Donald Trump becomes the first former U.S. president to face a criminal trial – a case involving alleged hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels that carries major political and legal ramifications as he runs to regain the White House.
The trial began in Manhattan on April 15. It is the first of four potential criminal trials Trump faces, but may be the only one to take place before the Nov. 5 U.S. election in which he is the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in a 2020 rematch.
Trump, 77, has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records in the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Trump is accused of arranging a $130,000 payment made by his lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign to buy her silence about a sexual encounter she has said she had with him at a Lake Tahoe hotel in 2006 and then falsifying records to cover it up.
Denying any such encounter with the porn star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, Trump has said the payment was made to stop her “false and extortionist accusations.”
Trump also faces federal charges in Washington and state charges in Georgia over his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden, as well as federal charges in Florida of illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office in 2021. Trump has pleaded not guilty in each and has called them politically motivated.
The hush money case allegations are not new – news of the Daniels payoff generated headlines in 2018 – and the facts may come across as more tawdry and less consequential than Trump’s other three indictments. The U.S. Justice Department previously investigated the matter and Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance law violations, testifying that Trump orchestrated the payment to Daniels. Federal prosecutors opted not to charge Trump, ending their investigation in 2019.
Bragg has argued that the case is about Trump’s effort to corrupt the 2016 election – the businessman-turned-politician defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton – through a “catch-and-kill” scheme to purchase the silence of people with potentially damaging information about him.
According to prosecutors, Cohen also arranged a payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal, who has said that she too had a sexual relationship with Trump – a relationship Trump has denied.
In New York, falsifying business records to commit or conceal another crime is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.
The first seven jurors for Donald Trump’s hush money trial were seated Tuesday after lawyers grilled the jury pool about their social media posts, political views and personal lives to decide who can sit in fair judgment of the former president.
The panelists who were selected are an information technology worker, an English teacher, an oncology nurse, a sales professional, a software engineer and two lawyers.
Eleven more people still must be sworn in before opening statements begin as early as next week in the first criminal trial of a former commander in chief. It’s a moment of reckoning for Trump, who has tried to put off his prosecutions until after the November election and casts himself as the victim of a politically motivated justice system.
(Luc Cohen and Tim Reid, Reuters, Ruth Brown, Philip Marcelo and Jill Colvin, AP, PBS. Photo: AP)