Former president Donald Trump’s campaign team played a cheeky move moments after the former president was arraigned by a grand jury in Manhattan on Tuesday. They released a t-shirt with a fake mugshot of the former president that said ‘Not Guilty’, as the 45th POTUS became the first ever to be arraigned.
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You know that not the real mugshot and anybody can make them because no copyright on the shirts. Man you and that clown Donald Trump are clowns. pic.twitter.com/smRJMOGDNS
— Douglas Kroger (@kroger641) April 4, 2023
Priced at $36, these t-shirts were put up on sale on the official website of Trump’s presidential bid for the 2024 elections, and are being sold to raise funds for the campaign. Although Donald Trump became the first US president to be arraigned, he was let go without a mugshot, possibly because he had earlier claimed that his mugshot will become “the most famous one in the history of the world”, and he planned to use it to raise funds for his campaign.
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The 76-year-old Republican has been charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records and conspiracy. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and has since been released from custody, without pre-trial restrictions, by Judge Alvin L Bragg.
Among the charges against the former president, the most prominent ones relate to hush money payments amounting to $130,000 that he made to pornstar Stormy Daniels, via his then-lawyer Michael Cohen, in October 2016.
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In a document detailing the charges released by Judge Bragg, there are eleven instances of payments the former president made to Cohen between February 14, 2017, and December 5, 2017. Even though the payments were formally made in exchange for legal services, the prosecutors allege that they were reimbursements for hush money payments Cohen made on behalf of Trump.
It is alleged that American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, paid $150,000 to Playboy model Karen McDougal for exclusive rights to her story shortly after Trump became the Republican nominee for president in 2016. However, the story was never published. There are allegations that Trump made the payment to silence her.
