NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump tried to illegally affect the 2016 presidential election by stopping damaging tales about his private life from turning into public, a prosecutor instructed jurors Monday at the beginning of the former president’s historic hush money trial.
“This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election — to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using doctored corporate records and bank forms to conceal those payments along the way,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo mentioned. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.”
What to learn about Trump’s hush money trial:
A protection lawyer countered by assailing the case as baseless and attacking the integrity of the onetime Trump confidant who’s now the federal government’s star witness.
“President Trump is innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan district attorney’s office should never have brought this case,” legal professional Todd Blanche mentioned.
The opening statements supplied the 12-person jury — and the voting public — radically divergent roadmaps for a case that can unfold towards the backdrop of a intently contested White House race by which Trump will not be solely the presumptive Republican nominee but in addition a prison defendant going through the prospect of a felony conviction and jail.
It is the primary prison trial of a former American president and the first of 4 prosecutions of Trump to succeed in a jury. Befitting that historical past, prosecutors sought from the outset to raise the gravity of the case, which they mentioned was mainly about election interference as mirrored by the hush money funds to a porn actor who mentioned she had a sexual encounter with Trump.
“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election. Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again,” Colangelo mentioned.
The trial, which might last as long as two months, would require Trump to spend his days in a courtroom moderately than on the marketing campaign path, a actuality he complained about Monday when he lamented to reporters after leaving the courtroom: “I’m the leading candidate … and this is what they’re trying to take me off the trail for. Checks being paid to a lawyer.”
Trump has nonetheless sought to show his prison defendant standing into an asset for his marketing campaign, fundraising off his authorized jeopardy and repeatedly railing towards a justice system that he has for years claimed is weaponized towards him. In the weeks forward, the case will check the jury’s capability to guage him impartially but in addition Trump’s capability to adjust to courtroom protocol, together with a gag order barring him from attacking witnesses, jurors, trial prosecutors and a few others.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business information — a cost punishable by as much as 4 years in jail — although it’s not clear if the choose would search to place him behind bars. A conviction wouldn’t preclude Trump from turning into president once more, however as a result of it’s a state case, he wouldn’t be capable to pardon himself if discovered responsible. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The case introduced by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg revisits a years-old chapter from Trump’s biography when his celeb previous collided along with his political ambitions and, prosecutors say, he scrambled to stifle tales that he feared might torpedo his marketing campaign.
Former President Donald Trump, adopted by his legal professional Todd Blanche, left, exits the courtroom following proceedings in his trial, Friday, April 19, 2024, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo by way of AP)
The opening statements served as an introduction to the colourful solid of characters that characteristic prominently in that tawdry saga, together with Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who says she acquired the hush money; Michael Cohen, the lawyer who prosecutors say paid her; and David Pecker, the tabloid writer who agreed to operate because the marketing campaign’s “eyes and ears” and who served because the prosecution’s first witness on Monday.
AP correspondent Julie Walker experiences on opening statements in Donald Trump’s hush money prison trial.
Pecker is due again on the stand Tuesday, when the courtroom can even hear arguments on whether or not Trump violated Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order with a sequence of Truth Social posts about witnesses during the last week.
In his opening assertion, Colangelo outlined a complete effort by Trump and his allies to stop three separate tales — two from ladies alleging prior sexual encounters — from surfacing through the 2016 presidential marketing campaign. That endeavor was particularly pressing following the emergence late within the race of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording by which Trump might be heard boasting about grabbing ladies sexually with out their permission.
Colangelo recited Trump’s now-infamous remarks as Trump regarded on, stone-faced.
“The impact of that tape on the campaign was immediate and explosive,” Colangelo mentioned.
Within days of the “Access Hollywood” tape turning into public, Colangelo instructed jurors that the National Enquirer alerted Cohen that Stormy Daniels was agitating to go public along with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
“At Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated a deal to buy Ms. Daniels’ story in order to prevent American voters from learning that information before Election Day,” Colangelo instructed jurors.
But, the prosecutor famous, “neither Trump nor the Trump Organization could just write a check to Cohen for $130,000 with a memo line that said ‘reimbursement for porn star payoff.’” So, he added, “they agreed to cook the books and make it look like the payment was actually income, payment for services rendered.”
Those alleged falsified information kind the spine of the 34-count indictment towards Trump. Trump has denied a sexual encounter with Daniels.
Blanche, the protection lawyer, sought to preemptively undermine the credibility of Cohen, who pleaded responsible to federal expenses associated to his function within the hush money scheme, as somebody with an “obsession” with Trump who can’t be trusted. He mentioned Trump had achieved nothing unlawful when his firm recorded the checks to Cohen as authorized bills.
“There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It is called democracy,” not a criminal offense, Blanche mentioned.
Blanche challenged the notion that Trump agreed to the Daniels payout to safeguard his marketing campaign. Instead, he characterised the transaction as an try and squelch a “sinister” effort to embarrass Trump and his family members.
“President Trump fought back, like he always does, and like he’s entitled to do, to protect his family, his reputation and his brand, and that is not a crime,” Blanche instructed jurors.
The efforts to suppress the tales are what’s recognized within the tabloid business as “catch-and-kill” — catching a probably damaging story by shopping for the rights to it after which killing it by way of agreements that stop the paid person from telling the story to anybody else.
Besides the cost to Daniels, Colangelo additionally described different preparations, together with one which paid a former Playboy mannequin $150,000 to suppress claims of a virtually yearlong affair with the married Trump. Colangelo mentioned Trump “desperately did not want this information about Karen McDougal to become public because he was worried about its effect on the election.”
He mentioned jurors would hear a recording Cohen made in September 2016 of himself briefing Trump on the plan to purchase McDougal’s story. The recording was made public in July 2018. Colangelo instructed jurors they may hear Trump in his personal voice saying: “What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”
Trump denies McDougal’s claims of an affair.
The first and solely witness Monday was Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer and a longtime Trump pal who prosecutors say met with Trump and Cohen at Trump Tower in August 2015 and agreed to assist Trump’s marketing campaign establish destructive tales about him.
Pecker described the tabloid’s use of “checkbook journalism,” a apply that entails paying a supply for a narrative.
“I gave a number to the editors that they could not spend more than $10,000” on a narrative with out getting his approval, Pecker mentioned Tuesday.
The New York case has taken on added significance as a result of it might be the one one of many 4 towards Trump to succeed in trial earlier than the November election. Appeals and authorized wrangling have delayed the opposite three instances.
___
Tucker reported from Washington.
___
Follow the AP’s protection of former President Donald Trump at https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump.
