This Was The Prosecution Told The Jury In Their Opening Statement At Trump's NYC Hush Money Trial

5 months ago

On "Forbes Newsroom," attorney Jon-Jorge Aras spoke to Forbes Senior Law Editor Liane Jackson about the prosecution's argument to the jury in opening statements at former President Trump's NYC hush money trial.

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Transcript

00:00 Donald Trump is facing a 34 count indictment for falsifying business records and opening

00:07 statements began last week.

00:08 They chose the jury.

00:10 That was also a tumultuous time, but we had opening statements that didn't last particularly

00:15 long, about half an hour each.

00:17 Can you tell us a little bit about the prosecution and what they laid out to the jury?

00:24 Because they are setting the stage for the rest of this case.

00:26 And they were talking about this being a case, not just a hush money trial, which is the

00:31 term we keep hearing over and over, this hush money case, but they want to frame this as

00:36 about illegal election interference at a criminal conspiracy.

00:40 Can you talk a little bit more about that and what they told the jury?

00:44 Absolutely.

00:45 So the prosecution today got the opportunity to explain their narrative and lay out their

00:51 case and what they plan to prove throughout this process.

00:54 And it really breaks down into two areas.

00:56 The first area is the falsification of business records.

01:00 That's the underlying alleged crime, which is a misdemeanor that they're alleging former

01:06 President Trump did by recording entries of retainer payments to his attorney, Michael

01:11 Cohen, as retainer payments, as opposed to payments specifically for Stormy Daniels.

01:19 That's one part of it.

01:20 The second part of it is more broad ranging.

01:22 It has to do with a criminal conspiracy that former President Trump conspired with the

01:29 National Enquirer to go out and stop negative stories from being run against him with the

01:37 goal ultimately of interfering with the 2016 election.

01:42 And that interference allegedly would have been to stop negative press from coming out

01:47 that would be shielded from the public so they couldn't make ultimately an informed

01:52 decision on the candidate, former President Trump.

01:56 So it's broken down into two parts.

01:58 The first part is fairly straightforward.

02:01 The second part is a little bit more broad ranging and a conspiracy will have to involve,

02:07 obviously, more than one individual.

02:10 So it's going to have to be a minimum two people up to a larger group that agreed to

02:17 commit a criminal act.

This Was The Prosecution Told The Jury In Their Opening Statement At Trump's NYC Hush Money Trial

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