Opening arguments in the first criminal trial of Mr. Trump

[Procrustes Stretched]

They're here. Happening live as I post this. This is a criminal case of the century, and the century is in it's childhood stage. A former US President being held criminally liable.

WAPO:

“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a coverup,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said. “The defendant Donald Trump orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election. Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy and lied in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

Trump is not looking at Colangelo; he is staring straight ahead.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/22/trump-hush-money-trial-live-updates/

NYT:


April 22, 2024, 10:39 a.m. ET2 minutes ago
2 minutes ago
Maggie Haberman
Reporting from the courthouse
Colangelo is now describing the practice of “catch and kill,” in which The National Enquirer bought stories that were problematic to Trump and then buried them. To be clear, this is not a normal journalistic practice.

April 22, 2024, 10:39 a.m. ET1 minute ago
1 minute ago
Jonah Bromwich
Reporting from the courthouse
I see one juror smiling slightly as Colangelo describes some of the National Enquirer headlines that helped Trump's campaign in 2016, embarrassing campaign opponents including Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Prosecutors only won the right to talk about those headlines last week. We can see how important they are here today, as they go to what prosecutors say was Trump’s intent: seeking to assist his candidacy by promoting negative stories about others and suppressing those about himself.


April 22, 2024, 10:40 a.m. ETJust now
Just now
Maggie Haberman
Reporting from the courthouse
One of those catch-and-kill deals involved a story that turned out to be false about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock. A doorman at a Trump building was a key figure in it.

‘Criminal Conspiracy’ Alleged as Jury Starts Hearing Trump Trial

Court adjourned for the day after opening statements from both sides and the start of testimony from the longtime publisher of The National Enquirer. A lawyer for Donald Trump told jurors the former president did nothing illegal.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

April 22, 2024, 10:32 a.m. ET11 minutes ago
11 minutes ago
Kate Christobek
Reporting from the courthouse
As Matthew Colangelo says that Trump orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election, Trump shook his head.

April 22, 2024, 10:32 a.m. ET11 minutes ago
11 minutes ago
Maggie Haberman
Reporting from the courthouse
It remains to be seen if Trump has learned the lesson of the second Carroll trial, which he attended. He acted out in front of the jury throughout the trial. He ended up facing an $83.3 million civil judgment.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

April 22, 2024, 10:44 a.m. ETJust now
Just now
Benjamin Protess
Investigative reporter
Prosecutors are going to highlight three hush-money deals over the course of the trial. As our colleague Michael Rothfeld recently explained, Trump’s allies paid off the porn star, the Playboy model and the doorman.


April 22, 2024, 10:42 a.m. ET2 minutes ago
2 minutes ago
Jonah Bromwich
Reporting from the courthouse
Matthew Colangelo emphasizes that it was the first time that David Pecker, of The National Enquirer, had paid for information relating to Trump. He’s emphasizing the key point: That every one of these acts involving hush-money deals sprang from the meeting at which he said the conspiracy was hatched.




April 22, 2024, 10:44 a.m. ETJust now
Just now
Alan Feuer
Providing analysis of Trump cases
In other words, prosecutors are accusing Trump of using The National Enquirer to do for Trump what Trump says all the time that others do against him: promote “fake news.”

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

WAPO: 7 min ago

Prosecutor: Trump paid hush money to make sure public wouldn’t know about sexual encounter​

Return to menu

By Devlin Barrett
Reporter focusing on national security and law enforcement
Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo told jurors Monday that former president Donald Trump paid adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to be silent about their past sexual conduct, as part of a scheme with his former lawyer Michael Cohen to keep voters from learning about it before the 2016 election.
“They disguised what the payments were for,” Colangelo said, speaking clearly and calmly with his hands in his suit pockets.


“The defendant said in his business records that he was paying Cohen for legal services pursuant to a retainer agreement. But those were lies,” Colangelo continued. “The defendant was paying him back for an illegal payment to Stormy Daniels on the eve of an election.”
Cohen’s job, Colangelo said, “really was to take care of problems for the defendant.”
Trump has denied the alleged encounter with Daniels.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

time for a break here...

 

[Synthaholic]

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

April 22, 2024, 11:11 a.m. ET15 minutes ago
15 minutes ago
Maggie Haberman
Reporting from the courthouse

Colangelo is now depicting Michael Cohen as a flawed man who has lied before, saying he lied about the payment to Stormy Daniels initially “to protect his boss.”


Image

Credit...Yuki Iwamura/Associated Press


April 22, 2024, 11:14 a.m. ET12 minutes ago
12 minutes ago
Maggie Haberman
Reporting from the courthouse
Cohen is expected to be a key witness for the prosecution. Colangelo is explaining his litany of problems to get out ahead of the defense, which will try to undermine Cohen. Colangelo is doing something here that Trump’s lawyers can’t do, in part because their client won’t let them: admit that mistakes were made.


