Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial begins with jury selection – live

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Manhattan district attorney prosecutor Josh Steinglass asks Judge Merchan to clarify whether they can use evidence of Trump’s “catch and kill” scheme with National Enquirer to prevent negative stories from coming out before 2016 election – which is what the case is all about.

Steinglass wants to use testimony of Aug 2015 meeting between Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, because it shows Trump agreed to a scheme where National Enquirer published flattering stories on Trump, and negative stories on Trump’s opponents. The district attorney wants to show it was all to impact the 2016 election.

Steinglass says the “entire point of the Trump Tower meeting was to control the flow of information that reached the electorate” and “to accentuate negative, and exaggerated information harmful to Trump’s opponents.” Steinglass says:

The court should admit this evidence at trial. There is no conceivable prejudice for headlines the defendant himself commissioned.

Judge Merchan said he was not prepared to rule on a request from Trump’s lawyers that the trial not be held on 17 May so that he can attend his son Barron’s high school graduation.

A Trump lawyer also requested the trial not be held on 3 June so that he could attend his own son’s graduation.

Merchan said that if the trial proceeds as planned, he would be willing to adjourn for one or both days, adding:

It really depends on how we’re doing on time and where we are in the trial.

Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, wants to introduce evidence about the Trump 2016 campaign’s collusion with AMI, publisher of The National Enquire.

Steinglass says that outlet had said it would push positive stories about Trump and negative reports on his opponents, such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

This included stories about Cruz, alleging infidelity and a familiar connection to JFK’s assassination. With Rubio, this included salacious reports alleging drug abuse and some sort of sex scandal, Steinglass revealed.

Protests are taking place outside the Manhattan courthouse both in support of and against Donald Trump.

One group of demonstrators is carrying a banner that reads “No one is above the law”, and another group is calling on the judge, Juan Merchan, to recuse himself from the case.

Before we get into jury selection proper, Trump does not get off to a good start. Merchan starts by dealing with a couple “loose ends”, including Trump’s pending motion that the judge recuse himself. The judge goes through some of the “offensive” statements from Trump’s motion, saying he has no agenda against Trump.

Merchan starts with his recent interview with the Associated Press, which Trump complained about. Merchan notes he told the AP explicitly that he wouldn’t discuss the Trump case. He then tells Trump that his complaints do not “reasonably or logically” explain how these statements reflect bias.

Merchan then moves on to his daughter’s podcast interview from 2019, in which she said he disliked politicians using Twitter. Merchan says that does not reflect a bias against any party. Trump’s second motion to recuse the judge is denied.

Judge Merchan denies motion to recuse himself

Judge Juan Merchan denied the defense motion to recuse himself from the case.

In a recent court filing, Trump’s lawyers called on Merchan to remove himself from the case, arguing the judge’s daughter’s work for a political consultancy with Democratic clients poses a conflict of interest.

In a one-page court filing dated 1 April, Trump’s lawyers asked Merchan for permission to file a formal motion for him to recuse himself, arguing the trial would benefit his daughter’s firm, Authentic Campaigns, financially.

Trump last year made a similar request for Merchan to recuse himself, but the judge denied the bid after an ethics panel found that his daughter’s work did not pose reasonable questions about his impartiality.

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has already started trying to frame the case as a matter of election interference, casting the hush-money payments and efforts to hide them as part of a scheme to conceal information from voters ahead of the 2016 election.

When Bragg first filed the charges, the biggest issue in the case was whether the crimes amounted to a felony. In New York, falsification of business records is a misdemeanor, but can be charged as a felony when it is done with the intent to commit another crime.

Bragg has said Trump falsified the business records with the intent to violate federal and New York state election laws, among other things – a novel way of charging the crime.

Many experts were initially somewhat skeptical of this strategy. While Judge Juan Merchan and a federal judge have both allowed Bragg to proceed to trial on this theory, it will probably be a central issue at the trial. Bragg will need to convince the jurors beyond a reasonable doubt not only that Trump falsified business records but also that he intended to violate another law.

As the criminal cases mounted against Donald Trump last year, one could be forgiven for not giving much thought to the New York case that charged him with 34 felony counts for falsifying business records.

The episode was a bombshell when the Wall Street Journal first reported it in January 2018. By the time the case was filed last year, it had largely faded in the public psyche – buried under Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 election and an avalanche of other lies.

Now, the once-sleepy case will be the first time a former president has gone to trial on criminal charges. It’s an awkward incongruity – the case with what appear the more benign crimes is taking on an outsize importance by going first – and a dynamic that’s been shaped entirely by Trump, who has used an array of legal maneuvers to delay the other three criminal cases against him.

