Trump’s criminal trial, a first for a former president, has begun in New York

To start the day in court Monday, the parties debated potential evidence and whether Trump has violated a gag order.

The judge overseeing the case, Juan Merchan, had issued a gag order on Trump that specifically bars him from making, or directing others to make, public statements about witnesses, prosecutors or jurors. He later extended the order to cover the families of those people after Trump went after the judge’s daughter by name on the former president’s social media site.

Merchan said he will hold a hearing on April 23 about the prosecution’s request to have Trump held in contempt of the gag order for several social media posts about potential witnesses in the case.

‘Trump wants to be present at everything’

Arriving to the courtroom Monday, Trump reiterated his complaint that the case is political persecution.

“This is a persecution like never before,” he told reporters. “It’s an assault on America and that’s why I am very proud to be here, this is an assault on our country.”

To the extent possible, Trump plans to be involved in court conferences and the jury selection process, defense attorney Todd Blanche said Monday.

“President Trump wants to be present at everything,” Blanche said.

Merchan warned that if Trump disrupts the proceeding, he could be jailed, with the trial continuing in his absence.

The trial comes just months before the presidential election in November. Most polls show Trump in a tight race with President Biden, his successor to the presidency. Trump must balance his legal troubles — he faces dozens of state and federal charges — with the election cycle, though his predicament hasn’t dampened enthusiasm for him among his most ardent supporters.

Trump’s other major trials — related to his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, his handling of classified documents and alleged election interference in Georgia — are in various stages of delay, and it is unlikely that a verdict in any of them will come before the election.

A decision in the New York criminal case could come by summer of this year.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments later this month on whether Trump enjoys blanket immunity for his actions as president, and what it decides could have ramifications for the presidency.

The district attorney hopes to make this case about 2016 election interference

A grand jury indicted Trump in the spring of last year, marking the first time a former or sitting president faced criminal charges. Republicans quickly dismissed the indictment as an overreach of power by District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who had brought the charges. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

At the center of the trial are 11 “hush money” payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels who, at the time Trump was first running for president, threatened to go public with accusations she’d had an affair with him not long after he married Melania Trump.

The lawsuit alleges that payments were made from Trump’s flagship Trump Organization to Michael Cohen, then a vice president and counsel at the company. The payments were described by the Trump Organization falsely as “legal retainers”; they were, in fact, reimbursements to Cohen for paying Daniels.

Cohen transferred that money to Daniels less than two weeks before the 2016 election. After Trump won, he reimbursed Cohen, including with his own personal checks. Trump has denied an affair with Daniels, but in 2018 he admitted reimbursing Cohen for money paid to her, arguing it had nothing to do with the campaign.

The indictment also includes a separate $150,000 payment to another woman — the Playboy model Karen McDougal, who has spoken openly about her experience — who also claimed to have had an intimate relationship with Trump.

The fact of the payments and the false records isn’t in dispute. What Bragg has to prove is that Trump made them in order to further other crimes, such as violating campaign finance law and mischaracterizing the payments for tax purposes.

In 2018, Cohen admitted to paying Daniels $130,000 — pleading guilty to eight counts including criminal tax evasion and campaign finance violations — and implicated Trump. At his plea hearing, Cohen said he organized these payments in coordination with and at the direction of then-candidate Trump.

Trump will balance the courtroom and the campaign