The hush money trial of former President Donald Trump is underway in New York City, where he faces charges related to a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Donald Trump Faces Allegations of a Criminal Scheme
Donald Trump, who pleaded not guilty in April, is accused of orchestrating a criminal scheme to hide the reimbursement of the $130,000 hush money payment made by his former lawyer Michael Cohen.
Cohen allegedly arranged the payment days leading up to the 2016 election to silence Stormy Daniels about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006, which the former president denied.
In the opening statement, the prosecution asserted that Trump's actions amounted to a corrupt effort to sway the 2016 election by hiding his alleged affair with the porn star, ABC News reported.
The prosecutors noted that if this story had come out ahead of the election, "it could have been devastating to his [Trump] campaign."
"Cohen made that payment at Donald Trump's direction and for his benefit and he did it with the special goal of influencing the election. This was not spin or communications strategy," prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told the jury.
"This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election to help DT [Trump] get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad about his behavior. It was election fraud, pure and simple," he added.
On the other hand, the defense argued that there was "nothing wrong with trying to influence an election."
"It's called democracy. They put something sinister on this idea, as if it's a crime. You'll learn it's not," defense attorney Todd Blanche told jurors during his opening statement.
Blanche also said that Trump was unaware of how his employees at the Trump Organization processed the invoices, including those from Cohen.
"'Hey, we got this invoice. I know we are trying to cover it up here...' Absolutely not," Blanche said sarcastically.
"President Trump has nothing to do with the invoice, with the check being generated, or with the entry on the ledger... [because he was busy] "in the White House while he was running the country," he added.
Trump is facing 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to the hush money payments to Daniels. However, Blanche maintained that "none of this was a crime," and the 34 counts of falsifying business records "are really just 34 pieces of paper."
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First Witness in Donald Trump Hush Money Trial
Monday's trial also heard the testimony from its first witness, David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer. Pecker allegedly engaged in a conspiracy with Donald Trump and Michael Cohen to help influence the 2016 election by killing negative stories about the former president.
In his brief turn on the stand, Pecker mainly just talked about his background and said the Enquirer practiced "checkbook journalism" or "paid for stories" and that he had the final say on any story about a celebrity or famous person.
Pecker's testimony is expected to continue Tuesday. Trump sat quietly as he listened to the opening statements and sometimes shook his head, passing notes to his attorneys and whispering in their ears.
But he said outside the courtroom: "This is what they're trying to take me off the [campaign] trail for. Checks being paid to a lawyer." He also stressed that his payments to Cohen were appropriately labeled as legal expenses.
A jury comprising seven men and five women from Manhattan was tasked with hearing the first-ever criminal trial against a US president.
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