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Donald Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt” the 2016 presidential election when he conspired to prevent damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public, a prosecutor told jurors on Monday at the start of the former president’s historic hush money trial.
A defence lawyer countered by saying that Trump “was innocent” and that the case should never have been brought.
The opening statements launched the first criminal trial of a former American president, a case that will unfold against the backdrop of a closely contested White House race in which Trump is not only the presumptive Republican nominee but also a defendant facing the prospect of a felony conviction and prison.
“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,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told jurors.
The statements offered the 12-person jury — and the voting public — a roadmap for how to view the allegations at the heart of the case.
They also served as an introduction to the colourful cast of characters that comprise the tawdry saga, including a porn actor who says she had a sexual encounter with Trump; the lawyer who prosecutors say paid her to keep quiet about it; and the tabloid publisher who agreed to function as the campaign’s “eyes and ears”.
Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — a charge punishable by up to four years in prison — though it’s not clear if the judge would seek to put him behind bars. A conviction would not preclude Trump from becoming president again, but because it is a state case, he would not be able to attempt to pardon himself if found guilty. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg revisits a chapter from Trump’s history when his celebrity past collided with his political ambitions and, prosecutors say, he scrambled to stifle stories that he feared could torpedo his campaign.
In his opening statements, Colangelo traced the origins of the effort to the emergence late in the 2016 campaign of the 2005 Access Hollywood recording in which Trump could be heard boasting about grabbing women sexually without their permission.
“The impact of that tape on the campaign was immediate and explosive,” Colangelo said, recounting for jurors how prominent Trump allies withdrew their endorsements and condemned his language.
The prosecutor said evidence will show the Republican National Committee even considered whether it was possible to replace Trump with another candidate.
Within days of the Access Hollywood tape becoming public, Colangelo told jurors that The National Enquirer alerted Cohen that porn actor Stormy Daniels was agitating to go public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
“At Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated a deal to buy Ms Daniels’ story to prevent American voters from hearing that story before Election Day,” Colangelo told jurors.
The prosecutor described other payments as well that were part of what’s known in the tabloid industry as a “catch-and-kill” ploy — catching a potentially damaging story by buying the rights to it and then suppressing or killing it through agreements that prevent the paid person from telling the story to anyone else.
Colangelo also talked about arrangements made to pay a former Playboy model $150,000 to suppress her claims of a nearly yearlong affair with the married Trump. Colangelo said Trump “desperately did not want this information about Karen McDougal to become public because he was worried about its effect on the election.”
He told jurors they will hear a recording Cohen made in September 2016 of himself briefing Trump on the plan to buy McDougal’s story. The recording was made public in July 2018. Colangelo told jurors they hear Trump in his own voice, saying: “What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?”
Trump arrived at the courthouse shortly before 9am, minutes after castigating the case in capital letters on social media as “election interference” and a “witch hunt”.
The trial will require him to spend his days in a courtroom rather than on the campaign trail, a reality he complained about Monday when he lamented to reporters that he was “here instead of being able to be in Pennsylvania and Georgia and lots of other places campaigning, and it’s very unfair”.
Just as Trump sat through a jury selection process in which multiple prospective jurors expressed negative opinions about him, he will be forced to remain in court as salacious and potentially unflattering details about his personal life are shared with the jury.
Trump has nonetheless sought to turn his criminal defendant status into an asset for his campaign, fundraising off his legal jeopardy and repeatedly railing against a justice system that he has for years claimed is weaponised against him.
Hearing the case is a jury that includes, among others, multiple lawyers, a sales professional, an investment banker and an English teacher. As court began on Monday, Judge Juan Merchan disclosed that one of the jurors selected for the case had conveyed reservations about participating, apparently because of the intense media attention. The juror was questioned privately but will remain on the case.
The case will test jurors’ ability to set aside any bias but also Trump’s ability to abide by the court’s restrictions, such as a gag order that bars him from attacking witnesses. Prosecutors are seeking fines against him for alleged violations of that order.
Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of the payments in internal records when his company reimbursed Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2018 and is expected to be a star witness for the prosecution.
Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.
To convict Trump of a felony, prosecutors must show he not only falsified or caused business records to be entered falsely, which would be a misdemeanour, but that he did so to conceal another crime.
The allegations don’t accuse Trump of an egregious abuse of power like the federal case in Washington charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, or of flouting national security protocols like the federal case in Florida charging him with hoarding classified documents.
But the New York prosecution has taken on added importance because it may be the only one of the four cases against Trump that reaches trial before the November election. Appeals and legal wrangling have delayed the other three cases.
