What happened in the courtroom during opening statements in Trump’s hush money trial

Opening statements began Monday in the first criminal trial of Donald Trump. Prosecutors accused Trump and his associates of falsifying business records during his 2016 campaign to conceal an alleged extramarital affair. But the former president’s attorney said he was not involved in the payments, which they argue weren’t illegal, and did not commit a crime. William Brangham reports.
Geoff Bennett:
Opening statements began today in the first criminal trial of former President Donald Trump. Prosecutors accused Mr. Trump and his associates of falsifying business records during his 2016 campaign for president in an effort to conceal an alleged extramarital affair. But the former president’s attorney said he was not involved in the payments, which they argue were not illegal and did not commit a crime.
Our William Brangham was in the courthouse today following it all.
So, William, we know that the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, very much wants this case to be seen as a case about interference in the 2016 election and less about alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. How much of that came out in the prosecution’s opening statement today?
William Brangham:
I mean, Geoff, it came out an enormous amount. I mean, it was one of the very first things out of prosecutor Matthew Colangelo’s mouth.
He was arguing that Donald Trump engaged in and coordinated a conspiracy to corrupt the 2016 election, as you’re talking about. That’s the frame that they want jurors to see this entire case through. Now, the tricky part is, it’s not what they’re charging. There’s no allegation or insinuation that they broke campaign finance laws here.
They’re talking about prosecuting Donald Trump for falsifying business records, but they want those 34 charges of what they call cooking the books to be seen in service of that larger, more nefarious goal.
And prosecutors today took the jurors back in time to 2016. It was the end of the presidential election, and the “Access Hollywood” tape had just dropped, and Donald Trump’s campaign was in panic mode. And then, all of a sudden, the story that Stormy Daniels, the pornographic actress, had been trying to sell for a few months suddenly became much more urgent to them.
And so, then, Donald Trump’s lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 of his own money to stay quiet and to not say anything about that. Then, once Donald Trump became president, he repaid Cohen that money and more.
And it is in that process, that’s where prosecutors argue that the conspiracy to cover all this up was, because they argue that Trump tried to make that — those payments seem like — quote, unquote — “just run-of-the-mill legal fees,” when, in fact, they were in service of this hush money.
And so Colangelo said this was election fraud, pure and simple.
Geoff Bennett:
And how did Mr. Trump’s defense team respond to that?
William Brangham:
Well, Todd Blanche, who represents the former president, said that Donald Trump is innocent of all of this, he’s not guilty of any crime.
He said Stormy Daniels’ allegation was completely false. He said Trump had nothing to do with those initial payments to her, nor did he have anything to do with the accounting of how the payments to Michael Cohen were being made. He flat-out rejected the idea that there was anything unusual about Trump paying Michael Cohen, who was his lawyer at the time, called himself Trump’s lawyer, was his lawyer, and that, of course, you pay your lawyer fees all the time.
He said there’s nothing out of the ordinary there.
Geoff Bennett:
And Michael Cohen, who you mentioned is expected to be the prosecution’s star witness, given his centrality to this whole alleged scheme, the Trump team says that Michael Cohen cannot be trusted.
How are both sides really laying the foundation for his coming testimony?
William Brangham:
I mean, Geoff, this is going to be one of the central tensions of this case, is trying to impugn the reliability and trustworthiness of Michael Cohen.
As you said, he is a convicted felon. He has been found guilty of perjury. The prosecution tried to inoculate themselves in some way by this, by admitting all of that, and saying that everything that you hear Michael Cohen say on the witness stand, don’t just take it as Michael Cohen’s word, but they will promise that they will back it up with evidence, e-mails, texts, phone calls, recordings of Donald Trump himself that affirm all of the things that Michael Cohen has to say.
Todd Blanche, Trump’s lawyer, in his opening statement today, said, not only is Michael Cohen a liar who you cannot trust, but he said that he is — quote — “obsessed” with Donald Trump and obsessed with seeing him in jail and seeing his family in jail. He painted Michael Cohen as someone who’s basically staked his entire career and financial future by selling books and doing these podcasts as someone who wants to see Trump sunken at all costs, and that you thus can’t trust him, that it’s all poison fruit, everything coming out of his mouth.
Geoff Bennett:
So what other witnesses should we expect to hear about and hear from in the coming weeks?
William Brangham:
Well, we heard from one of them partly today. That was David Pecker, who is the head of American Media, which was the publisher of The National Enquirer.
And Pecker’s role in all of this is that he, for the prosecutors, helped set up this pattern, that David Pecker and Michael Cohen and allegedly Donald Trump were all part of this early scheme set up in 2015, before the campaign began, to make The National Enquirer sort of the eyes and ears for Donald Trump and that, if anyone came forward with stories that could be damaging to the candidate, they would buy those stories up and squash them.
So we will hear more from Pecker. We’re expected to hear from Stormy Daniels. We’re expected to hear from Michael Cohen, as we have been discussing. We might also hear from Hope Hicks, who was a campaign aide at the time, and who apparently had some conversations about these payments.
The biggest unanswered question as far as who gets on the witness stand is Donald Trump himself. He has said he wants to testify, but he has said this in previous cases and then, when given the choice, chooses not to.
Whether he does or not is still a big open question. I mean, there’s not a single legal analyst that I have spoken to who thinks that it’s a good idea, thinking that would be an incredibly risky move for Trump himself to take the witness stand.
Geoff Bennett:
William Brangham.
Thanks, as always, William. We appreciate it.
William Brangham:
Thanks, Geoff.