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Manhattan prosecutors charged Donald Trump that he lied “over and over again” about the payments made to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election to prevent his relationship from becoming public.
The 77-year-old former president of the United States “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo told the seven men and five women chosen to decide the case. Trump continued to cover up the transactions because he “wanted to hide his criminal conduct and that of others,” Colangelo added. It began like this as the opening arguments of the first criminal trial against a former president of the United States began.
The alleged conspiracy
The prosecutor explained that “the conspiracy began” a few months after Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 in a meeting between him, his lawyer Michael Cohen and National Enquirer editor David Pecker. In that meeting “they organized a conspiracy to influence the presidential election by withholding negative information about Trump in order to help him get elected,” he said. Colangelo said the conspiracy included Cohen’s payments to porn star Stormy Daniels just weeks before the 2016 election so he wouldn’t reveal an old affair with the tycoon. Payments which in his opinion were made “at the direction of the accused to influence the presidential elections”. After the vote, Trump reimbursed Cohen for those payments and “disguised their purpose.” The tycoon “stated in corporate documents that he was paying Cohen for legal services under a non-existent agreement.”
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Payments to cover up news
Matthew Colangelo described in court the “catch and kill” practice used by the tycoon, his lawyer Michael Cohen and the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid David Pecker to protect The Donald’s image. “It’s a way of buying harmful information not to publish it but to hide it, make it disappear and, in this case, help the candidate,” Colangelo said. The first episode, he reported, was the tabloid’s payment of 30,000 dollars to the former concierge of Trump Tower for a later covered-up exclusive, the one according to which Trump was the father of a child out of wedlock. The second was the payment of 150,000 dollars to the Playboy bunny Karen McDougal for another exclusive story not to be published, concerning her past relationship with the tycoon: «The defendant desperately wanted this information about Karen McDougal not to become public because she was worried about the elections.” The prosecutor also claimed that the tabloid was used to attack Trump’s opponents in the race for the White House, accusing Bern Carson of medical negligence and Republican Senator Ted Cruz of “sexual infidelity” and of “having some family connection to the assassination of Jfk”.
The defense arguments
«Donald Trump is innocent, he has not committed any crime». Thus Todd Blanche, one of the former American president’s lawyers in the porn star case, began his preliminary statements. Trump «is a man, he is a husband, he is a father. He is a person just like you and just like me”, continued the lawyer, insisting on calling the tycoon “president”. The lawyer then contested the accusation, arguing that the 34 charges are just pieces of paper and that “none of them is a crime”, referring to the 34 checks with which, according to the prosecutor, the tycoon’s then lawyer Michael Cohen would have been reimbursed after having advanced the 130 thousand dollars paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels out of his own pocket. “The jury will find a lot of reasonable doubts,” he added.