April 22, 2024, 11:14 a.m. ET12 minutes ago
12 minutes ago
Jonah Bromwich
Reporting from the courthouse
Colangelo insists that much of Cohen’s testimony will be corroborated, including by witnesses from The National Enquirer and “an extensive paper trail.”


April 22, 2024, 11:15 a.m. ET12 minutes ago
12 minutes ago
Alan Feuer
Providing analysis of Trump cases
Because the prosecution bears the burden of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt, it gets to go first (and last) in a criminal case. The advantage of that can be seen in action here, as Colangelo gives the jury his own frame through which to view Michael Cohen.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

April 22, 2024, 11:15 a.m. ET14 minutes ago
14 minutes ago
Jonah Bromwich
Reporting from the courthouse

“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a coverup,” Colangelo says, as he starts to conclude his opening statement, saying that at the end of the case, jurors will have no reasonable doubt about Trump’s guilt.


April 22, 2024, 11:15 a.m. ET13 minutes ago
13 minutes ago
Jonah Bromwich
Reporting from the courthouse


Colangelo encourages jurors to “tune out the noise” and “focus on the facts” during the course of the trial. He summarizes the evidence again, and says after all the evidence is in, Joshua Steinglass, another prosecutor, will do the closing argument.


April 22, 2024, 11:15 a.m. ET13 minutes ago
13 minutes ago
Jonah Bromwich
Reporting from the courthouse

He ends by saying there is “only one conclusion: Donald Trump is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.”

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

next up...

 

[candycorn]

Trump’s Only Options for His Defense Are Really Quite Bad

Alvin Bragg’s case will leave little room for the former president’s lawyers.

slate.com

 

[Harry Dresden]

geezus......lol...

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

April 22, 2024, 11:16 a.m. ET16 minutes ago
Maggie Haberman
Reporting from the courthouse
Todd Blanche is now up, with the defense's opening statement.


Jonah Bromwich
Reporting from the courthouse
“President Trump is innocent,” are the first words of Blanche’s opening. ’President Trump did not commit any crimes.”


Jesse McKinley
Reporting from the courthouse
“He is cloaked in innocence,” Todd Blanche says of Trump

Maggie Haberman
Reporting from the courthouse
Blanche highlights that Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence, which is something that some of his more heated critics sometimes lose sight of.

Maggie Haberman
Reporting from the courthouse
Blanche explains why they all call Trump “President Trump,” saying he’s earned it and it’s the office he’s held. Then he mentions that Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.


Jonah Bromwich
Reporting from the courthouse
Blanche seeks to have the jurors relate to his client, as he says Trump is doing “what any of us would do.”

Maggie Haberman
Blanche just said Trump put up “a wall” between himself and his company when he became president. We may see prosecutors try to test that statement.

 

[Harry Dresden]

dante are you taking notes?....dont forget to take lunch.....

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Jonah Bromwich
This is the third time that I’ve heard lawyers for Trump talk in a New York courtroom about how successful the Trump Organization, his business, has been. It’s another way of pacifying their client — and it again shows the way that Trump’s lawyers are hemmed in by his personal preferences. Instead of blasting Trump but seeking to appeal to the jury’s fairness, they’re compelled to build him up.


Jesse McKinley
Blanche downplays the 34 charges of falsfying records Trump faces as a “business records violation.”


Jonah Bromwich
He points toward the disparity between the $130,000 hush money payment and what was repaid to Cohen. He asks them, if Trump really was so frugal, would he have repaid Cohen so much? “This was not a payback,” he says, adding of Cohen: “He was President Trump’s personal attorney.”


Maggie Haberman

“Michael Cohen wanted a job in the administration. He didn’t get one,” Blanche says, offering a motive for Cohen’s testimony.



Jonah Bromwich
Blanche calls Cohen a “criminal.” He can be expected to continue to criticize him, but this is a delicate dance: If Blanche goes too hard at Cohen, he could alienate jurors. Instead, he has to seem dispassionate and factual, which helps explain the emphasis on Cohen’s felonies. Those are facts, indisputable. But now Blanche ramps up: “He’s obsessed with President Trump even to this day,” he says of Cohen.


Maggie Haberman
Blanche says Cohen demonstrated that obsession in his public interviews, and “his desire to see President Trump go to prison.”

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

dante are you taking notes?....dont forget to take lunch.....

the time in between posts? I put in a group 3 times.

but continue. You come across as lame a s a Trump lawyer

 

[Donald H]

Sadly for mr. Trump, he will find a jail cell safe harbour against the humiliation he's forced to suffer.

Will he order his remaining faithful who aren't in jail, to lash out with violence on his behalf? He has nothing else left with which to fight!

We'll soon see.

 

[Harry Dresden]

the time in between posts? I put in a group 3 times.

but continue. You come across as lame a s a Trump lawyer

says the lame guy who is actually watching this....

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

says the lame guy who is actually watching this....

I merely respond to alerts

next

 

[Harry Dresden]

I merely respond to alerts

next

yea sure dante.....lol....alerts my aching ass...

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

yea sure dante.....lol....alerts my aching ass...

thank you