Trump enters court ahead of gag order hearing
Victoria Bekiempis
Donald Trump has walked into judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom; he sported a navy suit, white shirt, and red tie, and carried himself with an air of fatigue.
Merchan will soon weigh whether to hold the ex-president in contempt over his apparent repeated violations of a gag order that bars him from publicly trashing witnesses in his hush-money trial.
Prosecutors on 15 April requested a contempt hearing, saying Trump “willfully violated the 1 April [gag] order with three social media posts about known witnesses concerning their participation in this criminal proceeding.”
On 18 April, they said that Trump had committed “seven additional violations of the Court’s Order dated April 1, 2024. The People request that the hearing on April 23, 2024 include these violations as well as the violations outlined in the filing on April 15, 2024.”
It also appears that Trump might have violated the gag order yet again on Monday at court, by railing against Michael Cohen – his onetime attorney-turned-key prosecution witness. Trump told reporters:
When are they going to look at all the lies that Cohen did in the last trial. He got caught lying. Pure lying. And when are they going to look at that.
If found in contempt, the possible penalties against Trump include potential warnings, fines, or in the extreme, jail.
Key events
Victoria Bekiempis
The prosecution is making its arguments as to whether judge Juan Merchan should hold Trump in contempt.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy handed Merchan documents with the 10 alleged violations.
“Eight of the violative posts were on the defendant’s Truth Social account,” Conroy said. Two of the posts were on his official campaign website. He argued:
Defendant has violated this order repeatedly and hasn’t stopped.
“The defendant violated the order again – on camera. He did it right here in the hallway outside,” Conroy said, referring to his dig at Cohen yesterday.
We will be filing another order to show cause for this violation later today.
Donald Trump spoke to the media before heading inside the courtroom. He refused to answer questions about why he did not appeal his gag order, if he would continue to post about witnesses, and if he thinks Michael Cohen is a “sleaze bag”, per pool.
The former president spoke abut the pro-Palestinian demonstrations in several US universities, describing them as a “disgrace to our country” and “all Biden’s fault”.
He said people were wanting to “protest peacefully” at the Manhattan court but “we have more police presence here than anyone’s ever seen … you can’t get near this courthouse”, meanwhile “you have nobody up in a college, where you have very radical people wanting to rip the colleges down, the universities down.”
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump is seated by himself looking fatigued and with his eyes closed while he waits for his lawyers to confer with the judge and prosecutors before the start of proceedings today.
First on the agenda: whether Trump violated the gag order barring him from assailing witnesses in the case.
Prosecutors allege Trump violated the order multiple times, with Trump seemingly ignoring the gag order altogether on Monday when he directly attacked his former lawyer Michael Cohen.
Victoria Bekiempis
Following the contempt hearing, David Pecker is expected to return to the witness stand.
Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, is the first prosecution witness.
Prosecutors contend that Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, and David Pecker plotted in 2015 to prevent damaging information about the then-GOP presidential hopeful from getting out.
Prosecutors allege that Trump’s transfer of hush-money was illicit, arguing that it was falsely represented in business records as legal services to Cohen.
Trump enters court ahead of gag order hearing
Victoria Bekiempis
Donald Trump has walked into judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom; he sported a navy suit, white shirt, and red tie, and carried himself with an air of fatigue.
Merchan will soon weigh whether to hold the ex-president in contempt over his apparent repeated violations of a gag order that bars him from publicly trashing witnesses in his hush-money trial.
Prosecutors on 15 April requested a contempt hearing, saying Trump “willfully violated the 1 April [gag] order with three social media posts about known witnesses concerning their participation in this criminal proceeding.”
On 18 April, they said that Trump had committed “seven additional violations of the Court’s Order dated April 1, 2024. The People request that the hearing on April 23, 2024 include these violations as well as the violations outlined in the filing on April 15, 2024.”
It also appears that Trump might have violated the gag order yet again on Monday at court, by railing against Michael Cohen – his onetime attorney-turned-key prosecution witness. Trump told reporters:
When are they going to look at all the lies that Cohen did in the last trial. He got caught lying. Pure lying. And when are they going to look at that.
If found in contempt, the possible penalties against Trump include potential warnings, fines, or in the extreme, jail.
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche on Monday defended Trump’s attempt to address Stormy Daniels’s “sinister” allegations, calling it an attempt to try to “embarrass President Trump, to embarrass his family, because as the people alluded to at that time, there were all kinds of salacious allegations going around about President Trump, and it was damaging to him and it was damaging to his family”.
