Trump’s sex life in spotlight as hush money trial begins
Legal arguments about what the jury could be told about past events, including an affair Trump had when wife Melania was pregnant, took centre stage as his criminal trial began in Manhattan on Monday, reports Devlin Barrett.
Merchan agreed to allow prosecutors to tell the jury about a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Trump, Cohen and National Enquirer editor David Pecker, who allegedly tried to help Trump’s presidential campaign. Prosecutors say the three men discussed publishing positive stories about the real estate mogul turned candidate, and negative pieces about his political opponents.
The opening day of Donald Trump’s criminal trial delved deep into his tabloid-fuelled sex life, as lawyers and the judge debated how many salacious details jurors should eventually hear as they decide whether he broke the law to cover up hush money payments.
The historic first trial of a former US president began on Monday in an ageing courthouse that has seen a host of highprofile cases over the years, from rap stars to movie moguls, but never one with such potential consequences for the nation and the world.
The dry rituals of court only made the proceedings more surreal, as New York Supreme Court Justice Juan M Mercha warned Trump he could be sent to jail if he disrupted the trial or failed to appear in court, and prosecutors said they would seek to hold Trump in contempt even before a single potential juror had been questioned.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was openly contemptuous of the trial when speaking to reporters in the courthouse hallway. “This is an assault on America,” he declared, calling the case a “political prosecution … that should never have been brought.”
Once inside the courtroom, however, Trump was anything but disruptive. He frequently appeared bored or uninterested in the legal jousting that took up the entire morning session.
Shortly after the lunch break, as Merchan read a lengthy series of instructions to prospective jurors, Trump closed his eyes and at times appeared to nod off. He then would abruptly catch himself and stiffen his posture.
The former president’s most animated moments in court came when the judge was not on the bench. Trump chatted with his lawyers at the defence table, sometimes making them laugh or smile.
While hundreds of potential jurors waited on another floor, lawyers sparred for hours on Monday morning over what evidence should be shared with them, and a host of legal issues large and small.
It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that the first batch of 96 potential jurors entered the courtroom to begin the voir dire screening process.
Almost immediately half of them were gone, having raised their hands when asked who could not be fair or impartial in a case involving Trump.
Merchan tried to keep the high-profile case on an even keel, at one point urging prosecutors and defence lawyers to “sit down, relax” while he laid out the issues yet to be decided.
Trump has repeatedly criticised the judge, claiming bias against him and unsuccessfully attempting to get him removed from the case. Merchan, in turn, expressed his displeasure with Trump over public statements attacking his former lawyer Michael Cohen, a key witness in the case, after the judge had issued a gag order explicitly barring such comments.
Prosecutors argued Trump had made three social media posts that violated the judge’s order. They asked that he be fined a total of $3000, found in contempt and warned he could be sent to jail if he keeps making such comments.
When Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, responded that his client had to be able to respond to political and public attacks from Cohen and others, Merchan asked archly for the lawyer to point out where in his gag order he’d made an exception like that. The judge scheduled a hearing on the matter next week.
Trump’s unique status as a defendant who also happens to be a former and potential future president arose frequently in the opening hours of the trial - the first of four that Trump faces, and the only one that has not been significantly delayed by pretrial proceedings and appeals.
Criminal defendants, Merchan noted, have a right to participate in private sidebar questioning of potential jurors, but if Trump were to do that, he would be joined by Secret Service agents, creating logistical hurdles for court officials.
Prosecutors have charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records - part of what they say was a criminal scheme to cover up Cohen’s 2016 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels so she would keep quiet about her alleged tryst with Trump years earlier.
Cohen was reimbursed for those payments after Trump won the 2016 presidential election, but those payments were categorised as a legal retainer. Concealing the true purpose of the
payments amounts to a crime, prosecutors charge.
In a case so closely tied to an alleged sexual liaison, lawyers spent much of Monday arguing over what a jury can be told about other purported indiscretions in Trump’s life.
Prosecutors wanted to tell the jury that he also had an affair with Karen MacDougal, a Playboy model, at a time when his wife, Melania Trump, was pregnant with his child.
Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, argued that would poison the jury against his client, for something that was not a crime and has no bearing on the charges he is facing.
“The risk of unfair prejudice is through the roof,” Blanche said, “… because of these salacious details about a completely different situation.”
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass argued that the details of the McDougal affair were important to show Trump’s state of mind and behaviour when allegations of sexual impropriety surfaced against him.
The judge said the jury could be told about the affair, but not the additional detail that at the time Melania Trump was pregnant.
That detail, he said, was prejudicial, although he reserved the right to change his thinking on that matter as other evidence is introduced during the trial.
Since the 1980s, Trump’s fame and notoriety have been fuelled partly by the tabloid press, and prosecutors made clear on Monday morning that they aim to use that backscratching relationship against him.
Merchan agreed to allow prosecutors to tell the jury about a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Trump, Cohen and National Enquirer editor David Pecker, who allegedly tried to help Trump’s presidential campaign.
Prosecutors say the three men discussed publishing positive stories about the real estate mogul turned candidate, and negative pieces about his political opponents.
Prosecutors are expected to use that type of information to support their argument that Trump intended to help his campaign image when he covered up the $130,000 payment to Daniels. That money allegedly kept her quiet during the campaign about a sexual encounter she says she’d had with Trump 10 years earlier.
“The entire point of the Trump Tower meeting was to control the flow of information that reached the electorate to accentuate the positive, hide the negative and exaggerate information that would be harmful to Trump’s opponents,” Steinglass argued.
Blanche countered that the meeting was not part of any charged criminal conduct, and said such sessions are common for candidates.
While they lost that argument, Trump’s lawyers convinced Merchan that jurors should not be told about a number of women who came forward in late 2016 to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct in the wake of an “Access Hollywood” recording in which he bragged about grabbing women.
Merchan called those accusations “very, very prejudicial”, adding that they are “just a rumour, just gossip, complete hearsay. Did it happen? There’s nothing to prove that. For me to allow the defendant to be prejudiced based just on a rumour is not fair.”
Steinglass had argued that his team should be allowed to mention, in general terms, those claims to the jury, to show how Trump reacted to them.
Trump “became almost obsessed with addressing these allegations”, the prosecutor said, because the candidate worried the stories would hurt him with women voters.
“This is really the key, specifically with female voters,” Steinglass argued.
– Washington Post
Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.