Manhattan prosecutors delivered a uncooked recounting of Donald J. Trump’s seamy previous on Monday as they debuted their case in opposition to him to jurors, the nation and the world, decreasing the previous president to a co-conspirator in a plot to cowl up three intercourse scandals that threatened his 2016 election win.
Their opening assertion was a pivotal second within the first prosecution of an American president, a sweeping synopsis of the case in opposition to Mr. Trump, who watched from the protection desk, sometimes shaking his head. Moments later, Mr. Trump’s lawyer delivered his personal opening, starting with the straightforward declare that “President Trump is harmless,” then noting that he’s as soon as once more the presumptive Republican nominee and concluding with an exhortation for jurors to “use your widespread sense.”
The jury of 12 New Yorkers who will weigh Mr. Trump’s authorized destiny earlier than tens of millions of voters determine his political future additionally heard transient testimony from the prosecution’s leadoff witness, David Pecker, a former tabloid writer who was shut with Mr. Trump. Mr. Pecker, who ran The Nationwide Enquirer, testified that his grocery store tabloids practiced “checkbook journalism.” On this case, prosecutors say, he purchased and buried tales that would have imperiled Mr. Trump’s 2016 marketing campaign.
The flurry of exercise on the landmark trial’s first formal day captivated jurors, a lot of whom jotted notes as they adopted alongside.
And it despatched nervous vitality by way of a Decrease Manhattan courthouse as bomb-sniffing canine, the U.S. Secret Service and the police patrolled the dingy constructing. The spectacle was a vivid reminder of the continuing’s unprecedented nature: A courthouse accustomed to biking by way of trials of murderers, fraudsters and felons of every type now had its first former president.
On Monday, the trial ended early and with little fanfare, to accommodate the Passover vacation and a juror’s emergency dental appointment.
Nevertheless it started in putting trend, with the decide, Juan M. Merchan, figuring out what prosecutors might ask of Mr. Trump ought to he take the witness stand in his personal protection. In a victory for the prosecution, the decide dominated that they might query him about three civil trials he misplaced over the past yr — together with a fraud case during which a special decide discovered him answerable for conspiring to inflate his internet price, and penalized him tons of of tens of millions of {dollars}.
Matthew Colangelo, a senior aide to the Manhattan district legal professional, Alvin L. Bragg, then seized on what he known as a conspiracy within the felony case. Over the course of a 45-minute opening, as Mr. Bragg watched from the entrance row, Mr. Colangelo calmly walked the jury by way of the prosecution’s argument that Mr. Trump orchestrated the plot to deprave the 2016 election.
The scheme, he defined, concerned hush-money offers with three individuals who had salacious tales to promote: a porn star, a Playboy mannequin and a doorman at one among Mr. Trump’s buildings.
Mr. Trump, who faces as much as 4 years in jail, directed allies to purchase these folks’s silence to guard his candidacy, Mr. Colangelo defined. Mr. Pecker took care of the mannequin and the doorman, whereas Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who is about to be the prosecution’s star witness, paid off the porn star.
After taking the White Home, Mr. Colangelo added, Mr. Trump agreed to “prepare dinner the books” to cowl up Mr. Cohen’s $130,000 cost to the porn star, Stormy Daniels. When Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen, Mr. Colangelo mentioned, Mr. Trump and his firm falsified inner data, disguising the repayments as routine authorized bills.
Mr. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise data, one for every false test, ledger and bill.
The previous president lied “again and again and over” once more, Mr. Colangelo emphatically mentioned, casting him as a conniving felony.
However Mr. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche sought to undercut the prosecution’s lofty rhetoric with a extra innocuous distillation of the case, calling it a “enterprise data violation” that wasn’t.
As an alternative, he mentioned, it was “simply 34 items of paper.”
Mr. Blanche positioned blame on Mr. Cohen, who had hashed out the reimbursement plan with Mr. Trump’s firm and pleaded responsible to federal expenses for his position. Mr. Blanche contended that “President Trump had nothing to do with the bill.”
