Unlock Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, editor-in-chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Manhattan prosecutors have accused Donald Trump of lying “over and over again” to “cover up” payments made to prevent allegations of an extramarital affair from becoming public in the days leading up to the 2016 election, as Opening arguments were beginning in the first criminal trial against a former American. president.
The 77-year-old “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo told the seven men and five women chosen to decide the case. “He wanted to cover up his criminal conduct and that of others.”
Trump denounced the court and prosecutors on social media and once again denounced the case as a witch hunt as he took to the courtroom Monday morning. “This constitutes election interference, everyone knows that,” the presumptive Republican nominee for the 2024 White House told reporters.
Sitting at the defense table in the courtroom, he looked silently at the judge and jury during opening statements, but did not meet the gaze of prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who brought the case.
The start of the trial comes just over a year after Bragg brought the first criminal charges against a former US president, accusing Trump of allegedly concealing $130,000 in payments made in the run-up to the 2016 election to buying the silence of a porn actor who claimed she had a brief affair with the reality TV star a decade ago.
Like any defendant, Trump must be present every day during what is expected to be a six-week trial, a requirement he says will limit his campaign ahead of the November election. The court will sit Wednesday if the case proceeds on schedule, Judge Juan Mercan said last week.
Last week, 12 jurors and six alternates were chosen from a group of nearly 200 New Yorkers, who were carefully screened to ensure they did not have insurmountable prejudices against Trump. All said they could be impartial in deciding the facts of the case, although some expressed distaste for his policies and personality.
The silence case is the first against Trump to go to trial, but the former president still faces criminal charges in three different courts for his alleged attempts to thwart the peaceful transition of power after the 2020 election and for his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida. It is unclear when the other criminal cases will go to trial. He also faces several civil lawsuits.