Two years after Donald Trump’s election, adult-film actress Stormy Daniels came forward about the money she was paid to stay quiet about an affair the two had between 2006 and 2007. Now, this “hush money” the actress was given could land former president Trump in jail.

According to a Timeline made by CBS News, the payment was made after Daniels was approached to tell her story about the affair by a news source. She gave an interview to them in 2011, but the magazine that carried out the interview never published the story as the result of receiving a threat to sue Donald Trump’s lawyer.

By the presidential race in 2015, another actress by the name of Karen McDougal was also beginning to talk about an affair she had with Trump during the same years as Daniels. After the National Enquirer attains a deal with McDougal to pay $150,000 for her story, it never gets published.

Daniels also got in contact with the National Enquirer, which led to Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, getting in contact with the attorney representing Stormy Daniels during this experience. As a result of this, Cohen attained a deal in which it was agreed that Daniels would be paid $130,000 and sign a non-disclosure agreement, as well as giving up the rights to her story.

In 2018, the details of this agreement were brought to light by the Wall Street Journal. Cohen, and indirectly Trump, denied the allegations, even releasing a statement claiming to have been written by Daniels that these things were false.
The crime Trump is being accused of is not paying Stormy Daniels hush money, but instead how these payments were written and recorded under the Trump Organization. The way they were recorded could result in Trump being charged in New York for falsification of business records. Over the weekend, Donald Trump was invited to give testimony in front of a grand jury, but it is up in the air whether the trial will actually occur. There is a potential that the statute of limitations for this crime has run out, meaning that charges could be dismissed.