Trump hush money trial live: first witness David Pecker to return to stand as prosecutors say payments were ‘election fraud’ | Donald Trump trials

Hush money was ‘election fraud pure and simple’, argued prosecutors during opening statements

Chris Michael

In his opening statements, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told an entertaining and damning tale.

In it, a presidential candidate tried criminally to cover up an alleged affair with an adult film star to keep damaging information away from the American public weeks before the 2016 election.

Specifically, Colangelo said, Trump’s campaign was terrified after the release of the Access Hollywood tape, which revealed Trump on a hot mic bragging that he could sexually assault women because he was famous. His campaign spun that story as “locker room talk”, but should US voters hear about an affair with a porn star (and who said Trump’s behavior in the bedroom was unpleasant), that wouldn’t be “talk” – it would be action.

Colangelo said the effort to manipulate media began from the beginning of the campaign. He said Trump invited his friend and the former publisher of the National Enquirer, Pecker, to a meeting at Trump Tower in summer 2015. Trump had recently thrown his hat into the ring for the 2016 Republican nomination, and Colangelo said Trump, his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen and Pecker hatched a plan to keep damaging information about Trump out of the press.

According to the prosecution, Pecker agreed to run damaging information in the National Enquirer about opponents – including an item claiming, falsely, that Senator Ted Cruz had family connections to the JFK assassination.

Pecker would also buy up negative stories for the express purpose of preventing them from being published – a “catch-and-kill” campaign that Colangelo said was geared towards helping Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

He mentioned an earlier payment to Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. Colangelo said:

Pecker will also testify that $150,000 was way more than AMI would normally pay for this kind of story, but he discussed it with Donald Trump and he discussed it with Michael Cohen, and he agreed on the deal with the understanding what Trump would find a way to pay AMI back … The company coordinated directly with the candidate.

Today, we’ll learn more.

First off today, before we get to Pecker in the witness box, judge Merchan is likely to address whether Trump violated a court-imposed gag order with a series of social media posts about witnesses.

Prosecutors have accused Trump of violating the order 10 times since the start of the trial, and last week filed a motion to hold the former president in contempt of court, and to fine him $1,000 per violation.

Merchan subjected Trump to a gag order before the trial began, covering prosecutors (but not the Manhattan district attorney, Bragg), witnesses, court employees, jurors and their families. Before the trial, Merchan then extended the gag order to cover his own family and Bragg’s family, after Trump posted about Merchan’s daughter, who worked for a company that helped Democratic candidates with digital campaigns.

Trump remains free to criticize Merchan himself, though doing so would be unlikely to win any favors from the judge, who will decide Trump’s sentence should the jury find him guilty.

Good morning. Donald Trump is back in a Manhattan courtroom this morning where the first witness in his hush-money trial is expected to return to the stand in the first ever criminal trial of a former US president.

A 12-person jury in the case of the People of the State of New York versus Donald Trump heard opening statements on Monday from prosecutors and defense lawyers in the first of four criminal cases against the presumptive Republican nominee to reach trial. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up an alleged affair with the adult film star Stormy Daniels just weeks before the election.

The case, brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, hinges on a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels to keep her story under wraps. Bragg contends that Trump masked the true nature of the payment in business records, by describing repayments to Cohen as lawful legal expenses.

After opening statements from both sides, the historic trial also briefly heard from its first witness, David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer and a man at the heart of Trump’s alleged crimes. Pecker is expected to continue his testimony today.

Court is scheduled to begin at 9.30am ET, and the jury will return at 11am. Before Pecker returns to the stand, judge Juan Merchan will hold a hearing over whether Trump violated a court-imposed gag order by making social media posts about witnesses.

Trump’s criminal hush-money trial: what to know