Inside the Stormy Daniels hush money case that led to Trump’s arrest

Former President Donald Trump has been out of office for more than three years, and is itching to get back in the White House.

But one figure from his first run for president has refused to go away, and has ended up being a major headache for him as he pursues a third White House bid.

We’re talking, of course, about adult film star Stormy Daniels, also known by her real name, Stephanie Clifford. Ms Daniels made headlines in 2018 when she came forward with an allegation that she had been in a romantic extramarital relationship with the president in 2006, and had been threatened and later bribed to keep her mouth shut.

At the time, the basis of her claim took on an interesting angle thanks to a lawsuit she filed against then-President Donald Trump. Alleging that the hush agreement was invalid because Mr Trump had not signed it, she sued him and triggered what would become a years-long investigation into whether the scheme was legal at all points.

On 30 March 2023, a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Mr Trump on 34 charges of falsifying business records to conceal the hush money payments and other alleged election schemes.

On 4 April 2023 he appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court for his arraignment, where he pled not guilty to all charges. After another year of legal wrangling, the trial will finally begin with jury selection on 15 April 2024.

With this historic moment, let’s go back to the beginning, and look at the major milestones of the Trump-Stormy relationship:

The first journalists to latch on to the Stormy Daniels story did so long before it ever came out. It’s still unclear exactly how many news outlets contacted Ms Daniels prior to the 2016 election, but at least one, Fox News, is known to have killed a story