For the first time in history, prosecutors will present a criminal case against a former American president to a jury Monday as they accuse Donald Trump of a hush money scheme aimed at preventing damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public.
A 12-person jury in Manhattan is set to hear opening statements from prosecutors and defense lawyers in the first of four criminal cases against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to reach trial.
The statements are expected to give jurors and the voting public the clearest view yet of the allegations at the heart of the case, as well as insight into Trump’s expected defense.
Attorneys will also introduce a colorful cast of characters who are expected to testify about the made-for-tabloids saga, including a porn actor who says she had a sexual encounter with Trump and the lawyer who prosecutors say paid her to keep quiet about it.
Trump trial: What to expect from historic hearing of the century?
Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and could face four years in prison if convicted, though it’s not clear if the judge would seek to put him behind bars. A conviction would not preclude Trump from becoming president again, but because it is a state case, he would not be able to attempt to pardon himself if found guilty. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Unfolding as Trump vies to reclaim the White House, the trial will require him to spend his days in a courtroom rather than the campaign trail. He will have to listen as witnesses recount salacious and potentially unflattering details about his private life.
Trump has nonetheless sought to turn his criminal defendant status into an asset for his campaign, fundraising off his legal jeopardy and repeatedly railing against a justice system that he has for years claimed is weaponized against him.
Hearing the case is a jury that includes, among others, multiple lawyers, a sales professional, an investment banker and an English teacher.
The case will test jurors’ ability to set aside any bias but also Trump’s ability to abide by the court’s restrictions, such as a gag order that bars him from attacking witnesses. Prosecutors are seeking fines against him for alleged violations of that order.
4:45Man sets himself on fire outside Trump trial courthouse in New York
The case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg revisits a chapter from Trump’s history when his celebrity past collided with his political ambitions and, prosecutors say, he sought to prevent potentially damaging stories from surfacing through hush money payments.
One such payment was a $130,000 sum that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, gave to porn actor Stormy Daniels to prevent her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump from emerging into public shortly before the 2016 election.
Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of the payments in internal records when his company reimbursed Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2018 and is expected to be a star witness for the prosecution.
Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.
To convict Trump of a felony, prosecutors must show he not only falsified or caused business records to be entered falsely, which would be a misdemeanor, but that he did so to conceal another crime.
The allegations don’t accuse Trump of an egregious abuse of power like the federal case in Washington charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, or of flouting national security protocols like the federal case in Florida charging him with hoarding classified documents.
But the New York prosecution has taken on added importance because it may be the only one of the four cases against Trump that reaches trial before the November election. Appeals and legal wrangling have delayed the other three cases.
The other charge of which Trump has been convicted is sexual abuse which as a horrible a crime as anybody who wants to be the president of the USA can be charged with.
If Joe Biden was convicted of sexual assault he would be a dead man politically and not even the democrats would vote for him. On the other hand Donald Trump is a hero to the conservatives for being a rapist. It is beyond shameful.
Jury finds Trump liable for sexual abuse, awards accuser $5M
A jury found Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996. The jury awarded her $5 million in a judgment that could haunt the former president as he campaigns to regain the White House. (May 9) (AP video: David R Martin, Robert Bumsted)Videos
NEW YORK (AP) — A jury found Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5 million in a judgment that could haunt the former president as he campaigns to regain the White House.
The verdict was split: Jurors rejected Carroll’s claim that she was raped, finding Trump responsible for a lesser degree of sexual abuse. The judgment adds to Trump’s legal woes and offers vindication to Carroll, whose allegations had been mocked and dismissed by Trump for years.
She nodded as the verdict was announced in a New York City federal courtroom only three hours after deliberations had begun, then hugged supporters and smiled through tears. As the courtroom cleared, Carroll could be heard laughing and crying.
Jurors also found Trump liable for defaming Carroll over her allegations. Trump did not attend the civil trial and was absent when the verdict was read.
Trump immediately lashed out on his social media site, claiming that he does not know Carroll and referring to the verdict as “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.” He promised to appeal.
Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, shook hands with Carroll and hugged her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, after the verdict was announced. Outside the courthouse, he told reporters the jury’s rejection of the rape claim while finding Trump responsible for sexual abuse was “perplexing” and “strange.”
“Part of me was obviously very happy that Donald Trump was not branded a rapist,” he said.
He defended Trump’s absence, citing the trial’s “circus atmosphere.” He said having Trump there “would be more of a circus.”
Tacopina added: “What more can you say other than ‘I didn’t do it’?”
In a written statement, Kaplan said the verdict proved nobody is above the law, “not even the president of the United States.”
