NEW YORK (AFP) – Donald Trump engaged in “election fraud” by paying hush money to a woman just days before the 2016 White House vote, prosecutors said on Monday at the first ever criminal trial of a former United States president.
“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo said. “He orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.”
Laying out the prosecution’s case for the jury, Colangelo said Trump falsified business records to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels over a 2006 encounter that could have impacted his presidential bid.
“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” he said.
Trump, 77, dressed in a dark blue suit and blue tie with an American flag pin on his lapel, sat at the defence table flanked by his lawyers, staring straight ahead as the prosecutor delivered his opening remarks.
The case poses substantial risks to the Republican presidential candidate, coming less than seven months before his November election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden.
Prosecution witnesses are expected to include Daniels and Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, who arranged the alleged payment.
“President Trump did not commit any crimes,” Todd Blanche, one of his attorneys, said in his opening statement. “The Manhattan DA should never have brought this case. I have a spoiler alert: there’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election,” Blanche said. “It’s called democracy.”
David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, was the first witness called by prosecutors, who allege he was used to bury negative stories about Trump, a policy known as “catch and kill”.
Pecker was only briefly on the stand before court was adjourned for the day by Judge Juan Merchan.
Trump, speaking to reporters in a hallway after the court session, again insisted he had done nothing wrong and claimed the case was brought to derail his 2024 White House bid.
The trial will keep Trump in court for four days a week over a possibly six-to-eight-week period. He faces 34 counts of falsifying business records for reimbursements made to Cohen, his lawyer, for the USD130,000 “hush money” payment to Daniels.
Blanche, Trump’s attorney, attacked the credibility of Cohen, who served prison time for tax evasion and campaign finance violations, and Daniels in his opening remarks.
“He’s a convicted felon,” Blanche said of Cohen. “And he also is a convicted perjurer.”
Daniels “saw her chance to make a lot of money, USD130,000, and it worked,” he said.
“And since this story came out in 2018, became public, she’s made hundreds of thousands of dollars because of it.”
Trump has separately been indicted on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Biden and for hoarding secret documents after leaving the White House. Those cases have been repeatedly delayed, however, due to his strategy of challenging every legal step.