You will hear during this trial President Trump fought back – like he always does – like he’s entitled to do to protect his family, his reputation, and his brand – that is not a crime.
He attacked Michael Cohen, alleging he wanted a job in the Trump administration but did not get one, and saying “he’s obsessed with President Trump, even to this day” to the extent of having multiple podcasts over Trump and waxing enthusiastic about the possibility of his former boss’ conviction. Cohen, he noted, was found to have lied under oath, further undermining his reliability.
As for Daniels, he dismissed her role in the trial as immaterial:
It doesn’t matter. What I mean by that is, I expect you will learn that Ms Daniels doesn’t have any idea. She doesn’t know anything about the charge, 34 counts in this case. She has no idea what Michael Cohen wrote on the invoice … her testimony, while salacious, does not matter.
Trump ‘a person just like you and me’, argued defense in opening statements
Victoria Bekiempis
In the defense’s opening statements, Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche said:
President Trump is innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan district attorney should never have brought this case.
Blanche made an effort to humanize Trump, while also repeatedly calling him “President Trump”.
He’s, in some ways, larger than life. But he’s also here in this courtroom doing what any of us would do – defending himself … He’s also a man, he’s a husband, he’s a father, he’s a person who’s just like you and just like me.
Blanche argued that Trump was unaware about the specifics of the hush-money payments because he left it all to Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen. Trump had nothing to do with the 34 checks other than to sign them, Blanche said. He added:
There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy.
Prosecutors, he said, “they put something sinister on this idea, as if it was a crime. You’ll learn: it’s not.”
Chris Michael
The defense then moved on to attacking the key witnesses.
First off, Blanche explained Trump’s actions after he heard the so-called “sinister” allegations of Stormy Daniels. He described these allegations an attempt to try to “embarrass President Trump, to embarrass his family, because as the people alluded to at that time, there were all kinds of salacious allegations going around about President Trump, and it was damaging to him and it was damaging to his family.
“You will hear during this trial President Trump fought back – like he always does – like he’s entitled to do to protect his family, his reputation, and his brand – that is not a crime.”
Blanche then attacked Cohen, who he claimed was peeved for not landing a job in the Trump administration. “He’s obsessed with President Trump, even to this day”, Blanche said, to the extent of having multiple podcasts over Trump and waxing enthusiastic about the possibility of his former boss’ conviction. He then noted that Cohen was found to have lied under oath, further undermining his reliability.
As for Daniels, he dismissed her role in the trial as immaterial: “It doesn’t matter. What I mean by that is, I expect you will learn that Ms Daniels doesn’t have any idea. She doesn’t know anything about the charge, 34 counts in this case. She has no idea what Michael Cohen wrote on the invoice.
“Her testimony, while salacious, does not matter.”
Blanche concluded by emphasizing that catch-and-kills of the kind arranged by Trump, Cohen and Pecker of the National Enquirer are not illegal. “This sort of thing happens regularly, where newspapers [make] decisions about what to publish, where to publish, how to publish,” Blanche said. “It happens with politicians, famous people, wealthy people.”
Chris Michael
Then it was the defense’s turn for opening statements.
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche started by making an effort to humanize Trump, while also repeatedly calling him “President Trump”. “He’s, in some ways, larger than life. But he’s also here in this courtroom doing what any of us would do – defending himself,” Blanche said.
“He’s also a man, he’s a husband, he’s a father, he’s a person who’s just like you and just like me.”
Leaving aside whether Donald Trump is anything like anyone else at all, Blanche then moved on to claiming Trump was unaware about the specifics of the hush-money payments because he left it all to Cohen.
In a moment that caused some guffaws in the Guardian newsroom, Blanche said Trump had nothing to do with the 34 checks other than to sign them.
He added: “There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy.” Prosecutors, he said, “they put something sinister on this idea, as if it was a crime. You’ll learn: it’s not.”
Chris Michael
One amusing detail from yesterday – Colangelo using Trump’s famous cheapness as evidence of motive.
The prosecutor noted that even though Cohen paid off Daniels to the tune of $130,000, he was ultimately repaid $420,000. Colangelo alleged that Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg met with Cohen to discuss the repayment, and added $50,000 to the tab for “tech services” – then double that amount “to account for taxes”.
The fact Trump overpaid, Colangelo said, shows he knew the payoff was wrong.
