What happened in the courtroom during opening statements in Trump’s hush money trial

William Brangham:

I mean, Geoff, it came out an enormous amount. I mean, it was one of the very first things out of prosecutor Matthew Colangelo’s mouth.

He was arguing that Donald Trump engaged in and coordinated a conspiracy to corrupt the 2016 election, as you’re talking about. That’s the frame that they want jurors to see this entire case through. Now, the tricky part is, it’s not what they’re charging. There’s no allegation or insinuation that they broke campaign finance laws here.

They’re talking about prosecuting Donald Trump for falsifying business records, but they want those 34 charges of what they call cooking the books to be seen in service of that larger, more nefarious goal.

And prosecutors today took the jurors back in time to 2016. It was the end of the presidential election, and the “Access Hollywood” tape had just dropped, and Donald Trump’s campaign was in panic mode. And then, all of a sudden, the story that Stormy Daniels, the pornographic actress, had been trying to sell for a few months suddenly became much more urgent to them.

And so, then, Donald Trump’s lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 of his own money to stay quiet and not say anything about that. Then, once Donald Trump became president, he repaid Cohen that money and more.

And it is in that process, that’s where prosecutors argue that the conspiracy to cover all this up was, because they argue that Trump tried to make that — those payments seem like — quote, unquote — “just run-of-the-mill legal fees,” when, in fact, they were in service of this hush money.

And so Colangelo said this was election fraud, pure and simple.