When former President Donald Trump’s hush money case opens Monday with jury selection, he will become the first former president to stand trial on criminal charges.
— Donald Trump will make history as the first former president to stand trial on criminal charges when his hush money case opens Monday with jury selection.
The case will force the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to juggle campaigning with sitting in a Manhattan courtroom for weeks to defend himself against charges involving a scheme to bury allegations of marital infidelity that arose during his first White House campaign in 2016.
It carries enormous political ramifications as potentially the only one of four criminal cases against Trump that could reach a verdict before voters decide in November whether to send him back to the White House.
Here’s what to know about the hush money case and the charges against Trump:
WHAT’S THIS CASE ABOUT?
The former president is accused of falsifying internal Trump Organization records as part of a scheme to bury damaging stories that he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign, particularly as Trump’s reputation was suffering at the time from comments he had made about women.
The allegations focus on payoffs to two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump years earlier, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged Trump had out of wedlock. Trump says none of these supposed sexual encounters occurred.
Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 and arranged for the publisher of the National Enquirer supermarket tabloid to pay McDougal $150,000 in a journalistically dubious practice known as « catch-and-kill » in which a publication pays for exclusive rights to someone’s story with no intention of publishing it, either as a favor to a celebrity subject or to gain leverage over the person.
Prosecutors say Trump’s company reimbursed Cohen and paid him bonuses and extra payments, all of which were falsely logged in Trump Organization records as legal expenses. Cohen has separately pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law in connection with the payments.
WHAT ARE THE CHARGES?
Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The charge carries up to four years in prison, though whether he will spend time behind bars if convicted would ultimately be up to the judge.
The counts are linked to a series of checks written to Cohen to reimburse him for his role in paying off Daniels.
