Trump’s trial judge rules jury can hear evidence of his alleged affair with an ex-Playboy model

Former president claims persecution as first of four US prosecutions starts

Donald Trump’s first criminal trial started in Manhattan yesterday morning with the judge ruling that jurors will be allowed to hear evidence about the former president’s alleged extra-marital affair with a former Playboy model.

In a flurry of rulings before the start of jury selection, Justice Juan Merchan said evidence about Mr Trump’s alleged relationship with Karen McDougal is a central element of the case accusing the former president of falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment.

But the judge agreed to prevent jurors from listening to the so-called Access Hollywood tape or from hearing that Mr Trump’s wife Melania was pregnant during the alleged affair.

Selection of a panel of 12 jurors and six alternates didn’t begin as expected, after Justice Merchan went through a litany of motions recently made by Mr Trump’s legal team that needed to be resolved before potential jurors can be interviewed. It’s the first of Mr Trump’s four criminal prosecutions to go to trial.

The jurors who are chosen will decide whether Mr Trump falsified business records at his real-estate company to conceal a hush-money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election as part of a broader alleged scheme to prevent voters from seeing negative tabloid stories about him.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought the indictment against Mr Trump last year.

Mr Trump, who has railed against the case for months and denies wrongdoing, claims he’s the victim of a Democratic “witch-hunt” to prevent him from returning to the White House.

The Republican frontrunner faces three other criminal prosecutions, including two that accuse him of conspiring to overturn the result of the 2020 election after he lost to Joe Biden.

After entering the New York state courthouse, 77-year-old Mr Trump walked slowly and deliberately towards the press outside the courtroom in his traditional blue suit and red tie. Mr Trump paused before the cameras and said that the case was an outrage and a persecution.

“It’s a case that should have never been brought,” said Mr Trump, who has denied having had a relationship with McDougal or another woman in the case, Stormy Daniels, who was a porn star.

The timing of the release of the Access Hollywood tape in which Mr Trump boasts about men who are “stars” being allowed to grab women’s genitals without consent is significant because the district attorney argues it created a firestorm around Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign that motivated him to pay €130,000 to Daniels to keep quiet about their alleged affair a decade earlier.

Mr Trump’s alleged affair with McDougal may also be important because American Media Inc, publisher of the National Enquirer, paid her €140,000 to keep quiet about it before the election.

Mr Trump is required to attend the trial each day, preventing him from travelling during his presidential campaign, but also giving him free access to television cameras outside the courtroom.

Once a jury is picked, lawyers for Mr Bragg and Mr Trump will give opening statements, and the government will begin calling witnesses. Mr Bragg’s star witnessisMrTrump’sformerlawyerand fixerMichaelCohen,whopersonallypaid Daniels to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Mr Trump a decade earlier.

Central to the indictment is the way in which Mr Trump repaid Cohen, allegedly in monthly instalments throughout 2017 that were falsely classified in financial statements as legal services.

‘Mr Trump claims this is a Democratic “witch-hunt” to stop him from returning to the White House’