'Election Fraud, Pure and Simple': Trump's Prosecutors Move Beyond Stormy Daniels in Wide-Lens Trial Opening
For most casual observers of former President Donald Trump’s debut criminal trial in New York, adult film actress Stormy Daniels is a central figure. But prosecutors widened the aperture on the historic case through a sweeping narrative about election influence that went beyond any single hush-money scheme.
“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo told jurors on Monday morning,
All 34 felony counts against the former president charge him with falsifying business records to reimburse Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen for hush-money payments to Daniels. During two fateful phone calls, Trump and Cohen allegedly devised a complicated system of hush money and reimbursements, involving a shell company, alleged tax deceptions, and disguised monthly payments, inflating a $130,000 payoff to more than twice its size: $420,000.
Colangelo unpacked that system well into his taut opening statement, clocking in at less than one hour. However, the prosecutor laid out a long backstory of the 2016 presidential election before even mentioning Daniels’ name. “This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up,” Colangelo told the jury. “The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” he continued. “Then, he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”
https://www.justsecurity.org/94927/trump-trial-opening/
