(The Center Square) – Federal prosecutors on Monday began laying out what they say is election fraud in 2016 by former President Donald Trump.
Trump, 77, is the first former U.S. president to be charged with a felony. Prosecutors and defense attorneys presented their opening statements to the jury of five women and seven men.
Prosecutors said Trump corrupted the 2016 election, The Hill reported on Monday.
“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up,” Manhattan prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said. “The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election, then covered it up.”
Trump will spend four days a week in court in New York for the next six to eight weeks on state charges that he disguised hush money payments to two women as legal expenses during the 2016 election. Judge Juan Merchan has not scheduled trial days on Wednesdays.
On Monday, his defense attorneys said he had done nothing wrong.
“President Trump is innocent,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche told the jury. “He did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan district attorney’s office should never have brought this case.”
Trump pleaded not guilty in April 2023 to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Merchan’s gag order remains in place, ordered last month before the trial began. Trump, the nation’s 45th president, is prohibited from making or directing others to make public statements about witnesses concerning their potential participation or about counsel in the case or about court staff, district attorney staff or family members of staff.
Prosecutors said Trump’s $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels was falsely covered up as a business expense, that the money was to help keep her quiet. Prosecutors say they had a sexual encounter.
Prosecutors also said Trump paid Karen McDougal, a Playboy magazine “Playmate,” and reimbursed then attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to cover it up.
“This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior,” Colangelo said. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.”
Reuters reported that Blanche countered that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should have never brought the case to trial.
“There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election” Blanche said. “It’s called democracy. They put something sinister on this idea, as if it’s a crime.”
Prosecutors say Trump falsified internal records kept by his company, hiding the true nature of payments that involve Daniels ($130,000), McDougal ($150,000), and Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen ($420,000). Prosecutors say the money was logged as legal expenses, not reimbursements. In a reversal of past close relationships now pivotal to the prosecution against him, both Cohen and Daniels are expected to testify.
Under New York state law, falsifying business records in the first degree is a Class E felony that carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison.
Even if convicted and sentenced to jail, Trump could continue his campaign to return to the White House. He’s facing the Democratic incumbent who ousted him in 2020, 81-year-old President Joe Biden.
Trump faces 88 felony charges spread across four cases in Florida, Georgia, New York and Washington.
Trump has said the criminal and civil trials he faces are designed to keep him from winning the 2024 rematch versus Biden.
“Federal prosecutors on Monday began laying out what they say is election fraud in 2016 by former President Donald Trump.”,,,,,by creating their own lawfare election fraud to effect and corrupt the outcome of the 2024 election!!!!! Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,,,and he who is without scruples line up with the democrats. When it comes to orchestrating criminal schemes, they are the guilty Beethoven’s 9th opus, compared to an innocent Trump nursery rhyme ditty.
Trying to connect the payment of hush money to the corruption of a 2016 election is a far walk to reality, but a short trip to a quick democrat politically purloined 2024 election. Claiming that Trump hush money exceeds the Clintonian stain proven blue dresses and coverups of past female molestations of Presidential proportions is the heights of hypocrisy. Getting paid off in cash for a woman is a lot less painful for a woman than getting smoked by Clintonian cigars, and humiliated for life, by an acting President in office that democrats blindly cheered on as qualified to win a nother subsequent Presidential re-election having himself paid off Jennifer Flowers and others in legions of hush money and State Jobs. Such magnitudes of their own moral failures proves the whole Democrat party unfit to govern a Great American nation, and it all started with THEM, and their Beep, Beep, little Bill.
what a farce
THIS IS lawfare, pure and simple.
AND UNLESS we the people stop it, the left will KEEP USING IT To stay in power.
This is a jacked up Democrat Crime Organization nothing burger. It was nor hush money it was a payment for a basic Non-Disclosure Contract. Major corporations enter to these everyday in order to not waste time on petty legal matters. ASt worst these were misdemeanors that the statutes on limitations ran out on years ago. Also the lady in question published a written statement clarifying there was never an inappropriate relationship between herself and President Trump. The U.S.D.O.J. looked at this some years ago as did the Federal Elections Commission and both stated there were no laws violated. What were have is one piece of a massive attack on the leading Republican Candidate by the Democrat Crime Organization in hopes of preventing him from winning the November Election. These cases are such obvious cases of Prosecutorial Misconduct and a massive collusion between the Democrat CRime Organization, it’s minions in the U.S.D.O.J. and Democrat Prosecutors and Judges. Any cases Trump loses will be overturned on appeal and he should file suit against all parties involved in this putrid cases of injustice for prosecutorial misconduct and malicious prosecution. All guilty parties should never be allowed in a court room ever again except as defendants.
YOU assume they will LET ANY Appeal get to the scotus..