Donald Trump faces trial over hush money
Chris Michael
Good morning. Today marks a first in American history: a US president is going on trial for criminal charges.
Donald Trump, winner of the 2016 election, loser in 2020 and now once again the presumptive Republican nominee in 2024, is accused of attempting to interfere with the first of those elections, by paying hush money to hide information from the American voters – specifically, the fact that he had an affair with an adult film star, Stephanie Clifford, AKA Stormy Daniels.
Prosecutors say he had his attorney, Michael Cohen, pay $130,000 to a Daniels attorney in order to buy her silence. Similarly, they say he participated in a “catch and kill” scheme with the National Enquirer to buy another affair story – this one from the Playboy model Karen McDougall – in order to not publish it.
Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records after he allegedly repaid his lawyer, Michael Cohen, for the payments but listed them as legal fees. This would, prosecutors say, violate campaign finance law because the payments were intended to keep valuable information away from US voters right before the 2016 election.
All of this came, if you’ll recall, around the time of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, where Trump bragged he could sexually assault women because of his fame. Prosecutors say Trump was terrified that if another story came out, about affairs with a porn star, it could cost him the 2016 election. Of course, the story didn’t come out, and he won the presidency.
It is a tricky case – not necessarily because of the facts of the hush-money payments themselves, but because prosecutors will have to prove Trump’s intent to commit a crime.
It also plays out in the thick of a presidential campaign, where Trump is running neck and neck in the polls with the US president, Joe Biden.
Strap in.
Key events
Chris Michael
So what happens today?
Well, Trump will be present, though he won’t be testifying or anything like that yet. (He may never: he has a history of talking big about cases, only to refuse to speak under oath.) He’s likely to speak to the media outside the courthouse about the case, although he is under a gag order to prevent him from making public statements about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff, and the family members of judge Juan Merchan and DA Alvin Bragg – though not about those two men themselves.
Mainly, like everyone else, he’ll be watching the trial kick off with jury selection, which could last a couple of weeks of what’s expected to be a roughly six-week trial.
Finding human being who don’t have an opinion about the guy who has absolutely dominated media coverage for nearly a decade will be next to impossible. The judge has acknowledged this, and ruled that merely liking or disliking Trump itself won’t therefore be grounds to dismiss a juror. Instead, Merchan will be looking for people who can be reasonably fair and impartial, whatever their personal opinions of Trump. Each juror will answer a questionnaire, including whether they support far-left or far-right movements and which podcasts and newspapers they subscribe to.
Trump’s team will be looking for jurors that support him. Some analysts goes as far as to say that, given the huge weight of evidence against him, Trump’s strategy will likely be to find just one juror who secretly intends to support Trump no matter what facts emerge. That bias could lead to jury nullification and a mistrial: a win for Trump.
Prosecutors, for their part, will be hoping to find 12 people who are intelligent enough to understand campaign finance law and willing to treat the facts at face value.
But there’s another jury here, as Trump well knows – the jury of public opinion. Remember, even if Trump is convicted and serves time in prison, he could still be elected president. So he will no doubt use every opportunity he can – including on the steps of the courthouse today – to shout his message that everything’s a “deep state” conspiracy, in the hopes that whether he wins or loses he gets a bump in the polls: either for an acquittal, or as a martyr.
Chris Michael
You might be forgiven for asking: so which case is this again?
After all, Trump faces 92 criminal counts in total, across four different investigations:
He’s also accused of taking classified documents from the White House and showing them off to random people at his country club, including top secret information about America’s nuclear arsenal.
And he’s accused twice (one federal case, one in Georgia) for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden but then worked doggedly to undermine, efforts that culminated when a mob who believed Trump’s election lies stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in order to stop Congress from transferring power to Joe Biden.
And don’t confuse this case for two civil cases Trump has just lost – for defaming the writer E Jean Carroll by claiming that she was lying about Trump raping her, which a judge determined was “substantially true” – and another for fraud, specifically inflating the value of his properties in New York in order to win more favourable loans. So far he owes more than $500m for those defeats.
Trump’s other criminal cases, however – while seemingly even more consequential than the Stormy Daniels one – have become bogged down. Trump has pursued a strategy of filing endless movements and appeals, in a naked attempt to delay the cases. Largely, it has worked.
That means the Stormy Daniels case, brought by the district attorney Alvin Bragg in New York, could be the only one he faces before the presidential election on 5 November. And should should he regain the presidency, Trump could move to quash the two federal cases – though not the Georgia one. But in that case the DA, Fani Willis, has been embroiled in a controversy for allegedly hiring her married boyfriend as a prosecutor.
It’s enough to make your head spin.
It’s also, however, very simple. Finally, after nearly eight years since he first started actively trying to subvert democracy, Trump faces a criminal trial. He can’t delay any longer.
Today, he’ll be in the courtroom.
Donald Trump faces trial over hush money
Chris Michael
Good morning. Today marks a first in American history: a US president is going on trial for criminal charges.
Donald Trump, winner of the 2016 election, loser in 2020 and now once again the presumptive Republican nominee in 2024, is accused of attempting to interfere with the first of those elections, by paying hush money to hide information from the American voters – specifically, the fact that he had an affair with an adult film star, Stephanie Clifford, AKA Stormy Daniels.
Prosecutors say he had his attorney, Michael Cohen, pay $130,000 to a Daniels attorney in order to buy her silence. Similarly, they say he participated in a “catch and kill” scheme with the National Enquirer to buy another affair story – this one from the Playboy model Karen McDougall – in order to not publish it.
Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records after he allegedly repaid his lawyer, Michael Cohen, for the payments but listed them as legal fees. This would, prosecutors say, violate campaign finance law because the payments were intended to keep valuable information away from US voters right before the 2016 election.
All of this came, if you’ll recall, around the time of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, where Trump bragged he could sexually assault women because of his fame. Prosecutors say Trump was terrified that if another story came out, about affairs with a porn star, it could cost him the 2016 election. Of course, the story didn’t come out, and he won the presidency.
It is a tricky case – not necessarily because of the facts of the hush-money payments themselves, but because prosecutors will have to prove Trump’s intent to commit a crime.
It also plays out in the thick of a presidential campaign, where Trump is running neck and neck in the polls with the US president, Joe Biden.
Strap in.
