Here are 5 'big questions that loom' as Trump’s first criminal trial draws closer: analysis

12 April 2024

This Monday, April 15 will mark a first in the United States' 248-year history when jury selection begins in former President Donald Trump's first criminal trial.

Trump and his attorneys have been able to delay the trials in all four of the criminal indictments he is facing. But assuming there are no more delays, the trial for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.'s hush money/business records case is right around the corner.

Bragg alleges that during the 2016 presidential race, Trump falsified business records in order to make hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. According to Michael Cohen — Trump's former personal attorney and fixer and one of Bragg's key witnesses — Trump had extramarital affairs with Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal and paid hush money to cover them up.

In a listicle published on April 12, The Hill's Niall Stanage lays out five "big questions that loom" as Trump's first criminal trial draws closer and closer.

The questions are: (1) "How big a spectacle will Trump create?," (2) "Will Team Trump seek further delay — or try to get it over with?," (3) "Can prosecutors prove a felony?," (4) "Does Trump keep attacking the judge and his family?," and (5) "Do President Biden and the Democrats weigh in?"

Stanage points out that "hush money payments are not illegal" in the United States and that Trump is not being prosecuted simply because of the payments themselves.

"The offense with which Trump is charged is usually a misdemeanor rather than a felony," Stanage explains. "But it can fall into the latter category when prosecutors contend, as they do here, that a defendant cooked the books as part of another crime. The case being made by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) and his team is that Trump falsified business records in order to conceal breaches of state and federal election law."

The Belfast-born journalist continues, "Some facts are undisputed: Trump's then-fixer and attorney Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election to keep her claims of having had sex with Trump a decade earlier out of the public domain. Trump, through his company, then reimbursed Cohen with payments that were officially classified as a retainer for his legal services. Bragg's felony case, simply put, is that the $130,000 was paid in furtherance of Trump's political campaign and should therefore have been declared as such."

Niall Stanage's full article for The Hill is available at this link.

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