s contacts with Russia in 2016. If Mr Trump decides not to appear voluntarily, prosecutors could seek to have him extradited from Florida. Mr DeSantis, as governor, would have to give formal approval.

Editorial Comment and Emily Sheffield Page 14

BURIED in a lengthy new audit on public-sector fraud by the National Audit Office is a remarkable detail. It notes that at the time the Department for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy was charged with handling the Bounce Back Loan scheme, it only had two full-time staff working in its counter fraud function. That’s how unprepared government departments were to handle the risk of corruption during Covid-19.

The Public Sector Fraud Authority has estimated that between £33 and £58 billion of public money was lost to fraud and error. Dial back, and during the two-year period leading up to the pandemic fraud amounted to £5.5 billion. The Treasury has admitted it has already written off £4.3 billion stolen from its Covid Recovery schemes. Put simply, we’re accepting that criminals will be keeping vast sums of public money with no consequence.

Rewind to 2020 and naturally the BEIS took preventive measures by hiring extra fraud experts to police the bounce back loans. Last Autumn, however, the Public Accounts Committee said BEIS had not only been “complacent in preventing fraud” in the 100 per cent taxpayer-guaranteed scheme, but that the Government appeared complacent in also accepting the level of unpaid debt, with “no long-term plans for recovering overdue debt” which stood at £17 billion, with 10 per cent of that stolen. And this is before we look at PPE…

The report by the National Audit Office (NAO), published yesterday, outlines how warnings in a previous audit in 2016 had said widespread fraud was being vastly under-estimated across government departments. The NAO had noticed a suspicious disparity between the level of corruption the Government reported and the level in other countries. They also discovered there were few incentives for departments to record and report the true scale of potential fraud. Some corrective measures were taken at the time, but not enough. And boom, a pandemic pitched up and all hell broke loose.

In my opinion, the Treasury took the right decision that the higher risk for corruption in launching these schemes at speed was acceptable, given the circumstances. But the complacency in recovering taxpayer money has hugely damaged public trust. And this government still has some way to go towards restoring that trust. Because it also comes at a time when MP lobbying and extra jobs are under scrutiny; Boris Johnson has been investigated for misleading Parliament and there’s an uncontrolled rise in fraud in the private sector — many experts describe it as a fraud epidemic. Fraud now makes up 41 per cent of all recorded crime against individuals but less than one per cent of police personnel are devoted to tackling it. Shocking, isn’t it?

As one who has been a victim of fraud, I was staggered — given the banks had CCTV footage of the criminals withdrawing our money — that neither they nor the police were willing to investigate. This is just one example of everyday criminality going unpunished.

Taxpayers understandably look on with utter dismay at the waste and criminality during Covid, when our taxes are going up, public services are stretched to breaking point and borrowing is through the roof. Only after consistent and mounting public outrage did the Government establish the £100 million Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) last August.

It matters because as the NAO explains there is a risk that post the pandemic, we come to perceive higher levels of fraud against taxpayers as normal and tolerated. And that alongside a rise in private-sector fraud, the UK is considered as more corrupt than it was before Covid-19.

The latest Transparency International survey of public perception of corruption shows the UK fell from eight place in 2017 to 18th in 2022. And it takes a very long time to rebuild trust.

And for governments and societies to function properly trust has to be at the heart of everything. Rishi Sunak must drill down on accountability, and not excuse what happened during Covid-19. He needs to say openly and repeatedly, we won’t let this happen ever again.

The Home Secretary must take far more action on the fraud that is rife in this country, rather than focusing solely on controlling illegal immigrants. Otherwise, the criminals keep winning. And we keep paying.

There’s a risk that post pandemic we come to see higher levels of fraud as being normal and tolerated

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