Trump is accused of hide a payment $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election to prevent her from speaking publicly about her claim that she maintained a affair of a night with him at a celebrity golf tournament a decade earlier, more than four months after Trump's wife, Melania, gave birth to the couple's now 18-year-old son, Barron.
Additionally, the indictment alleges that a former Playboy Playmate of the Year, Karen McDougal, says she had a month-long affair with Trump and that a tabloid publisher paid her $150,000 with which he bought the rights to her story and then, at her behest, of Trump, removed the article.
Trump has denied both allegations and the 34 charges that he faces in the New York case, including that he ordered his former political fixer, perjured convict Michael Cohen, to make the payment to Daniels and then reimburse him during the first year of his presidency in 2017, while he settled the Cohen's monthly stipends in Trump's business records as legal expenses.
Arriving at the trial on Tuesday, Trump told reporters: “I was paying a lawyer and I wrote it down as a legal expense. “That's exactly what it was.”
Altering his company's accounting books would be a misdemeanor, but to convict Trump of a more serious crime, prosecutors will have to convince jurors that he committed an underlying crime, such as trying to influence the outcome of the election. 2016 maintaining information on alleged voter issues.
It is not illegal to pay hush money, and Trump can claim that the payments were made simply to prevent the disclosure of personally compromising details of his life, not to try to influence the 2016 election.
The eventual 12-member jury will have to reach a unanimous decision of a guilty or acquittal verdict. If jurors cannot reach an agreement among themselves, what is called a “hung jury” would occur, leaving prosecutors to decide whether to seek a new trial.
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.
Two of the other accusations, one state and one federal, blame Trump for trying illegally reverse his 2020 defeatwhile the third alleges that he took – also illegally – hundreds of highly classified national security documents to his seaside property in Florida when his presidential term ended and then refused investigators' requests to return them.
No firm trial dates have been set in any of those three cases, and Trump has sought to push back the start dates until after the election.
If Trump 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.
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