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Donald Trump is in court for his first criminal trial.
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Shortly after he arrived, prosecutors accused him of violating his gag order.
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Jury selection is set to begin later in the day.
At 9:31 AM, Donald Trump crossed the threshold.
With hunched shoulders but his chin up, he stepped into a courtroom on the 15th floor of the grimy, hot, and poorly lit New York County criminal court in downtown Manhattan.
It is the location of the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president.
As Trump walked into the courtroom, he paused for a split second, licked his lips, then began walking through the room’s center aisle toward his seat before the judge’s bench.
Moments after he sat down, photographers took his picture sitting at the defense table, where he was flanked by his attorneys.
Monday marks the beginning of jury selection, presided over by trial judge Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, which is expected to last up to two weeks.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has accused Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records, saying he lied on documents to disguise payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress.
The aim of those payments — according to prosecutors, Daniels, and Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer who facilitated the money transfers — was to deceive the voting public by making her stay silent about an affair she says she had with him ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Before jury selection got underway, Merchan addressed a series of motions from both Trump and the Manhattan district attorney’s lawyers.
Trump has fought against Merchan’s gag order, which forbids him from talking about trial jurors, witnesses, staff prosecutors, and family members of Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy accused Trump early Monday afternoon of violating the gag order, and he asked the judge to impose $1,000 penalties for each of three different Truth Social posts.
In Truth Social posts last week, Trump attacked Cohen and Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, calling them “two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!”
On Monday morning — while Trump was “sitting in this courtroom,” Conroy said — Trump shared another post attacking Cohen, quoting a New York Post editorial saying “a serial perjurer will try to prove an old misdemeanor against Trump in an embarrassment for the New York legal system.”
Merchan said he would rule on the alleged gag order violations after the lunch break.
Earlier in the morning, he ruled on a variety of other motions. Some were losses for Trump (he won’t recuse himself from the case), while others were relative victories (jurors won’t hear that Melania Trump was pregnant at the time of one of Trump’s alleged affairs).
Merchan has blocked numerous attempts to delay the case
In the hallway before walking into the courtroom Monday morning, Trump once again called the case unfair, telling journalists it was a “political persecution.”
“This is an assault on America,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened before, there’s never been anything like it.”
“I’m very proud to be here,” he added later.
The hush-money case is the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial before the 2024 election, where Trump is the presumed Republican nominee against President Joe Biden.
Merchan has previously denied about a dozen different attempts from Trump’s lawyers to delay the case. In a Friday decision, Merchan dismissed one of his motions to delay the case because of “pretrial publicity,” calling it “untenable.”
“Defendant appears to take the position that his situation and this case are unique and that the pre-trial publicity will never subside,” Merchan wrote. “However, this view does not align with reality.”
On Truth Social, Trump complained once again Monday morning about the gag order, calling the trial “rigged.” He also posted a screenshot of a social media post that falsely claimed Orthodox Jews could not serve on the jury. The trial overlaps with Passover, and Merchan previously said he would consider the needs of jurors in determining the trial schedule.
“When I walk into that courtroom, I know I will have the love of 200 million Americans behind me, and I will be FIGHTING for the FREEDOM of 325 MILLION AMERICANS!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Over the past year, Trump has been a defendant in three different civil trials.
Two were for cases brought by E. Jean Carroll, where one jury concluded he sexually abused and defamed her, and another found he should pay her more than $80 million in additional damages for continued defamation.
Jury selection was much swifter in those cases, which was held in federal court. For Carroll’s second trial, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan selected the nine-person jury in less than three hours.
The other civil trial was for a sprawling lawsuit from the New York attorney general’s office against the Trump Organization. In that case, a judge — in a bench trial with no jury — ordered him and his codefendants to pay nearly half-a-billion dollars in penalties.
Trump has been charged in three other criminal cases, none of which have firm trial dates yet. Two were brought by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and for him hoarding government documents in Mar-a-Lago after the presidency.
The other was brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, for pressuring Georgia election officials to overturn Biden’s 2020 electoral victory in the state.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Amanda Smith is a dedicated U.S. correspondent with a passion for uncovering the stories that shape the nation. With a background in political science, she provides in-depth analysis and insightful commentary on domestic affairs, ensuring readers are well-informed about the latest developments across the United States.
