Trump’s history-making hush-money trial begins
The judge denied a defence request to recuse himself from the case ater Trump’s lawyers said he had a conflict of interest
Donald Trump arrived on Monday at a New York court for the start of jury selection in his hush-money trial, marking a singular moment in American history as the former president answers to criminal charges that he falsified business records in order to stifle stories about his sex life.
The first trial of any former US commander in chief will unfold as Trump vies to reclaim the White House, creating a remarkable split-screen spectacle of the presumptive Republican nominee spending his days as a criminal defendant while also campaigning for the presidency. He’s blended those roles over the last year by presenting himself, on the campaign trail and on social media, as victim of politically motivated prosecutions designed to derail his candidacy.
Ater a norm-shatering presidency shadowed by years of investigations, the trial amounts to a historic courtroom reckoning for Trump, who now faces four indictments charging him with crimes ranging from hoarding classified documents to ploting to overturn an election. Yet the political stakes are less clear since a conviction would not preclude him from becoming president and because the allegations in this case have been known for years and are seen as less grievous than the conduct behind the three other indictments.
The day began with Judge Juan M. Merchan ruling on a variety of procedural pretrial motions as Trump sat hunched over in his seat and stared into a monitor directly in front of him on the defence table while evidence was shown.
The judge denied a defence request to recuse himself from the case ater Trump’s lawyers said he had a conflict of interest. He also said prosecutors could not play for the jury the 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump was captured discussing grabbing women sexually without their permission. However, prosecutors will be allowed to question witnesses about the recording, which became public in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.
Prosecutors also asked Monday for Merchan to fine Trump $3,000 over social media posts that they said violated the judge’s gag order barring him from atacking witnesses. Last week, he used his Truth Social plaform to call his former lawyer Michael Cohen and the adult film actor Stormy Daniels “two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!”
“The defendant has demonstrated his willingness to flout the order. He’s atacked witnesses in the case,” said Christopher Conroy, one of the trial prosecutors.
One of Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, maintained that Trump was simply responding to the witnesses’ statements.
“It’s not as if President Trump is going out and targeting individuals. He is responding to salacious, repeated vehement atacks by these witnesses,” Blanche said.
When jury selection begins, scores of people are due to be called into the courtroom to start the process of finding 12 jurors, plus six alternates. Trump’s notoriety would make the process of picking a jury a near-herculean task in any year, but it’s likely to be especially challenging now, unfolding in a closely contested presidential election in the city where Trump grew up and catapulted to celebrity status before winning the White House.
Merchan has writen that the key is “whether the prospective juror can assure us that they will set aside any personal feelings or biases and render a decision that is based on the evidence and the law.”
No mater the outcome, Trump is determined to benefit from the proceedings, casting the case, and his indictments elsewhere, as a broad “weaponization of law enforcement” by Democratic prosecutors and officials. He maintains they are orchestrating sham charges in hopes of impeding his presidential run.
He’s lambasted judges and prosecutors for years, a patern of atacks that continued up to the moment he entered court on Monday, when he said: ‘”This is political persecution. This is a persecution like never before.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records that arose from an alleged effort to keep salacious - and, he says, bogus - stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaign.