Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is expected to testify Monday before a Manhattan grand jury investigating hush money payments he arranged and made on the former president's behalf.
Cohen arrived at the courthouse accompanied by his lawyer shortly in advance of his closed-door testimony, which comes at a critical time as the Manhattan district attorney's office approaches a decision whether to seek charges against Trump.
A Trump loyalist turned adversary, Cohen is likely to provide critical details about whatever involvement the Republican presidential candidate may have had in the payments made during the 2016 campaign to two women who alleged affairs or sexual encounters with him.
"My goal is to tell the truth," Cohen told reporters outside the courthouse, dismissing a suggestion that he might be motivated by a desire to see Trump behind bars.
"This is not revenge," he said. "This is all about accountability. He needs to be held accountable for his dirty deeds."
Trump denies being involved with either of the women, the porn actor Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal.
Cohen has given prosecutors evidence, including voice recordings of conversations he had with a lawyer for one of the women, as well as emails and text messages. He also has recordings of a conversation in which he and Trump spoke about an arrangement to pay the other woman through the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer.
Prosecutors appear to be looking at whether Trump committed crimes in how the payments were made or how they were accounted for internally at Trump's company, the Trump Organization.
One possible charge would be falsifying business records, a misdemeanor unless prosecutors could prove it was done to conceal another crime. No former U.S. president has ever been charged with a crime.
Appearing Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Trump lawyer Joseph Tacopina said it is unlikely the former president will accept an invitation, extended by prosecutors last week, to testify before the grand jury.
"We have no plans on participating in this proceeding," Tacopina said. "It's a decision that needs to be made still. There's been no deadline set, so we'll wait and see."
He characterized Trump as a victim, saying he was pressured into making the payment to Daniels.
"This was a plain extortion and I don't know since when we've decided to start prosecuting extortion victims," Tacopina said. "He's denied -- vehemently denied -- this affair. But he had to pay money because there was going to be an allegation that was going to be publicly embarrassing to him, regardless of the campaign."
Daniels and the attorney who helped arrange the payment for her, Keith Davidson, have both denied extorting anyone.
Tacopina is also accusing the Manhattan district attorney's office of prosecutorial misconduct, writing in a letter to New York City's inspector general that prosecutors are trying to hamper Trump's chances in the 2024 presidential election. Tacopina asked the city's Department of Investigation to probe a "patently political prosecution."
The Manhattan district attorney's office declined to comment.
Trump's lawyers have tried several times to get judges in New York and Florida to intervene in or halt investigations of Trump and the Trump Organization, arguing that they are politically motivated. All of those attempts have failed.
Cohen served prison time after pleading guilty in 2018 to federal charges, including campaign finance violations, for arranging the payouts to Daniels and McDougal to keep them from going public. He has also been disbarred.
Trump's lawyers could point to those factors in an attempt to undermine Cohen's credibility, if the former president is charged and Cohen ends up testifying at trial.
Cohen has been meeting regularly with Manhattan prosecutors in recent weeks, including a daylong session Friday to prepare for his grand jury appearance.
The panel has been hearing evidence since January in what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, has called the "next chapter" of his office's yearslong Trump investigation. But the hush money payments -- perhaps the most salacious of the avenues of inquiry into Trump -- are familiar ground.
Federal prosecutors and Bragg's predecessor in the DA's office, Cyrus Vance Jr., each scrutinized the payments but didn't charge Trump.
Cohen declined to comment to reporters as he left the meeting, saying he'd be "taking a little bit of time now to stay silent and allow the DA build their case."
Trump continued to lash out at the probe on social media on Friday, calling the case a "Scam, Injustice, Mockery, and Complete and Total Weaponization of Law Enforcement in order to affect a Presidential Election!"
Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 through his own company and was then reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as "legal expenses."
McDougal's $150,000 payment was made through the publisher of the National Enquirer, which squelched her story in a journalistically dubious practice known as "catch-and-kill."
According to federal prosecutors who charged Cohen, the Trump Organization then "grossed up" Cohen's reimbursement for the Daniels payment for "tax purposes," giving him $360,000 plus a $60,000 bonus, for a total of $420,000.
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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
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Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.