Judge says prosecutors cannot show Access Hollywood tape to jury in history Trump criminal trial – live

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Judge Merchan has shot down prosecutors’ push to bring in three other allegations.

Prosecutors are seeking to admit the fact there were three women who came forward with allegations of sexual assault against Trump.

In denying the request, Merchan said it would be “very prejudicial,” noting they hadn’t been proven.

Judge says prosecutors cannot show Access Hollywood tape to jury

The email to former Trump campaign manager Hope Hicks “is powerful evidence of the campaign’s reaction to the incendiary [Access Hollywood video]”, Manhattan DA prosecutor Josh Steinglass says.

Stormy Daniels, he said, “was living proof” of the fact that Trump was involved in boorish behavior.

Prosecutors also wanted to introduce a clip from the E Jean Carroll deposition where he references the tape.

Merchan ruled that the Access Hollywood tape itself could not come in, nor should the Carroll deposition tape. Merchan said he wants to avoid a trial within a trial.

Josh Steinglass is explaining why evidence relating to the Access Hollywood tape should be admitted and why doing so is legal.

“We request to be able to elicit testimony that describes the tape,” the Manhattan district attorney prosecutor said. He said this will show Trump’s motive in the Stormy scheme, as team Trump’s discussion of the tape showed how they were trying to keep things from spiraling.

David Farenhold of the Washington Post emailed former campaign manager Hope Hicks about three hours before the Post’s story with the “grab ‘em” tape went online. The email included a transcript of the Access Hollywood video, and asked Hicks several questions abut the tape.

Hicks then fowarded the email to other campaign officials including Steve Bannon and Kelly Conway, Steinglass said.

It appears that Steve Bannon forwarded this email chain to Michael Cohen.

In the email, it said “It’s all over the place. Who’s doing damage control.”

Josh Steinglass, the Manhattan district attorney prosecutor, is now asking to let him establish that Karen McDougal, who was the subject of previous Trump “catch and kill” effort, is a former Playboy model and claims to have had a year-long romantic and sexual relationship while Trump’s wife Melania was pregnant.

Trump was stone-faced as this part unfolded. But his lead lawyer Todd Blanche came to his defense, springing up to object to the salacious details.

This is just to embarrass President Trump, it has nothing to do with the trial, he’s not charged with this misconduct.

Trump gets a win on this. Merchan has previously ruled on what evidence is allowed in and what’s not. And Merchan tells prosecutors he won’t allow them to use evidence Trump was having an affair when Melania was pregnant.

Josh Steinglass, the Manhattan district attorney prosecutor, asks 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 August 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.

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 Enquirer.

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 John F Kennedy’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.”