Opening statements in the historic hush money trial of former President Donald Trump are set to begin Monday, setting the stage for weeks of potentially unflattering testimony about his personal life and placing his legal troubles at the center of his closely contested campaign against President Joe Biden.
A panel of New Yorkers — 12 jurors and six alternates — was sworn in last Friday after four days of jury selection and will hear what is the first-ever criminal trial against a former U.S. commander-in-chief.
Trump is accused of falsifying internal business records as part of an alleged scheme to bury stories that he thought might hurt his presidential campaign in 2016. At the heart of the allegations is a $130,000 payment made to porn actor Stormy Daniels by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, to prevent her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump from surfacing in the final days of the race.
Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of such payments in internal business documents. Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The hush money case is the first of Trump’s four indictments to reach trial.
The allegations at the heart of this case don’t accuse Donald 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 election. Appeals and legal wrangling have delayed the other three cases.
For the first time, prosecutors will present a criminal case against a former American president to a jury Monday as they accuse Donald Trump of a hush money scheme aimed at preventing damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public.
The statements are expected to give jurors and the voting public the clearest view yet of the allegations at the heart of the case, as well as insight into Trump’s expected defense.
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