The first trial of a former president of the United States is already underway. In a hearing for the ages, Matthew Colangelo, assistant district attorney, was in charge of presenting the accusation against Donald Trump while he shook his head. “This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up,” Colangelo said. “The accused Donald Trump orchestrated a criminal plot to tamper with the 2016 presidential election. He then covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again,” he stated at the beginning of his opening statement, a kind of introduction to the trial. Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, began his argument by saying: “President Trump is innocent. “President Trump committed no crime.”
If, The people of the State of New York against Donald Trump, The former president is accused of commercial falsehoods in payments to hide scandals in the 2016 presidential campaign. The best known of them is the payment of $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels made by Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, to silence an alleged extramarital affair in the final stretch of the campaign.
Colangelo has claimed in his opening statement that Cohen made the payment to silence the porn actress “at the direction of the defendant” and “to influence the presidential election.” Trump then reimbursed him and “they disguised what the payments were for,” according to the prosecutor. The defendant “said in business records that he was paying Cohen for legal services under a retainer agreement.” [minutas]. But they were lies. There was no retention agreement,” he added, as reported by the media present in court.
“Neither Trump nor the Trump Organization could simply write a check to Cohen with a memo line that said 'reimbursement for payment to a porn star.' So they agreed to manipulate the books and make it appear that the payment was actually remuneration, a payment for services provided,” she has argued.
Without “reasonable doubt”
Cohen is now the prosecution's star witness whose credibility the defense will try to erode. The prosecutor has warned the jury about this: “I suspect that the defense will do everything possible to reject his testimony, precisely because it is so devastating,” said Colangelo. Shortly after, the defense attorney said that Cohen is “obsessed” with Trump and that he holds a grudge against him because he did not give him a position in his administration. “His entire financial livelihood depends on the destruction of President Trump.” he has argued. “You cannot make a serious decision about President Trump based on the words of Michael Cohen,” Blanche added.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
Since this is a criminal case, the presumption of innocence operates. To be convicted, jurors must find that he committed the crimes of which she is accused beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecution and defense have opposing positions: “At the end of the case, we are confident that they will have no reasonable doubt that Donald Trump is guilty of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of a presidential election,” the prosecutor said. Just the opposite has been maintained by Trump's lawyer. Blanche has said that prosecutors have told “a very clean and beautiful story,” but that “it is not that simple” and that the jury will find “a lot of reasonable doubt.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the 34 crimes of falsifying business records for which he is being tried. The former president has always denied that he had sexual relations with Stormy Daniels and, more relevant to the case, his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were valid legal expenses. Trump himself, upon leaving the court, referred to this, stating that they appeared as legal expenses because they were payment to a lawyer. Cohen represents many people, he said, and has summarized the case in his own way: “He presents an invoice or account and they pay it and they call it legal expenses and they charge me for that,” he said. Where it was reflected that they were legal expenses, “it is a very small line,” he added, where there was barely room for a couple of words, it was not enough to tell “the story of your life.”
Her lawyer said this Monday in the session that the Daniels scandal “was an attempt to embarrass President Trump, to embarrass his family” and that “before the 2016 elections, she saw her opportunity.” Regarding the accusations that the payments tried to illicitly influence the 2016 elections, the defense has responded: “I have a spoiler: There is nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It's called democracy.” Trump is not charged for the payments themselves, but for the alleged falsehoods to conceal them.
Todd has tried to empathize with the 12 jurors (seven men and five women) and the six alternates, who were sworn in last Friday after four days of selection. “Use your common sense,” he told them. “If they do, there will be a verdict of not guilty very quickly,” she added.
In this Monday's session, before the initial arguments and the jury entered the room, Judge Juan Merchan said that he will allow a transcript to be shown of what Trump says in a video in which he referred to women in terms profane and sexist, although he will not allow it to be reproduced in the room. “When you're a star, they let you do anything to them. Grab them by the pussy,” Trump said in that recording. The prosecution's thesis is that after the dissemination of that video in the 2016 campaign, it was vital for Trump to silence Stormy Daniels.
Upon entering the court building, Trump repeated his usual string of baseless disqualifications of the process, which he considers “electoral interference” in the November presidential campaign. “I'm here instead of being able to be in Pennsylvania and Georgia and many other places campaigning and it's very unfair,” he said. On Saturday he was scheduled to hold a rally in North Carolina, but he had to cancel it due to a storm.
Also without basis, Trump has stated upon his arrival at the courthouse that everything is a “witch hunt” and a “shame” that is “coordinated with Washington” to favor Joe Biden, the “worst president in the world,” in the elections. history”, a position that historians actually assign to him. At the exit, he repeated the same speech, without accepting questions.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Prosecutor #accuses #Trump #orchestrating #criminal #plot #corrupt #elections