Like all of the trials against Trump, there will also be a case in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion. And first-term district attorney Alvin Bragg will need to clear both hurdles by not only presenting a cut-and-dried case about falsifying business records, but reminding the American public who the true victims are: themselves.

Trial begins

This is the people of the state of New York versus Donald J Trump.

Court has begun with the clerk’s announcement. Juan Merchan has taken the bench.

The judge says:

The case is on today for jury selection. There are a couple of loose ends that we have to go over before we get started.”

Alvin Bragg has entered the courtroom.

In his official biography, Bragg, 50, is described as a “son of Harlem” who became Manhattan district attorney after “a lifetime of hard work, courage and demanding justice”.

In obtaining a grand jury indictment against Donald Trump over his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in 2016, the Democrat has now carved himself a place in history, as the man behind the first vote to criminally indict a former president.

Before he walked into the courtroom, Trump attacked the case as he addressed reporters. He said:

This is an assault on America, nothing like this has ever happened before, there’s never been anything like it.

“Every legal scholar said this case is nonsense, it should have never been brought, it doesn’t deserve anything like this,” Trump insisted, though as many legal scholars have noted, the Manhattan district attorney regularly prosecutes falsification of business records.

There is no case and I’ve said it people that don’t necessarily follow or like Donald Trump said this is an outrage that this case was brought.

This is political persecution this is a persecution like never before, nobody has ever seen anything like it and again it’s a case that should have never been brought, it’s an assault on America and that’s why I am very proud to be here.

This is an assault on our country and it’s a country that’s failing, it’s a country that’s run by an incompetent man and is very much involved in this case.

This is really an attack on a political opponent, that is all it is, so I’m very honored to be here, thank you very much.

If criminally convicted in New York, Donald Trump will face legal humiliations of the sort he loves when applied to other people, writes Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, in an opinion piece for the Guardian today.

Blumenthal quotes Joshua Dratel, the past president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, that if Trump is found guilty there is a wide range of punishments that could be applied, because the law doesn’t specify any mandatory ones.

He could go to jail. Probation is a possibility. He could get fined. The judge could sentence him to a fine, then put him on supervision – probably not likely. He could get one to three years. He could get four months in jail and a fine. If he got four months, then he’d have a work release application ready to go, then supervised for a few months. There’s no minimum time he’d have to serve. Then he might do a couple of days, a week or two, depending on the application. But that would be after appeal. If he would testify and lie on the stand that would generate a jail term. If he appeals, the judge stays the sentence.”

But one guarantee is that Trump would become the first disenfranchised felon to be nominated by a major party.

That means, on election day 2024, surrounded by the clicking cameras of the press corps, assuming he is still out on appeal, Trump could tag along with his wife Melania, a naturalized citizen, to the polls in Palm Beach, but he could not enter a voting booth. He could not vote for himself, or anyone else, for any office.

Trump appears to be scowling for the cameras as a group of pool photographers snaps photos of him before proceedings start.

The trial does not start until jury selection starts.

There is going to be some preliminary discussion of stuff prior to selection starting.

Trump went into the courtroom behind his attorney Todd Blanche, paused for a split second, licked his lips, then began walking up the courtroom’s center aisle.

Trump was hunch-shouldered, but chin up, his expression stern, per pool.

Trump’s lawyers are looking to find and seat on the 12-person jury what lawyers call a “holdout juror”.

Holdout jurors are people who the defense believes will be on their side and refuse to convict on any of the criminal counts.

Trump wants a holdout juror because that would lead to a mistrial – and with Trump unlikely to get an outright acquittal (since that would require every juror to find him not guilty) that’s the final outcome his lawyers are striving for.

Trump says trial 'an assault on America'

Donald Trump spoke briefly to reporters as he arrived at the court in Manhattan, where he claimed the trial is “an assault on America” and “an attack on a political opponent.”

“Nobody has ever seen anything like it,” he said, adding:

This is political persecution ... it’s a case that should have never been brought.

The former president added:

It’s an assault on America. And that’s why I’m very proud to be here. This is an assault. On our country. And it’s a country that’s failing. It’s a country that’s run by an incompetent man who’s very much involved in this case. This is really an attack on a political opponent. That’s all it is. So I’m very honored to be here.

Donald Trump has now walked into the courtroom for jury selection in his New York criminal trial with his legal team including: Todd Blanche, Emil Bove, Susan Necheles, Gedalia Stern.

Also in his entourage is senior Trump campaign adviser Steven Cheung.

Donald Trump has entered the courtroom.

He is seated at the defense table, crossing his fingers over each other.