I was at the courthouse Monday for opening statements in the first criminal trial of former President Donald Trump, the New York State case that alleges he falsified business records to cover up an affair with an adult film star and director, Stormy Daniels, in order to boost his 2016 run for president.
It’s a real privilege to be in the courtroom — news organizations have been fighting tooth and nail to get seats; I was very grateful for a chance to be there.
Some of my purely subjective observations about what it’s like to be there in person:
- The courtroom is barebones and inelegant. It has unflattering lighting. Think DMV office with a high ceiling.
- The courtroom doesn’t smell good. Think old soup and stale breath.
- The overall atmosphere is one I would describe as tense.
- The police officers who police the courtroom are working very hard and they appear to be very stressed.
- The judge in the case is soft-spoken and has a pleasant voice.
- Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo speaks just like Seth Meyers when Seth Meyers is not telling jokes.
- Trump looks a lot older than he used to.
It seemed to me — again, in my purely subjective take — that Trump seemed miserable to be there. That said, a lot of us look older than we did at the start of the Trump era in news and politics (myself very much included).
It seemed to me — again, in my purely subjective take — that Trump seemed miserable to be there.
I also think anyone’s got a right to look miserable when they’re sitting in a courtroom charged with dozens of felonies as a criminal defendant.
From the opening statement by defense counsel for Trump, we got a sense about how they’re going to defend their client.
They’re going to stress that he’s a former president, that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee for president again.
They’re going to claim that every aspect of his conduct was innocent — that there wasn’t an underlying sexual encounter to cover up, that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid a porn star on his own accord and for his own reasons, that Trump paid Cohen purely and only for normal legal services. In short, their message to the jury is that Trump had nothing to do with any affair or any cover-up of an alleged affair, and none of it had anything to do with the election.
If that is basic strategy from the defense, the prosecution’s opening statements presented one fact pattern in particular that might be the most difficult thing for the defense to explain away.
The prosecution’s opening statements presented one fact pattern in particular that might be the most difficult thing for the defense to explain away.
In the prosecution’s opening statement, Matthew Colangelo explained to the jury that there was what he called a criminal conspiracy between Trump and AMI to publish positive stories about Trump in the National Enquirer, and negative stories about his rivals, while also finding as-yet unpublished negative stories about Trump and paying people who might tell those stories to be quiet about them before the election.
The last part of that alleged conspiracy — the so-called “catch and kill” part of the scheme — is what is of most interest to prosecutors and what led to the charges that landed Trump in court.
Colangelo explained to the jury that AMI, which owns the National Enquirer, first found Dino Sajudin, a doorman at a Trump building, who said Trump had fathered a secret child with a housekeeper.
The doorman was the first person they paid to keep quiet about a Trump-related story, Colangelo said. Then there was a second person — a woman named Karen McDougal who said she had had an affair with Trump. Colangelo told the jury they paid her to keep quiet about her story, too.
Then there was Stormy Daniels, and although the National Enquirer also made arrangements to pay her for staying quiet, after their earlier two payoffs to benefit Trump’s campaign, Colangelo said, they decided they were not interested in putting up yet more money for this third catch-and-kill. Instead, it was Michael Cohen who had to put up the money for the payment to Daniels.
Here’s what Colangelo explained next:
"Cohen made that payment at Donald Trump’s direction and for his benefit, and he did it with a specific goal of influencing the outcome of the election.
Now, look, no politician wants bad press, but the evidence at trial will show that this was not spin or communication strategy; this was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected, through illegal expenditures, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using doctored corporate records and bank forms to conceal those payments along the way.
It was election fraud. Pure and simple."
Standing before the jury, Colangelo noted that the 2016 election was close, and that the potential impact of this alleged criminal conspiracy on the outcome of the race will never be known. He continued:
"We will never know, and it doesn’t matter, if this conspiracy was the difference-maker in a close election.
But you will see evidence in the defendant’s own words from his social media posts, from his speeches at campaign rallies and other events, you will see in his own words, making crystal clear that he was certainly concerned about how all of this could hurt his standing with voters and with female voters in particular.
You will also see evidence that on election night, as news outlets got closer to calling the election for Donald Trump... the lawyer for both Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal texted [editor] Dylan Howard at the National Enquirer and he said, 'What have we done?'
About a month after the election, Pecker then authorized AMI to release both Sajudin and McDougal from their non-disclosure agreements."
So, having paid for the stories in order to keep them from the public before Election Day, Pecker and AMI then told both McDougal and Sajudin a month after the election that they were no longer bound by the non-disclosure agreements.
For context, it is important to know that the defense has claimed none of these payments had anything to do with the election.
But the prosecution says it will present evidence that Trump and AMI paid for these people to be silent until the election was over, and then once the election was over, they released these people from their agreements.
Logically, if not legally, this just bluntly gives lie to the defense’s portrayal of Trump’s actions, as described in their opening statement.
The unavoidable implication is that, once the election happened, Trump and AMI didn’t care anymore about keeping those stories away from the public. Because at that point, it was “mission accomplished”; the mission had been to influence the election.
From what I heard in court Monday, this is the prosecution’s argument that is most troublesome for the defense. If prosecutors can support these claims with evidence and convince the jury of the truth of this fact pattern, it presents a nearly irrefutable logical inference showing what the payoffs were for: Trump was not acting not to protect his brand or to save his family from embarrassment. The payments were made purely and only for the purpose of influencing the election. Full stop.
The prosecution calls what Trump and AMI did “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” one that was “covered up” by lying in Trump Organization business records. Logically, that would seem like the crux of the case. Legally — we’ll see.