Trump trial live updates: Prosecution opening statement frames ‘criminal conspiracy’ to corrupt 2016 election

“I have a spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy,” says Blanche.

The 2017 payments to Michael Cohen were merely for payments for the retainer agreement for legal services rendered, according to Blanche.

“What on earth is a crime? What is a crime about what I just described?” Blanche says.

The 34 counts “are really just 34 pieces of paper,” including invoices, checks, and ledger notation from the invoice that said “for retainer agreement for legal services,” he says. Trump ultimately paid Cohen $420,000, not only the $130,000 that was paid to Stormy Daniels.

“None of this was a crime,” Blanche adds. “You just heard the People’s story … that Michael Cohen was trying to cover up the payback of this $130,000 agreement … But think for a moment about what the People just showed you. … Would a frugal businessman, a man who pinches pennies, repay a $130,000 debt to the tune of $420,000?

Donald Trump’s defense attorney Todd Blanche begins to present his opening statement.

“President Trump is also innocent. President Trump did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office should have never brought this case.”

Blanche says the defense will “refer to him as President Trump.”

“This is a title he has earned,” he says. “We will call him President Trump out of respect for the office he held… But he’s not just our former president, he’s not just Donald Trump that you’ve seen on TV or read about or seen photos of. He’s also a man, he’s a husband, he’s a father. And just like me.”

“The story you just heard you will learn is not true, and at the end of this trial, there will be plenty of reasonable doubt.”

Colangelo to jurors: “Tune out of the noise. Focus on the facts. Focus on the logical inferences that follow from those facts. Focus on the evidence, listen to the testimony, read the documents, emails, text messages, bank statements, handwritten notes, all of it.”

After the trial, when prosecutors return to the jurors for closing arguments after reviewing all of that evidence, all of it “inevitably leads to only one conclusion: Donald Trump is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.”

Alex Woodward reports from the courthouse:

In their opening arguments to jurors, Manhattan prosecutors outlined Donald Trump’s alleged criminal conspiracy to influence the 2016 presidential election by paying off publishers to bury compromising stories.

“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover up,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo told jurors on Monday.

After the Access Hollywood tape was published, AMI told Cohen that Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson had another story about sexual infidelity, with a porn star. At Trump’s direction, Cohen arranged to buy the story.

Trump told Cohen to delay until after the election, and he tried until it was eventually arranged that Cohen would pay Daniels $130,000 through a shell company called Essential Consultants LLC. Cohen took out a home equity loan to make the payment.

This was to influence the election. This was a conspiracy. It was election fraud, pure and simple.

On Election Night, Keith Davidson texted the National Enquirer’s Dylan Howard and asked, What have we done? Trump invited Pecker to the White House, to thank him.

In January 2017, before Trump took office, Cohen met with Allen Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization. In arranging repayment, they couldn’t admit the money was for a porn star payoff. They doubled the amount so Cohen had to pay taxes on it and added another $60,000 as a year-end bonus.

Weisselberg wrote it all down and Trump approved it.

Trump is described as a “frugal” man who was “pinching pennies.” Evidence at trial will show that, Colangelo says.

Colangelo says: “No politician wants bad press. But the evidence at trial will show that this was not spin, or a communications strategy. This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy… It was election fraud. Pure and simple.”

Trump has largely been facing forward. Colangelo is speaking at a podium to Trump’s right, slightly behind him.

Karen McDougal meanwhile was offered $150,000 for the “limited life rights to the story of her affair … but the real reason … was to make sure she did not publicize details of her affair with Trump before the 2016 election,” Colangelo says.

He says that Pecker will testify that $150,000 was way more than AMI would normally pay for that kind of story.

Cohen recorded a conversation with Trump in September 2016 — “You’ll get a chance to hear that conversation in this trial,” Colangelo says — on which Cohen said he spoke to then Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg about how to set that up.

“You’ll hear [Trump] ask Cohen, ‘What do we have to pay for this? 150?'” he said. “You’ll hear in his own voice suggest paying in cash.”

AMI then agreed to sell the rights to a shell company set up by Cohen, giving Trump the rights to the McDougal story. Jurors will be shown a “fake” invoice billing the shell company for so-called “advisory” services, and that Cohen, Pecker and Trump would not appear in the transaction. Pecker then told Cohen the deal was off, and that AMI would instead eat the cost.

Jurors just heard Colangelo quote from the Access Hollywood tape, which gives context to the campaign going into “damage control mode” when it learned of the Stormy Daniels story

Three catch-and-kill deals stem from the Trump Tower agreement and lay the foundation for the case: The doorman, Karen McDougal, and Stormy Daniels.

According to Colangelo, the doorman’s story — which shows Cohen actively colluding in a catch-and-kill scheme with a media enterprise” — was ultimately bunk, but Cohen told Pecker not to release him from his NDA until after the election.

Pecker then “deliberately delayed” the release of his NDA, Colangelo says.