Andy DehnartA former NBC reality TV star has joined the long list of former reality stars to be indicted and charged with crimes.
A reality star by the name of Donald J. Trump was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
He once starred in something called The Apprentice, and then later went on to become the only president in U.S. history to be impeached and acquitted twice, the second time after he was fired.
As an indicted and charged reality star, he’s now in the company of other reality stars from Survivor’s Michael Skupin, who was indicted and charged with racketeering and possession of child porn and later pled out and served prison time for those crimes, respectively, to The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s Jen Shah, who was indicted and is now serving time in prison for defrauding old people.
Others include USA Network stars Todd and Julie Christie, whose indictments led to long prison sentences, and Bravo star Teresa Guidice, who was indicted, convicted, and served prison time for fraud.
Will The Apprentice star follow his fellow NBCUniversal stars to prison? The defendant is very fond of locking people up, so perhaps that’s been a secret desire all along?
What crimes were a reality TV star accused of this time?
In a Manhattan arraignment court on Tuesday, Nick Pinto reported that defendants emerged from holding pens to hear the charges against them, plead, and find out if they’d be able to afford the bail that was set or be sent to Rikers Island.
Upon hearing the judge’s decision, an arraigned man told the judge, “Shut the fuck up and suck my dick.”
But that was not the man the media was there to cover endlessly and breathlessly, having not learned their lesson from 2016.
Nor was that the way the reality star was treated. He did not go to Rikers Island, where people experience things such as “extortion and control by inmates, to oppressive corrections officers, violence and solitary confinement,” but instead flew home to his golf club in Florida, where his good friend is governor.
He did not even have to have his photograph taken, even though he loves being in front of cameras. However, the “Official Trump Store” is selling a t-shirt with a pretend mug shot.
Two of the defendant’s high-profile supporters, uber-successful liar George Santos and mainstream media darling Marjorie Taylor Greene, did show up to have their pictures taken, although they ran away.
The Manhattan District Attorney arrested and charged the reality star for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”
He is accused of running “a ‘catch and kill’ scheme to identify, purchase, and bury negative information about him and boost his electoral prospects,” and the District Attorney says the defendant “went to great lengths to hide this conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws.”
Those alleged crimes were detailed in a 12-page statement of facts that it turns out was not actually required reading before tweeting about it.
The 34 crimes that the grand jury accused the reality star of were all for falsifying business records in the first degree.
Days earlier, the reality star proclaimed “I HAVE GAINED SUCH RESPECT FOR THIS GRAND JURY, & PERHAPS EVEN THE GRAND JURY SYSTEM AS A WHOLE.”
After the arraignment, the defendant released a detailed statement consisting of these 42 words:
The GREAT PATRIOTS inside and outside of the Courthouse on Tuesday were unbelievably nice, in fact, they couldn’t have been nicer. Court attendants, Police Officers, and others were all very professional, and represented New York City sooo well. Thank you to all!
Evidence against the former NBC reality star includes an actual audio recording of the reality star discussing, with his attorney, how to pay off the parent company of The National Enquirer, because it paid another reality star not to come forward with a story about an affair.
However, past recordings did not affect the defendant’s prospects.
Darrel
Saturday 8th of April 2023
Eh, I don't know Andy. Is it really that notable that some washed up reality star got indicted? Reality TV stars, both relevant and irrelevant seem to get charged with crimes on a rather regular basis, and I'd all but forgotten The Apprentice by this point.
I suppose it's more notable that it's the head of the show getting charged, and the salacious nature of paying off a porn star in order to hide the affair not from family, but from the entirety of the United States, but really, this feels rather commonplace; he's not even the first star of the Apprentice to be indicted.