The Latest | ‘Catch-and-kill’ strategy to be a focus as testimony resumes in Trump hush money case
NEW YORK — A veteran tabloid publisher was expected to return to the witness stand Tuesday in the historic hush-money trial of Donald Trump.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys painted competing portraits of the former president in their opening statements Monday — one portraying him as someone who tried to corrupt the 2016 presidential election for his own benefit and another describing him as an innocent, ordinary man who was put on a case subject. the government ‘should never have brought’.
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer and a longtime friend of Trump, was the only witness Monday. He is expected to tell jurors Tuesday about his efforts to help Trump suppress unflattering stories during the 2016 campaign.
Prosecutors say Pecker worked with Trump and Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen on a catch-and-kill strategy to buy and then fuel negative stories. At the heart of the case are allegations that Trump orchestrated a plan to bury unflattering stories about his personal life that could torpedo his campaign.
Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of those payments in internal company documents.
He has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying company records. Although he faces up to four years in prison if convicted, it is unclear whether the judge would decide to put him behind bars.
Before testimony resumes Tuesday, the judge will hold a hearing on prosecutors’ request to sanction and fine Trump over social media posts that they say violate a silence order banning him from attacking key witnesses.
The case is the first criminal trial of a former US president and the first of four prosecutions against Trump to go to a jury.
Currently:
– Key takeaways from the opening statements of Donald Trump’s hush money trial
– Key players: who’s who in Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal trial
– The hush money case is just one of Trump’s lawsuits. Check out the others here
– Trump’s $175 million bond in New York civil fraud case settled with cash promise
– Without cameras to go live, the Trump trial proves the potential of live blogs as a news tool
Here’s the latest:
Donald Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying internal corporate records of the Trump Organization. But prosecutors made clear they don’t want jurors to view this as a routine paper case.
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said Monday that at the heart of the case is a plan to “corrupt” the 2016 election by silencing people who were about to come forward with embarrassing stories that Trump feared would hurt his campaign harm.
“No politician wants bad press,” Colangelo said. “But the evidence at trial will show that this was not a spin or communications strategy. This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal spending to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior.”
Two journalists who covered the hush-money trial of Donald Trump were removed and expelled Monday for violating rules banning recording and photography in the overflow room, where reporters unable to get into the main courtroom watch the proceedings on large screens, court officials said .
One of the banned journalists had previously been warned for breaking the rules during jury selection.
Uniformed court officials have made daily announcements to remind reporters of the rules. Signs in the overflow area and around the courthouse make it clear that photography and filming are not permitted.
Donald Trump’s hush money trial will be suspended early Tuesday in honor of Passover. Judge Juan M. Merchan plans to end the court proceedings at 2 p.m. due to the holiday.
Prosecutors made history Monday as they presented their opening statements to a jury in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president, accusing Donald Trump of a hush-money scheme aimed at preventing damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public.
The dueling statements painted very different portraits of the man who, before serving in the White House, was best known as a major real estate developer and his reality TV show “The Apprentice.”
One depicted him as someone who tried to illegally corrupt the 2016 presidential election for his own benefit, and the other described him as an innocent, everyday man who was subjected to a case the government “should never have brought.”