Trump on Trial: Prosecutors call hush money ‘a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election’

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On the Docket: Opening statements

The former president Donald Trump’s first criminal trial got going in earnest today with opening statements from prosecutors and defense. The prosecutors sought to make the case that Trump illegally covered up campaign finance fraud, while Trump’s attorney went after prosecutors’ key witnesses and claimed there was no crime.

Here’s a full recap of the day from Victoria Bekiempis, and the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has three key takeaways.

Prosecutors: ‘This case is about a criminal conspiracy’

The prosecutor Matthew Colangelo summed up the charges as such: “This case is about a criminal conspiracy. The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election. Then he covered up that scheme by lying in his New York business records, over and over and over again.”

Colangelo then introduced an August 2015 meeting with Trump, his former attorney Michael Cohen and David Pecker (the CEO of American Media Inc, the publisher of the National Enquirer, and trial’s first witness), in which Cohen said Pecker agreed to help Trump’s campaign by catching and killing stories about his marital infidelities.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office alleges that Trump was doing this to help his election prospects, not to protect his private life – a key argument to be able to prove claims of illegal campaign finance violations. Prosecutors need to show that the business records were falsified in furtherance of another crime to be able to justify the felony charges.

Colangelo then unpacked how Cohen paid to “catch and kill” a story from the adult film star Stormy Daniels about her alleged affair with Trump. Trump proceeded to pay him back after the election, while falsely labeling the payments as business payments.

“Neither Trump nor the Trump organization could just write a check to Cohen for $130,000 with a memo line that said ‘reimbursement for porn star payoff’,” Colangelo said. “They had to disguise the nature of the repayment, so they agreed to cook the books and make it look like the repayment was actually income.”

Trump’s defense: ‘Trump did not commit any crimes’

Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche used his opening argument to try to discredit Cohen and Daniels, two probable key witnesses in the case. He conceded that Trump had paid hush money to kill embarrassing stories – but pointed out that was not illegal. He insisted that Trump did so to spare his family and his reputation. And he argued that Trump wasn’t actually familiar with the bookkeeping decisions on how Cohen was paid.

“President Trump is innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan district attorney should never have brought this case,” Blanche said, later arguing that Trump fought to keep Daniels’s allegations from the headlines in the closing days of the election “to protect his family, his reputation, and his brand”.

Blanche said Trump “had nothing to do with the invoice, with the check being generated, or with the entry on the ledger” for the post-election payments to Cohen. He insisted “Trump had nothing to do with the 34 checks [to Cohen] other than to sign them.”

He called Daniels “sinister” and claimed she’d “made a life” off of her claims about her relationship with Trump, while describing Cohen as a “convicted perjurer” with an axe to grind against Trump, his former boss, because Trump didn’t give him a White House job.

And he claimed that trying to influence the election wasn’t illegal.

“I have a spoiler alert: there’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election – it’s called democracy,” he said.

Witness One: David Pecker

With opening statements wrapped, the prosecution called Pecker to be their first witness of the case, using the final minutes of the day to introduce Pecker to the jury, establish that he had control over big stories at the National Enquirer, and that the tabloid paid sources.

“We used checkbook journalism and we paid for stories,” Pecker testified.

He’ll be back on the stand on Tuesday.

If Trump takes the stand …

Before the jury was brought in for the day, presiding Judge Juan Merchan issued a ruling on what prosecutors will be allowed to ask Trump if he decides to take the stand to testify in this trial.

Merchan said that prosecutors will be able to bring up that a judge found Trump committed business fraud in one earlier civil case, and a jury found he defamed E Jean Carroll in another. But Merchan won’t allow prosecutors to elicit testimony from Trump about his sexually assaulting Carroll.

In others news: Civil bond solutions

While Trump was in court on his criminal trial, some of his other lawyers were in another courtroom down the street, resolving a challenge to the $175m bond he posted in his civil fraud trial.

The New York attorney general, Letitia James, had raised objections to the terms of the bond earlier this month because Trump still had access to the bank account pledged as collateral. Trump’s lawyers agreed on Monday to guarantee the bond insurer has sole control of the account, promised he wouldn’t withdraw funds, and provide James with monthly statements to show the cash is still there. Judge Arthur Engoron signed off on the terms.

What’s up next: Gag order contempt hearing and more Pecker

Tomorrow will kick off with a hearing in which Merchan will determine whether Trump has repeatedly violated his gag order, which barred him from publicly discussing possible witnesses, and if he will face penalties.

Merchan’s options are either a $1,000 penalty per violation – or jail time. Obviously, one isn’t going to have much impact on the president, while the other is rather extreme and inflammatory (and highly unlikely).

The trial itself will resume at 11am EST tomorrow with more testimony from Pecker and is expected to run until 2pm EST.