After opening statements from both sides, in which the defence said: “ There’s nothing wrong with trying to infl uence an election – it’s called democracy”, the trial also heard from its fi rst witness, David Pecker , a former publisher of the National Enquirer and a man at the heart of Trump’s alleged crimes.
A jury of seven men and five women will consider whether Trump’s alleged eff orts to conceal an affair with Daniels, which he feared would damage his run for the White House, were illicit. Trump was charged in spring last year with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records .
The case, brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, hinges on a $130,000 (£105,000) payment that Trump's former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen made to Daniels to keep her story under wraps. Bragg contends Trump masked the true nature of the payment in business records, by describing repayments to Cohen as lawful legal expenses.
In his opening statement, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told jurors Trump invited his friend Pecker to a meeting at Trump Tower in summer 2015. Trump had recently thrown his hat into the ring for the 2016 Republican nomination. Colangelo said Trump, 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 the senator Ted Cruz had family connections to the JFK assassination - as well as buying up negative stories, for the express purpose of preventing them from being published.
Colangelo said this "catch and kill" campaign was geared towards helping Trump's 2016 election fight.
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