Trump hush-money trial kicks off with opening statements in New York

Donald Trump on Monday will hear prosecutors explain why his alleged coverup of a hush money payment to an adult film star during his 2016 campaign broke the law, as the first-ever criminal trial of a former United States president begins in New York.

Lawyers for the Republican presidential candidate will also make their opening statement in what may be the only one of Trump’s four criminal prosecutions to go to trial before his November 5 election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden.

Prosecutors say Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult star Stormy Daniels — for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier — deceived voters in the waning days of Trump’s 2016 campaign when his candidacy was struggling from other revelations of sexual misbehaviour.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and denies having had a sexual encounter with Daniels.

On Monday morning, Trump called for his supporters to protest peacefully. “America Loving Protesters should be allowed to protest at the front steps of courthouses, all over the country,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social.

Many legal experts see the case as the least consequential of the Trump prosecutions. A guilty verdict would not bar him from taking office but could hurt his candidacy.

Reuters/Ipsos polling shows half of independent voters and one in four Republicans say they would not vote for Trump if he is convicted of a crime.

Prosecutors have said the Daniels payment was part of a broader “catch and kill” scheme hatched by Trump, Cohen and David Pecker — the former chief executive of tabloid publisher American Media — to pay off people with potentially damaging information about Trump before the November 2016 election.