MANHATTAN (CN) — Flanked by one of his many legal teams, former President Donald Trump squeezed into a packed Manhattan courtroom Monday where a jury heard the opening arguments for his highly anticipated criminal trial.
“This case is about a criminal conspiracy, a cover-up,” said Matthew Colangelo of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. “The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election. Then, he covered up his criminal conspiracy by lying on his New York business records over and over again.”
Trump is standing trial on charges that he falsified business records to cover up hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought the case against Trump last year, accusing the former president of directing his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to pay Daniels to keep her quiet about a supposed extramarital relationship she had with Trump.
“Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to an adult film actress named Stormy Daniels just a couple of weeks before the 2016 election to silence her, and to make sure that the public did not learn of the sexual encounter with the defendant,” Colangelo said.
Trump has long denied any relationship with Daniels.
But prosecutors claim the hush money scheme was part of a larger plot from Trump to counter negative press related to his 2016 presidential run. Colangelo said that Trump in 2015 met with media mogul David Pecker in 2015 to hatch a deal to buy off damning stories about him, run negative articles about his political opponents and serve as his campaign’s “eyes and ears” in the media.
“This was a highly unusual deal even for tabloid journalism,” Colangelo said. "It was election fraud, plain and simple. We’ll never know — and it doesn't matter — whether this conspiracy was the difference maker in a close election.”
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche fired back on that summation during the defense’s opening.
“Spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election,” Blanche said. “It’s called democracy.”
Blanche professed that Trump is “innocent” and “did not commit any crimes,” chiding prosecutors for bringing the case and painting their arguments as an oversimplified, exaggerated version of what really happened.
“What the people just did for about 46 minutes is present to you what appeared to be a very clean, nice story,” Blanche said. “It is not. It is not as simple as the people just described.”
Blanche laid into the reliability of some of the prosecution’s expected witnesses, including Cohen and Daniels. He claimed that Cohen was a vindictive ex-employee of Trump’s, hellbent on destroying his reputation in an election year.
“You will learn that shortly after the election in 2016, he wanted a job in the administration; he didn’t get one,” Blanche said.
Blanche also called Cohen a “convicted perjurer” and a “serial liar” obsessed with Trump.
“His entire financial livelihood depends on President Trump’s destruction,” Blanche added, referencing Cohen’s podcasts and media appearances centered around his past work with Trump.
As for Daniels, Blanche said that she was “similarly, extremely biased” against the former president.
Despite a shortened day (both due to Passover and a juror’s dentist appointment), prosecutors did manage to seat their first witness: the aforementioned Pecker, who prosecutors say used his sway over the National Enquirer tabloid to help Trump skirt negative media coverage.
Pecker is the former CEO of American Media, which owned the Enquirer and a slew of other news publications. Prosecutors claim he was illegally paid by Trump for his partnership during the 2016 campaign.
The short day didn’t leave much time for Pecker’s testimony, though. His roughly 15 minutes at the stand on Monday was mostly spent introducing himself to the jury, which was seated together as a complete unit for the first time.
Pecker will return to the witness stand on Tuesday.
Prior to Monday’s opening arguments, Merchan took care of some “housekeeping,” which included issuing a Sandoval ruling to tell Trump what prior legal issues prosecutors could ask about should he decide to take the witness stand.
Merchan ordered that Trump’s $355 million fraud judgment, as well as his defamation verdicts in his trials against E. Jean Carroll, will be fair game for the district attorney. Prosecutors will also be able to ask Trump about his gag order violations from his civil fraud trial, the results of repeated public comments he made about the court’s law clerk.
Trump told reporters last week that he does plan to testify, responding to a shouted question as he left the courtroom with a "yes." He pleaded not guilty to the 34-count indictment last year.
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