Behind the gilded doors of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump and his advisers are preparing for several different potential scenarios related to a possible indictment from the Manhattan grand jury probing a hush money scheme.
Already a 2024 candidate for the White House, Trump has both celebrated how an indictment would help him politically and complained about how “unfair” it would be. He’s toyed with the idea of trying to create a media spectacle around it and, at times, he’s ignored the prospect of criminal charges altogether, sources close to him told CNN.
Two advisers said that the former president appears to have resigned himself to the likelihood of an indictment, with one close adviser calling his perceived distancing from the matter “compartmentalization.”
Even as there are signs the investigation into Trump’s alleged role in the scheme to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels is nearing an end and that preparations are being made for an indictment, it is not clear yet that the former president will be charged or when those charges could be unveiled.
“[Trump] knows it’s happening. We’ve all moved on to ‘OK, this is happening, how do we deal with it?’” one Trump adviser said.
In the latest twist in the case, CNN reported exclusively Tuesday evening that communications between Daniels and an attorney who is now representing Trump have been turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The exchanges – said to date back to 2018, when Daniels was seeking representation – raise the possibility that the Trump attorney, Joe Tacopina, could be sidelined from Trump’s defense.
CNN has not seen the records in question, and Tacopina denies that there is a conflict or that confidential information was shared with his office. He says he neither met nor spoke to Daniels. Ethics…
Read the full article here