Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as he begins his criminal trial in Manhattan State Court in New York City on April 22, 2024, on charges that he falsified business records to hide money he spent in 2016 for keeping quiet of porn star Stormy Daniels continues.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Prosecutors and defense attorneys for Donald Trump clashed Monday as they each tried to define the former president’s alleged crimes in his historic hush money trial.
“This case is about a criminal conspiracy” by Trump to “corrupt the 2016 election,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told jurors in his opening statements in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“He then covered up this criminal conspiracy by lying over and over again in his New York business filings,” he said.
“We will never know, and it doesn’t matter, whether this conspiracy was decisive in the close election,” Colangelo told the jury. “It was voter fraud, pure and simple.”
When Colangelo finished, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche responded: “The story you just heard, as you will learn, is not true.”
Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 22, 2024, to attend his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments related to extramarital affairs in New York.
Angela Weiss | Via Reuters
Blanche began by noting that Trump is not only a former US president, but also the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in the current election cycle.
“We will call him President Trump out of respect,” Blanche said.
“I have a spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with influencing an election,” Blanche added. “That’s called democracy.”
After both sides made their opening statements, prosecutors called David Pecker, the former CEO of National Enquirer publisher American Media, as the first witness.
David Pecker, former CEO of American Media, speaks in New York City on January 31, 2014.
Marion Curtis | Reuters
But Pecker was only on the witness stand briefly before Judge Juan Merchan excused the jury for the day. A juror had previously told the court that they needed to attend an emergency dentist appointment.
The jury will return to the courtroom around 11 a.m. ET on Tuesday after Merchan holds a hearing to consider Trump’s alleged violations of the gag order in the case.
The order prohibits him from discussing likely witnesses and their involvement in the case. On Thursday, prosecutors said Trump had violated it seven times since jury selection began this Monday.
The prosecutor wants Merchan to find Trump in contempt of court and fine him $1,000 for each violation.
As Trump left the courtroom, he downplayed the allegations.
“It’s about accounting, which is a very minor matter legally,” Trump said.
“They referred to a payment to a lawyer on the books as a legal fee,” Trump said. “I was charged with that.”
“For this they are trying to lead me astray,” the presidential candidate added. “It’s very unfair.”
Pecker was instrumental in alleged efforts in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to “capture and kill” negative information about Trump, the Republican nominee in that contest.
Pecker reportedly warned Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen in late 2016 about porn star Stormy Daniels’ claim that she had sex with Trump years earlier while he was married. Less than two weeks before the election that Trump ultimately won, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000.
American Media also reportedly paid $150,000 in early 2016 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also alleges she had an extramarital affair with Trump.
Colangelo described how Trump, Cohen and Pecker first conspired to influence the election during a meeting at Trump Tower in the summer of 2015. There, Pecker agreed to act as Trump’s “eyes and ears” by passing potentially damaging information to Cohen.
“Cohen’s job was actually to take care of the defendant’s problems,” Colangelo told the jury. “He was Trump’s fixer.”
To carry out the plan, Colangelo said, Trump and others used a practice called “catch and kill”: the publication paid for exclusive rights to a story but then never published it, thus catching and killing it.
Not only would they bury negative stories, but they would also agree to publish flattering stories about Trump and spread negative news about his opponents. Colangelo described this as a three-part conspiracy between Trump and Pecker, carried out by Cohen and then-National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard, to influence the election outcome.
Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal his reimbursement to Cohen for paying Daniels. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accuses Trump of trying to influence the 2016 election.
But these counts “are actually just 34 sheets of paper,” Blanche argued. “None of this was a crime.”
Trump will not take the stand on Monday, despite repeatedly saying he will testify at the trial. If he does so, Merchan ruled, prosecutors could challenge his credibility by questioning him about a range of court decisions not directly related to the hush money case.
Trump defended the payments to Cohen that are at the center of the case in a post Monday morning on Truth Social.
Bragg “says that payment of money to an attorney for legal services rendered should not be recorded on a ledger as a LEGAL EXPENSES,” Trump wrote. “What other term would be more appropriate???”
Read more about Trump’s hush money trial
Trump also complained in that post that he couldn’t run for president this week because he had to attend his trial, which is expected to last about six weeks.
“It’s also the perfect Crooked Joe Biden narrative – being stuck in a courtroom and not allowed to run for President of the United States!” he posted.
Opening statements and testimony were presented to a jury of 12 members and six alternates who sat in the historic trial last week.
Dozens of potential jurors quickly disqualified themselves from the proceedings, saying they could not be fair and impartial in deciding whether to indict the former president and current presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Others were relieved of duty after lawyers found previous social media posts criticizing Trump.
The former president’s lawyers made about a dozen different attempts to delay or dismiss the trial in the weeks leading up to it.
That included a request Friday afternoon to a Manhattan appeals court to stay the case, arguing that Trump could not get a fair jury in New York City, where polls show he is deeply unpopular.
Merchan had seated a full jury that same day, and the appeals court promptly rejected the attempt at the last minute.
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2024-04-22 17:07:16
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