Trump Trial Opening Statements: It’s Just-the-Facts vs. an Emotional Appeal

Donald Trump walked into a full courtroom on Monday morning with a stoic expression. It was the beginning of the first criminal trial of a former US president in the country’s history, an event that has been covered as deeply as any in recent media memory. The reality of the proceedings was still something to behold for some in the gallery.

“I’m the only guy with a notepad,” one reporter, amid rows of peers’ laptops, observed. “What the fuck is this?”

Five press photographers followed the former president’s path down the center of the room. They walked up to the defense table where he was seated in front of several Secret Service agents and brought their cameras up close to his face. From behind, he didn’t seem to move.

The defendant’s attorney, Todd Blanche, always referred to his client as “President Trump.” Justice Juan Merchan greeted him as “Mr. Trump.” When the jury walked in through a side door, they were in a room with a full press pool for the first time, having spent the previous week during jury selection among other prospective panelists. Most of them didn’t seem to notice the onlookers scanning their faces for insight. As Merchan issued instructions, they looked directly at him.

“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up,” senior counsel to the district attorney Matthew Colangelo told the jurors as he began his opening statement. He spoke in an even tone, hewing closely to the sequence of events that followed the announcement of the defendant’s 2016 presidential candidacy, beginning with a meeting at Trump Tower “here in Manhattan.” Trump, Colangelo said, spoke there with his former lawyer Michael Cohen and former American Media CEO and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, and “those three men formed a conspiracy at that meeting.”

In this just-the-facts telling, sex hardly figures into the picture. Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges of falsifying business records in order to cover up a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election. In describing a case about invoices, checks, and meetings, Colangelo was clearing the brush around an alleged affair with Stormy Daniels, which Trump has denied. Cohen “was even referred to as Trump’s fixer,” he said, deploying the most commonly used descriptor for the former attorney—and highlighting how much of the case will revolve around a set of characters and circumstances already etched into recent political lore. Colangelo spoke of the Access Hollywood tape, the concept of “catch-and-kill,” and Trump’s invocation of “locker room talk.”

The former president had been looking straight ahead for the most part, but he turned towards the jury as Blanche began to speak on his behalf.

“President Trump is innocent,” the defense attorney declared, hitting each sentence with a dramatic punch. “President Trump did not commit any crimes. The Manhattan district attorney’s office should have never brought this case.”

On the one hand, Blanche was careful to emphasize his client’s stature, outlining his rationale for using the honorific. “This is a title that he has earned because he was our 45th president,” he said. But Blanche also made an effort to humanize a figure who is “in some ways larger than life.”

Trump was “here in this courtroom, doing what any of us would do,” Blanche said. “Defending himself.” Adding, that aside, he’s “also a man, a husband, a father.”

In wrapping up his statement, the attorney sought to demystify a set of charges that, arriving at trial only months before the November election, have made for the curious sight of a former president trying to defend how he got to the White House as he seeks to regain his office. It would be better, Blanche seemed to suggest, to think of the circumstances of several years ago as mundane. “The 34 counts,” he said, “are really just 34 pieces of paper.”