Prosecutors launched the hush-money trial of Donald Trump by revealing new details Monday about how they seek to prove the former president corrupted the 2016 election to bury a sex scandal, while a defence lawyer countered the payment was meant only to protect his reputation.
The trial in lower Manhattan, the first of a former president, involves 34 felony counts alleging Trump falsified business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to stifle her claims of a sexual liaison. Prosecutors say he falsified records by claiming the reimbursements to his former attorney, Michael Cohen, who paid Daniels, were for legal fees.
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo used his opening statement Monday to sketch out a criminal conspiracy involving Trump, Cohen and David Pecker, who ran the company that owned the National Enquirer and agreed to buy and bury negative news about the former president. The plot, he said, began in a May 2015 meeting in Trump Tower.
"The evidence will show this was not spin or strategy but a plan to influence the election to help Donald Trump get elected," he said. "It was election fraud, pure and simple."
The trial takes place as Trump, 77, seeks to return to the White House in a rematch with President Joe Biden. It's one of four prosecutions hanging over the presumptive Republican nominee, who calls the case election interference and a witch hunt by Democrats.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche had a different spin on the events.
"Spoiler alert: there's nothing wrong with trying to influence an election," Blanche said. "It's called democracy."
Trump's Reputation
He assailed the prosecution case and their witnesses. Daniels had threatened to go public with her account of having sex with Trump in 2006, which was "almost an attempt to extort" him, Blanche said. Cohen, the DA's star witness, is "obsessed" with Trump and will lie to see him convicted, he said.
"It was sinister, it was an attempt to embarrass President Trump," the defence lawyer said. Trump bought the silence of Daniels, he said, to protect "his family, his reputation and his brand."
Blanche said his "larger than life" client is a victim of overreaching prosecutors who put their faith in Daniels and Cohen, the former Trump fixer who went to prison for perjury and other crimes.
The basic events of the trial have been known since 2018, and more specifically since Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump last year. But Colangelo revealed that the evidence includes insider accounts by Cohen and Pecker, emails, text messages, and recordings of Trump discussing the repayment, he said.
The crimes center around business records that Trump allegedly covered up in reimbursing $420,000 to Cohen, or more than twice what he paid Daniels to buy her silence, Colangelo said. After he was elected, Colangelo said, Trump falsely claimed the payments were for legal fees, he said.
Porn Star Payment
"They couldn't say 'reimbursement for porn star payment' so they had to cook the books," Colangelo said.
Jurors will hear Trump "working out the terms of the deal" on tape with Cohen, Colangelo said. "You will hear the defendant's own voice in a recorded conversation."
Their goal was to conceal damaging information ahead of the election and trash Trump's opponents like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson with scurrilous stories. The Enquirer would "catch and kill" damaging stories, or buy unflattering articles with no intention of publishing them.
Pecker was called briefly as the prosecution's first witness Monday, giving some basics about his role, and will return Tuesday. He said he had the final say over which stories were published in the Enquirer and which didn't see the light of day.
"We used chequebook journalism and paid for the story," he said.
Access Hollywood
Colangelo said the revelation in October 2016 of the so-called Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump bragged about his conquest of women, had an "immediate and explosive" effect on the campaign. That meant he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Daniels, to prevent any further election surprises.
"The campaign was concerned," the prosecutor said. "They knew it was damaging, not only because Trump bragged about sexual assault" but it was "in his own words, in his own voice."
Bragg filed the first of four criminal indictments of the former president. What was unclear until Monday was how the former president would defend Bragg's specific charges beyond attacking the DA and calling it an unfair witch hunt.
Trump, who wore a navy suit, white shirt and blue tie, seemed subdued and often jotted notes as Blanche took aim at Cohen, the witness who can most directly tie the payments to the election. Blanche recounted Cohen's criminal record since leaving Trump, including his prison term for tax fraud and lying under oath to Congress.
"He raised his hand, swore to tell the truth and then lied, under oath," Blanche said. As a podcaster and book author, Cohen is now obsessed with Trump, saying "his entire livelihood depends on this Trump obsession."
Trusting such a man is a mistake, the defence lawyer said.
"You cannot make a decision on President Trump based on Michael Cohen," Blanche said.
He also took shots at Daniels, whom he said profited greatly from her account of having sex with Trump in 2006 and still owes him $600,000 in legal judgments. He told jurors that her story doesn't relate to the financial transactions made by Cohen that are at the heart of the case.
"Her testimony, while salacious, does not matter," Blanche said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
