Stormy Daniels Once Again Clouds Trump's Horizon as New York DA Revisits the Case

The infinitely programmable Trump Scandal Machine was operating at maximum again on Monday. New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, apparently arisen from a deep and unprofitable slumber, empaneled a grand jury to look into the question of whether the former president* might be indicted on charges associated with payments to Stormy Daniels, the film icon whose dalliance with El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago has always been the primary sideshow attraction in the overall carnival of corruption that, well, mushroomed around the previous administration*. From The New York Times:

The grand jury was recently impaneled, and the beginning of witness testimony represents a clear signal that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is nearing a decision about whether to charge Mr. Trump. On Monday, one of the witnesses was seen with his lawyer entering the building in Lower Manhattan where the grand jury is sitting. The witness, David Pecker, is the former publisher of The National Enquirer, the tabloid that helped broker the deal with the porn star, Stormy Daniels. As prosecutors prepare to reconstruct the events surrounding the payment for grand jurors, they have sought to interview several witnesses, including the tabloid’s former editor, Dylan Howard, and two employees at Mr. Trump’s company, the people said. Mr. Howard and the Trump Organization employees, Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff, have not yet testified before the grand jury. The prosecutors have also begun contacting officials from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, one of the people said.

(A brief pause here as we struggle to contain the customary explosive guffaw at the reference to the former Enquirer publisher. I mean really, who is writing this story? Dickens?)

It never made any real sense that Michael Cohen would be the only person to be convicted behind this seedy little transaction.

Mr. Bragg’s decision to impanel a grand jury focused on the hush money — supercharging the longest-running criminal investigation into Mr. Trump — represents a dramatic escalation in an inquiry that once appeared to have reached a dead end. Under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney’s office had begun presenting evidence to an earlier grand jury about a case focused not just on the hush money but on Mr. Trump’s broader business practices, including whether he fraudulently inflated the value of his real estate to secure favorable loans and other financial benefits. Yet in the early weeks of his tenure last year, Mr. Bragg developed concerns about the strength of that case and decided to abandon the grand jury presentation, prompting the resignations of the two senior prosecutors leading the investigation.

One of them, Mark F. Pomerantz, was highly critical of Mr. Bragg’s decision and has written a book that is scheduled to be published next week, “People vs. Donald Trump,” detailing his account of the inquiry. Mr. Bragg’s office recently wrote to Mr. Pomerantz’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, expressing concern that the book might disclose grand jury information or interfere with the investigation.

S. Daniels.

Of course, it's always possible that Bragg is doing this knowing that the grand jury will go nowhere, but will succeed in clearing this twisted underbrush off his career path. Yet here we are. Whatever it was, something perked up the interest of Bragg and his office.

And Stormy Daniels is back in the show, which experience tells us is usually a promising plot twist. Let's see where the story goes.

Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.