The trial of Donald Trump relating to the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels could land the former US president in prison, author Salman Rushdie told dpa in Berlin on Tuesday.
"Well, I think this trial that's underway now in New York City has a serious possibility of sending him to jail, because the attempt to suppress the Stormy Daniels story was clearly a way of affecting the electoral process by keeping essential information away from voters," the 76-year-old author said.
The public prosecutor's office in New York accuses Trump of wanting to improve his chances of success in the 2016 presidential election by paying $130,000 to porn actress Daniels.
The payment itself was not illegal. However, Trump is said to have manipulated documents when reimbursing the amount to lawyer Michael Cohen in order to conceal the true reason for the transaction. This made the payments illegal campaign financing.
Rushdie, who lives in New York, takes a critical view of Trump's possible re-election because Trump is out for revenge. "So I think it has a destabilizing effect on way beyond the United States, on world politics," he said.
Rushdie is known for "Midnight's Children," for which he received the Booker Prize, and for "The Satanic Verses," for which an Iranian fatwa was issued on his life in 1989.
The fatwa, an order for Muslims to kill Rushdie, came in response to alleged blasphemy in "The Satanic Verses."
Rushdie's new book "Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder" was published in April. In it, Rushdie deals with the assassination attempt on his life in August 2022, when a man attacked the author with a knife and seriously injured him at an event in the US.
Rushdie was severely injured, losing an eye, but survived.
