A twelve-person jury will decide whether the former president was guilty of a crime when he allegedly paid off embarrassing newspaper ads and then falsified internal accounts to cover up the payments.
The defenders of Trump were given the floor after the prosecution’s presentation and maintained that the former president was innocent and that the case should never have been presented by the prosecutor’s office in Manhattan.
Witnesses
Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker was the first to take the stand after opening statements.
He is a close friend of Trump, and the prosecution believes that he and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen met in Trump Tower in 2015 to lay out a plan for dealing with negative newspaper reports.
The defenders believed that meeting is not in itself an offense and far from being evidence of planning a dubious strategy. Lead defense attorney Todd Blanche then went at the throat of Cohen, the prosecution’s main witness, whom he described as “obsessed with Trump” but who flipped and launched a campaign of lies when he didn’t get a job in the Trump administration.
Witch hunt
As usual, Trump fired a few volleys at what he called the government’s witch hunt, where the goal is allegedly to disrupt the ongoing presidential election campaign and reduce Trump’s chance of a second term in the White House.
– This is a very, very sad day for America, said the 77-year-old candidate as he entered the court building in Manhattan.
– I am here instead of being in Pennsylvania, Georgia and a number of other places to campaign. This is a witch hunt, and it’s shameful, Trump said.
Historic trial
Donald Trump is the first former president in US history to be indicted in a criminal case. The indictment concerns a breach of the Accounting Act in connection with a payment of 130,000 dollars, just over 1.4 million kroner, to Stephanie Clifford, better known as the porn actress Stormy Daniels.
The so-called hush money was paid via Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen just before the presidential election in 2016, allegedly so that Clifford would keep a close eye on the fact that she and Trump had had sex in a hotel ten years earlier.
Jail unlikely
The bribery case is considered to be the least damaging of the four cases Trump is currently involved in. Two other cases are more closely related to the storming of Capitol Hill in January 2020. A final case concerns the storage of secret documents after the resignation as president.
If he is found guilty following the indictment in the bribery case, Trump risks prison, but legal experts believe that a fine is more likely.
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2024-04-23 00:37:36