Media draws first conclusions from Trump's hush money trial for actress
Kyiv • UNN
Trump is charged with falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to silence people with compromising stories during his 2016 presidential campaign, which prosecutors allege was an attempt to illegally influence the election.
Prosecutors' speeches at the first court hearing in the trial of the former American president provided a clear plan for how they will try to prove that Donald Trump broke the law and how the defense plans to fight the charges on several fronts. This was reported by UNN with reference to AR.
Details
The newspaper writes that the jury was first familiarized with the arguments of the prosecution, which believes that Trump falsified business documents as part of a scheme aimed at silencing negative stories about him during his 2016 presidential campaign.
[Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying internal business records of the Trump Organization. Prosecutors have made it clear that they do not want the jury to view this case as a routine paperwork case. Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said that the case is based on a scheme to "corrupt" the 2016 election by silencing people who were going to come forward with embarrassing stories that Trump feared could harm his campaign.
The evidence in court will show that this was not a throwaway or a communications strategy. It was a planned, coordinated, long-term conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected by using illegal spending to silence people who had bad things to say about his behavior. It was election fraud
The charges are related to invoices and checks that were considered legal expenses in the Trump Organization's documentation, although prosecutors claim that they were actually reimbursements to Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen for paying $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels for her silence. Daniels had threatened to publicly claim that she had an extramarital sexual affair with Trump. He says this never happened.
The prosecutors' characterizations appear to be aimed at combating speculation by some experts that this case - possibly the only one to go to trial before the November election - is not as serious as the other three cases he faces. In these cases, Trump is accused of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to President Joe Biden, and of illegally retaining classified documents after he left the White House.
Meanwhile, Trump tried to downplay the allegations as he left the courtroom on Monday, calling it all an "accounting" matter and a "very minor thing." But he also said it was all about the electionscoming up this November. Trump has repeatedly said that the case is part of a broader Democratic attempt to damage his chances of returning to the presidency.
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