Carroll, in her own statement, said she sued Trump to “clear my name and to get my life back. Today, the world finally knows the truth. This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”
It was unclear what, if any, implications the verdict would have on Trump’s third presidential bid. He’s in a commanding position among GOP contenders and has faced few political consequences in the wake of previous controversies, ranging from the vulgar “Access Hollywood” tape to his New York criminal indictment.
His GOP rivals were mostly silent after the verdict, a sign of their reluctance to cross Trump supporters who are critical to winning the presidential nomination. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, one of the few vocal Trump critics in the race, said the verdict was “another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.”
Carroll was one of more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment. She went public in a 2019 memoir with her allegation that the Republican raped her in the dressing room of a posh Manhattan department store.
Trump, 76, denied it, saying he never encountered Carroll at the store and did not know her. He has called her a “nut job” who invented “a fraudulent and false story” to sell a memoir.
Carroll, 79, sought unspecified damages, plus a retraction of what she said were Trump’s defamatory denials of her claims.
The trial revisited the lightning-rod topic of Trump’s conduct toward women.
Carroll gave multiple days of frank, occasionally emotional testimony, buttressed by two friends who testified that she reported the alleged attack to them soon afterward.
Jurors also heard from Jessica Leeds, a former stockbroker who testified that Trump abruptly groped her against her will on an airline flight in the 1970s, and from Natasha Stoynoff, a writer who said Trump forcibly kissed her against her will while she was interviewing him for a 2005 article.
The six-man, three-woman jury also saw the well-known 2005 “Access Hollywood” hot-mic recording of Trump talking about kissing and grabbing women without asking.
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll, Leeds and Stoynoff have done.
The verdict comes as Trump faces an accelerating swirl of legal risks.
He’s fighting a New York criminal case related to hush money payments made to a porn actor. The state attorney general has sued him, his family and his business over alleged financial wrongdoing.
Trump is also contending with investigations into his possible mishandling of classified documents, his actions after the 2020 election and his activities during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump denies wrongdoing in all of those matters.
Carroll, who penned an Elle magazine advice column for 27 years, has also written for magazines and “Saturday Night Live.” She and Trump were in social circles that overlapped at a 1987 party, where a photo documented them and their then-spouses interacting. Trump has said he doesn’t remember it.
According to Carroll, she ended up in a dressing room with Trump after they ran into each other at Bergdorf Goodman on an unspecified Thursday evening in spring 1996.
They took an impromptu jaunt to the lingerie department so he could search for a women’s gift and soon were teasing each other about trying on a skimpy bodysuit, Carroll testified. To her, it seemed like comedy, something like her 1986 “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which a man admires himself in a mirror.
But then, she said, Trump slammed the door, pinned her against a wall, planted his mouth on hers, yanked her tights down and raped her as she tried to break away. Carroll said she ultimately pushed him off with her knee and immediately left the store.
“I always think back to why I walked in there to get myself in that situation,” she testified, her voice breaking, “but I’m proud to say I did get out.”
She never called police or noted it in her diary. Carroll said she kept silent for fear Trump would retaliate, out of shame and because she worried that people would see her as somewhat responsible for being attacked.
The jury awarded Carroll $2 million for Trump’s sexual abuse and $20,000 in punitive damages. For defamation, jurors awarded $1 million for Trump’s October statement, another $1.7 million for harm to Carroll’s reputation and $280,000 in punitive damages.
Tacopina told jurors Carroll invented her claims after hearing about a 2012 “Law and Order” episode in which a woman is raped in the dressing room of the lingerie section of a Bergdorf Goodman store.
Carroll “cannot produce any objective evidence to back up her claim because it didn’t happen,” he told jurors. He accused her of “advancing a false claim of rape for money, for political reasons and for status.”
In questioning Carroll, he sought to cast doubt on her description of fighting off the far heavier Trump without dropping her handbag or ripping her tights, and without anyone around to hear or see them in the lingerie section.
The lawyer pressed her about — by her own account — not screaming, looking for help while fleeing the store or seeking out medical attention, security video or police.
Carroll reproached him.
“I’m telling you he raped me, whether I screamed or not,” she said.
There’s no possibility of Trump being charged with attacking Carroll, as the legal time limit has long since passed.
For similar reasons, she initially filed her civil case as a defamation lawsuit, saying Trump’s derogatory denials had subjected her to hatred, shredded her reputation and harmed her career.
Then, starting last fall, New York state gave people a chance to sue over sexual assault allegations that would otherwise be too old. Carroll was one of the first to file.
Imagine Joe Biden is convicted of sexual assault and has to pay $ 464 million for that. Dr. Jill Biden would be gone to begin with. That is not happening and here is Dr. Jill Biden.
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