Donald Trump was a very frugal businessman. He believed in pinching pennies … He believed in negotiating every bill.
… Donald Trump’s willingness to [overpay] here shows just how important it was to hide the true nature of Cohen’s [payment] to Ms Daniels and the overall election conspiracy they had launched in August of 2015.
Hush money was ‘election fraud pure and simple’, argued prosecutors during opening statements
Chris Michael
In his opening statements, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told an entertaining and damning tale.
In it, a presidential candidate tried criminally to cover up an alleged affair with an adult film star to keep damaging information away from the American public weeks before the 2016 election.
Specifically, Colangelo said, Trump’s campaign was terrified after the release of the Access Hollywood tape, which revealed Trump on a hot mic bragging that he could sexually assault women because he was famous. His campaign spun that story as “locker room talk”, but should US voters hear about an affair with a porn star (and who said Trump’s behavior in the bedroom was unpleasant), that wouldn’t be “talk” – it would be action.
Colangelo said the effort to manipulate media began from the beginning of the campaign. He said Trump invited his friend and the former publisher of the National Enquirer, Pecker, to a meeting at Trump Tower in summer 2015. Trump had recently thrown his hat into the ring for the 2016 Republican nomination, and Colangelo said Trump, his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen and Pecker hatched a plan to keep damaging information about Trump out of the press.
According to the prosecution, Pecker agreed to run damaging information in the National Enquirer about opponents – including an item claiming, falsely, that Senator Ted Cruz had family connections to the JFK assassination.
Pecker would also buy up negative stories for the express purpose of preventing them from being published – a “catch-and-kill” campaign that Colangelo said was geared towards helping Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
He mentioned an earlier payment to Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. Colangelo said:
Pecker will also testify that $150,000 was way more than AMI would normally pay for this kind of story, but he discussed it with Donald Trump and he discussed it with Michael Cohen, and he agreed on the deal with the understanding what Trump would find a way to pay AMI back … The company coordinated directly with the candidate.
Today, we’ll learn more.
Judge to hold hearing over gag order
Léonie Chao-Fong
First off today, before we get to Pecker in the witness box, judge Merchan is likely to address whether Trump violated a court-imposed gag order with a series of social media posts about witnesses.
Prosecutors have accused Trump of violating the order 10 times since the start of the trial, and last week filed a motion to hold the former president in contempt of court, and to fine him $1,000 per violation.
Merchan subjected Trump to a gag order before the trial began, covering prosecutors (but not the Manhattan district attorney, Bragg), witnesses, court employees, jurors and their families. Before the trial, Merchan then extended the gag order to cover his own family and Bragg’s family, after Trump posted about Merchan’s daughter, who worked for a company that helped Democratic candidates with digital campaigns.
Trump remains free to criticize Merchan himself, though doing so would be unlikely to win any favors from the judge, who will decide Trump’s sentence should the jury find him guilty.
First witness David Pecker to return to the stand in Trump hush-money trial
Chris Michael
It was a day full of salacious details and outrageous claims yesterday as Donald Trump appeared in a Manhattan courtroom for opening statements in his hush-money trial – the first ever criminal trial of a former US president.
A 12-person jury in the case of the People of the State of New York versus Donald Trump heard prosecutors and defense lawyers give their side of events.
The prosecution said Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” in his efforts to cover up an alleged affair with the adult film star Stormy Daniels, calling it “election fraud – pure and simple”.
The defense countered that there was no crime committed because paying hush money is not illegal and neither is trying to influence the outcome of an election – “It’s called democracy.” Obviously that’s not quite what the prosecution are claiming, but we now have an early sense of how the two sides want to frame the story.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the alleged affair Daniels just weeks before the election.
The case, brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is the first of four criminal cases against the presumptive Republican nominee to reach trial. It hinges on a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels to keep her story under wraps. Bragg contends that Trump masked the true nature of the payment in business records, by describing repayments to Cohen as lawful legal expenses.
The prosecution claims the fact he paid the money to influence the election makes it a campaign expense, and by lying about it he violated federal campaign law – causing the fraud to rise from a misdemeanour to a felony.
Court is scheduled to begin at 9.30am ET, and the jury will return at 11am, with the first witness – David Pecker of the National Enquirer, a man at the heart of the alleged crimes – expected to return to the stand after a very brief appearance yesterday.
We’re at the courthouse again today. Stay with us.
Trump’s criminal hush-money trial: what to know