Previewing what’s more likely to be a recurring motif, Mr. Blanche took goal at Mr. Cohen’s credibility, noting that he “is a felony” and arguing that he’s a scorned former worker who will cease at nothing to place Mr. Trump in jail.
“I undergo you that he can’t be trusted,” Mr. Blanche mentioned, including, “He’s obsessive about President Trump even to this present day.”
Mr. Colangelo insisted, nevertheless, that a lot of Mr. Cohen’s testimony could be corroborated, together with by Mr. Pecker and “an intensive paper path.”
The opening statements supplied dueling interpretations of a case that has transfixed a lot of the political and authorized worlds. Mr. Bragg, in essence, has put Mr. Trump’s 2016 marketing campaign on trial through the coronary heart of the 2024 election.
A yr in the past, Mr. Bragg was the primary prosecutor to indict Mr. Trump. Three different indictments adopted in three different cities, on expenses that he plotted to overturn his 2020 election loss and mishandled categorized data as soon as he was now not president. However with these instances delayed, Mr. Bragg’s trial stands out as the just one that Mr. Trump will face earlier than Election Day.
In Monday’s opening assertion, Mr. Colangelo unspooled a scathing account of occasions surrounding Mr. Trump’s rebel run for the White Home.
It started in summer time 2015, quickly after Mr. Trump introduced his candidacy, with a gathering amongst Mr. Trump, Mr. Pecker and Mr. Cohen. They met on the candidate’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters, the place they hatched what the prosecutor known as “the Trump Tower conspiracy.”
The plan was to be careful for any damaging tales about Mr. Trump — after which conceal them from voters.
Such tales arose swiftly. Quickly, Mr. Pecker purchased the silence of the doorman, whose story about Mr. Trump fathering a toddler out of wedlock turned out to be false.
Then got here the Playboy mannequin, Karen McDougal, who mentioned she had an affair with Mr. Trump whereas he was married. The Nationwide Enquirer once more stepped in, shopping for the rights to her story after which by no means publishing it, a follow identified within the tabloid enterprise as “catch and kill.”
The third and most legally problematic deal — the $130,000 payoff to Ms. Daniels — took form within the marketing campaign’s waning weeks.
Ms. Daniels threatened to go public together with her decade-old story of intercourse with Mr. Trump simply as his marketing campaign was reeling from the discharge of the “Entry Hollywood” recording, during which Mr. Trump boasts about grabbing girls’s genitals.
“The marketing campaign went into instant harm management mode to blunt the affect of the tape,” Mr. Colangelo mentioned, and that included protecting Ms. Daniels quiet. “One other story about sexual infidelity, particularly with a porn star, on the heels of the ‘Entry Hollywood’ tape, might have been devastating to his marketing campaign.”
As soon as Mr. Trump was elected and needed to repay Mr. Cohen, he and his firm falsified the data to cowl it up, Mr. Colangelo mentioned.
“He wished to hide his and others’ felony conduct,” Mr. Colangelo informed the jury, arguing that the falsification “exhibits simply how vital it was to him to cover the true nature of Cohen’s unlawful cost to Ms. Daniels and the general election conspiracy.”
Mr. Blanche, for his half, disputed that any accusations amounted to election interference. “I’ve a spoiler alert: There’s nothing incorrect with making an attempt to affect an election,” he mentioned. “It’s known as democracy. They put one thing sinister on this concept as if it have been a criminal offense. You’ll study it’s not.”
Mr. Trump just isn’t formally charged with election interference, however the accusation underpins the case.
In New York, falsifying enterprise data is a felony if a defendant did so to hide one other crime. And on this case, Mr. Trump is accused of violating a state legislation by partaking in “conspiracy to advertise or forestall election.” The case might relaxation upon that assertion.
The decide has allowed prosecutors to debate the 2 different hush-money offers, which they’ll use to bolster the concept that the plot was meant to elect Mr. Trump, not simply to guard him and his household from humiliation.
“It was election fraud, pure and easy,” Mr. Colangelo declared.
Kate Christobek, Jesse McKinley and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.