Former President Donald Trump faces serious charges in two cases over whether he attempted to subvert the Constitution by overturning the results of a fair election and illegally remain in power.
Former President Donald Trump faces serious charges in two cases over whether he attempted to subvert the Constitution by overturning the results of a fair election and illegally remain in power.
Yet it’s a New York case centered on payments to silence an adult film actor that might provide the only legal reckoning this year on whether the Republican tried to undermine a pillar of American democracy.
Trump is charged in the hush money case with trying to falsify business records, but it was hard to tell that as the trial opened Monday.
Lead prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wasted little time during opening statements tying the case to Trump’s campaigning during his first run for the presidency. He said the payments made to Stormy Daniels amounted to “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.”
Whether the jury accepts that connection will be pivotal for Trump’s fate. The presumptive GOP nominee faces charges related to falsifying business records that would typically be misdemeanors unless the alleged act could be tied to another crime. Prosecutors were able to charge them as felonies because they allege that the false records were part of an effort to cover up state and federal election law violations – though that’s still not the type of direct election interference that Trump is charged with elsewhere.
Trump has referred to the New York trial and the three other criminal cases against him as a form of election interference, suggesting without evidence that they’re part of a Democratic plan to undermine his campaign to return to the White House.
“I’m here instead of being able to be in Pennsylvania and Georgia and lots of other places campaigning, and it’s very unfair,” he told reporters before Monday’s court session.
While the charges are felonies, the New York case is seen as the least consequential against the former president. In the two election cases, Trump is accused of more direct involvement in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
He faces a four-count federal indictment in Washington in connection with his actions in the run-up to the violent attack on the U.
