Donald Trump heads to trial Monday, the first former US president to face criminal charges and the threat of prison if convicted.
His lawyers, prosecutors and Judge Juan Merchán will begin selecting juries in a New York court to hear evidence of Trump's alleged flirtations with a porn star and a former Playboy bunny, money to silence them and falsified accounting books to hide the payments .
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential contender in the November election, will observe proceedings from the defendant's table in a trial that could take place four days a week for the next month and a half. He could take the stand to defend himself or not, depending on how he and his attorneys view prosecutors' evidence.
Trump, US president from early 2017 until January 2021, has repeatedly attacked his prosecution. He complained on his Truth Social platform last week: “Nothing like this has ever happened in our country before. On Monday I will be forced to sit, GAGED, before a HIGHLY CONFLICTIVE AND CORRUPT JUDGE, whose hatred towards me knows no limits.”
As he is due to appear in court, the case is almost certain to keep the 77-year-old candidate off the campaign trail for long periods of time. Trump is trying to win back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden, who defeated him in the 2020 election, although to this day he falsely claims that he was robbed of another four-year term due to voting irregularities.
The former president is accused of hiding a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election to prevent her from speaking publicly about her claim that she had a one-night stand with him at a celebrity golf tournament. a decade earlier, less than four months after Trump's wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron.
In a second case, the prosecution alleges that a former Playboy Playmate of the Year, Karen McDougal, says she had a months-long affair with Trump and was paid $150,000 by a tabloid publisher who bought the rights to her story and then, at her behest, of Trump, killed the article.
Trump has denied both affairs and the 34 charges he faces in the New York case, including that he ordered his former political fixer, convicted Michael Cohen, to make the payment to Daniels and then reimburse him during the first year of his presidency in 2017, while labeling Cohen's monthly stipends in Trump's business records as legal expenses.
Each of the charges carries the possibility of a four-year prison sentence, although Trump is sure to appeal any guilty verdict and sentence.
The New York case is one of four unprecedented criminal indictments Trump faces spanning 88 charges, all of which he has denied.
Some legal analysts view the hush money case as the least consequential of the four cases, but it may be the only one that will go to trial before the Nov. 5 election.
Two of the other indictments accuse Trump of illegally trying to overturn his 2020 loss, while the third alleges that he illegally took hundreds of highly classified national security documents to his oceanfront estate in Florida when his presidential term ended and then He refused investigators' requests to return them.
No firm trial dates have been set in any of these three cases, all delayed by pretrial hearings and legal arguments. Trump has tried to delay the start dates until after the election and, if he wins, he could request that the federal charges be dismissed. In any case, if he takes power again, he would not be tried during his presidency.
Cohen, who turned against his former boss, is expected to be a key witness against Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges in the case and lying to Congress, among other crimes. In total, he was imprisoned for about 13 and a half months and spent a year and a half under home confinement.
Stormy Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, is also expected to testify, and McDougal could also testify.
Prosecutors could also call Hope Hicks to the witness stand. Hicks is a loyal and veteran Trump aide who witnessed behind-the-scenes campaign strategies just before the 2016 vote.
Trump has criticized the bribery charges since he was impeached a year ago, saying they and the other accusations brought against him are part of a plot by President Joe Biden and Democrats to prevent him from winning the White House again. “Electoral interference,” he calls it.
There is no evidence that Biden played any role in the accusations Trump faces.
Trump complained bitterly when Merchan first imposed a gag order prohibiting him from verbally attacking key perpetrators in the case who were likely to testify against him, including Daniels, whom Trump has often called “horseface.”
On his Truth Social platform, Trump then attacked the judge's daughter, Loren Merchan, who is a key official at a political consulting firm that worked for the 2020 campaigns of Biden and other Democrats.
“This judge should be recused and the case should be dismissed,” Trump said. “There has practically never been a more confrontational judge than this one. ELECTORAL INTERFERENCE at its worst!”
Merchan ignored Trump's taunts, but tightened the gag order, prohibiting him from attacking the judge's relatives or those of the case's lead prosecutor, Alvin Bragg.
Merchan said the gag orders against Trump are justified given his conduct in other recent court cases, citing “threatening, inflammatory and denigrating” statements he has made.
“It is no longer just a mere possibility or reasonable probability that there is a threat to the integrity of the judicial process. The threat is very real,” Merchan wrote when imposing the strictest gag order that affected his daughter, although not the judge or the prosecutor.
Trump immediately said it would be a “great honor” for him to be imprisoned by Merchan for violating the gag order, comparing himself to the late Nelson Mandela of South Africa, imprisoned for years while fighting racial apartheid.
“If this partisan Hack wants to put me in the 'clinic' for telling the open and obvious TRUTH, I will gladly become a modern-day Nelson Mandela,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“We have to save our country from these political agents disguised as prosecutors and judges, and I am willing to sacrifice my freedom for that noble cause,” he said.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump's presidential campaign, called the more restrictive gag order “unconstitutional” in a statement to CBS Newsclaiming it prevents Trump from “engaging in critical political speech.”
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channels Youtube, WhatsApp and to newsletter. Turn on notifications and follow us on Facebook, x and instagram.
