In the inaugural criminal trial for a past US president, Donald Trump appeared at a courthouse in New York. Accused of concealing a payment meant to buy the silence of an adult film actress during his 2016 election campaign, he was present to listen to prosecutors lay out the reasons why this was deemed unlawful. Despite encouraging his followers to conduct peaceful demonstrations at courthouses “across the nation,” hardly any supporters could be seen when the ex-president reached the city centre courthouse. The location was safeguarded with barricades yet was accessible to the public.
Trump expressed his dismay on social media platforms regarding the closure of the Lower Manhattan area encompassing the courthouse. His defense team is set to deliver an introductory speech in what could be the sole out of four criminal charges against him to reach the courtroom prior to his 5th November re-election challenge against current US President, Democrat Joe Biden.
The prosecution alleges that a decade ago, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep mum about an alleged intimate encounter with Trump. The payments were reportedly made during the final phase of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and, coupled with other sexual misconduct allegations, painted a fraudulent picture to voters that potentially affected the election outcome.
Trump, who is facing 34 charges of business record falsehood brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, has pleaded not guilty and denied ever having a sexual encounter with Daniels. This lawsuit is considered the least significant among all the charges pressed against Trump by legal pundits. A conviction won’t forbid him from holding an office, but it might damage his potential candidacy.
Polling figures by Reuters/Ipsos suggest that if Trump were to be convicted of a crime, neither half of the independent voters nor a quarter of Republican voters would vote for him. The Daniels payment is deemed part of a wider “catch and kill” strategy, devised by Trump, Cohen, and David Pecker, former CEO of American Media. The strategy was allegedly to pay those who might have defamatory information about Trump prior to the 2016 election to keep them silent. Eventually, Trump triumphed over Democrat Hillary Clinton in that election.
According to the New York Times and CNN, Mr Pecker is expected to be the first witness brought forth by the prosecution following opening remarks. It has been reported that during a meeting with Trump and Cohen in August 2015, Pecker agreed to keep a vigilant watch for damaging stories about Trump, performing the role of ‘eyes and ears’ for the campaign.
American Media, publishers of the National Enquirer, acknowledged in 2018, as part of a negotiation to evade prosecution, that it had paid Karen McDougal, a former model for Playboy magazine, $150,000 for exclusive access to her narrative of an alleged months-long relationship with Mr Trump during 2006 and 2007. American Media claimed to have worked closely with Trump’s campaign but never went on to publish the story.
The publication struck a similar deal involving a payment of $30,000 to a doorman intending to broadcast a story about Mr Trump supposedly fathering an illegitimate child, a story that prosecutors have since deemed to be false.
Mr Trump has countered that such payments were personal and did not infringe upon election law. He has also refuted the claims of an affair with Ms McDougal.
In the trial taking place in New York, Mr Trump stands accused of falsely accounting his 2017 reimbursement to Cohen for the Ms Daniels payment as an official expense within his property firm’s books. It is alleged by the prosecution that he did so in an effort to obscure the fact that Mr Cohen’s payment went over the $2,700 cap on individual campaign donations that existed at that time.
The accounts of the payments made to Ms McDougal and the doorman could aid prosecutors in illustrating that the payment to Ms Daniels by Mr Cohen was part of a wider scheme to hide payments, which Trump endeavoured to keep under wraps.
As the key witness of the trial, Mr Pecker’s testimony could support Mr Cohen’s account, although it’s recognised by the the prosecution that Mr Cohen might face challenges concerning his credibility due to previous convictions for federal campaign-finance offenses connected to this scheme.
Trump’s defence team has been informed by the prosecution that they expect to call upon at least 20 witnesses in total, suggesting that the trial could span six to eight weeks.
Despite the legal turbulence, Mr Trump’s political standing remains steady. His popularity within the Republican party has surged following the unveiling of the New York charges in April 2023, and he is reportedly neck and neck with Mr Biden in recent polls.
The former US president is presently contending with a trio of indictments related to his post-election actions in 2020 and his management of classified papers following his 2021 White House departure. Despite his ‘not guilty’ plea in regard to these lawsuits, Mr Trump is accusing his Democratic opponents, particularly those aligned with Mr Biden, of politicising his legal issues as a tactic to hinder his political aspirations.
The presiding judge for his ‘hush money’ case, Juan Merchan, had previously issued a specific restraint order against him, in response to Mr Trump’s targeted critique of trial participants, which included witnesses, the prosecution, the judge himself, and his child. As of recent, there have been increased calls from the prosecution for Judge Merchan to impose sanctions on Mr Trump for his disregard of the previous censorship ruling. This information is as per a report by Reuters, copyrighted to Thomson Reuters 2024.