Trump faces trial on criminal hush money charges: What to know

Donald Trump has used every legal tool at his disposal to attempt to dismiss, diminish or delay the four criminal proceedings pending against him.

But on Monday, barring last-minute legal intervention, Trump will become the first former president to be tried on criminal charges.

The New York Supreme Court lawsuit focuses on allegations that Trump falsified business records as part of a scheme to conceal a secret $130,000 payment in 2016 to porn star Stormy Daniels, who said she had an extramarital affair with Trump years earlier.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accuses Trump of using a “catch and kill” tactic to hide information harmful to voters before the 2016 presidential election.

The case could be the only one of 88 criminal charges filed by Trump in four separate cases to go to trial before the Nov. 5 presidential election.

If convicted in the case, the 77-year-old ex-president could face prison time at New York’s notorious Rikers Island prison or a state prison.

Here’s what you need to know about the historic trial:

Trump is charged with 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records.

Under New York law, a person is guilty of this crime when his or her records are falsified with the intent to commit or conceal another crime.

The DA alleges that Trump and others violated election laws to carry out an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 election, by purchasing and deleting negative information about him.

At the heart of Bragg’s case is Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges related to hush money payments made to two women before the 2016 election.

Cohen is expected to be a key witness in the trial, where he will say Trump ordered him to make these payments.

To pay Daniels secretly, the prosecutor said, Cohen opened a bank account for a shell company he had created specifically to facilitate the payment. He then transferred $131,000 to that account from a home equity line of credit. On October 27 – less than two weeks before the 2016 election – Cohen wired $130,000 to Daniels’ lawyer in exchange for her silence about the alleged tryst with Trump.

After the election, Bragg says, Trump reimbursed Cohen for the payment through a series of monthly checks, processed by the Trump Organization, which recorded them as payments for legal services rendered in 2017 under a retainer .

These recordings were false, says the prosecutor.

Trump and Cohen were also allegedly involved in a secret payment in 2016 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who received $150,000 from then-National Enquirer publisher to keep quiet about her own alleged affair with Trump .

Bragg also cites a $30,000 payment by that publisher, American Media Inc., to a former Trump Tower doorman for the rights to a story about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock. After determining the story was false, the publisher’s CEO, David Pecker, wanted to end the deal — but he waited until after the 2016 election at Cohen’s direction, the prosecutor claims.

The trial was originally scheduled to begin March 25, but it was postponed until Monday to give Trump’s team time to review some recently acquired documents.

The trial will begin with the process of selecting 12 jurors, plus alternates.

Merchan said he expects the trial to last about six weeks.

Yes. New York law requires defendants to be present at their trial, with some exceptions.

Trump has voluntarily attended a number of hearings in the hush money case and his other criminal cases, generating waves of mainstream media attention that his regular campaign events no longer generate.

Trump was also scheduled to appear Monday for a deposition in a separate lawsuit related to the public merger of his media company, Trump Media and Technology Groupbut this appearance would have been postponed.

First-degree falsification of business records is a class E felony punishable by up to four years in prison.

But the sentence ultimately given to a defendant is often far less than the maximum, and Trump’s age and lack of prior convictions could also work in his favor in any potential sentencing decision.

His antagonism toward presiding Judge Juan Merchan and others connected to the case – including the judge’s daughter – could work against him, however.

“I think there is a significant risk that he will be convicted and face prison time,” said Norm Eisen, a legal analyst who helped House Democrats during the first impeachment of Trump, during a press briefing Thursday giving an overview of the secret trial. .

“When falsification of business records is intended to aid, conceal or commit serious crimes, it routinely receives prison sentences,” Eisen said.

Trump can continue to run for office even if he is convicted and imprisoned.

Cohen and Daniels are expected to testify at trial. But prosecutors have compiled a list of about a dozen other potential witnesses, including McDougal and Pecker, a source with direct knowledge of the situation told NBC News.

That same source told NBC that the defense’s potential witness list could include Trump himself.

Trump has not yet said whether he plans to testify in his defense. When he took the stand in November in his New York civil business fraud case, Trump angrily lashed out at the judge, the state attorney general and many other “haters.”

Bradley Smith, a former Federal Election Commission commissioner, is another potential defense witness, NBC reported.

Trump’s lawyers threw the kitchen sink at the trial in hopes of a delay. They made more than 10 attempts to move the case forward, including three in last-minute appeals filed in the final week before jury selection.

Trump, as he has in his other legal battles, used his public as a weapon against this case.

In regular social media rants and interviews, he denounced the judge, the prosecutor, key witnesses and various others, while claiming that all of his criminal charges were part of a Biden administration plot to harm to his presidential candidacy.

Merchan imposed a silence on Trump, then broadened it after the former president repeatedly criticized the judge’s daughter for her work for a Democratic political consultant. Trump’s legal team has repeatedly requested that Merchan recuse herself because of her daughter’s political activities. Merchan refused to do so last year.

In a video posted Thursday to Truth Social, Trump denounced the silence order, falsely claiming that “this only happens to me” and asserting that “there has never been a more divisive judge than this one.” this”.