Former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial began in a Manhattan courthouse on Monday, with former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker called as the first witness.
Trump is facing 34 felony countsfor falsifying business records about alleged hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election — the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. The jury was selected last week, and Trump made headlines for claiming falling asleep three days so far and repeatedly complaining that he does not think he’s getting a fair trial.
The ex-president’s complaints about the gag orders imposed by Judge Juan Merchan, and his continued comments and social media posts have been an ongoing issue, leading to speculation if America will see a former president go to prison. There is a hearing scheduled for Tuesday on this issue.
In light of Trump’s talkativeness, Assistant District Attorney Josh Steinglass told the court Friday morning that he was not going to give the defense team advanced notice about what order the prosecution would call witnesses to the stand, which is not a mandatory requirement.
After opening statements from both sides Monday, the prosecution called Pecker to the stand. Pecker is a longtime friend of Trump’s, and his relevance to the trial centers on his role allegedly helping “catch-and-kill” scandalous stories that would be damaging to the ex-president.
The court does not allow television broadcasts, so CNN’s panel of anchor discussed the case and followed along as the network’s reporters in the courtroom provided live updates.
Anchor Jake Tapper read from the live feed that prosecutors asked Pecker to identify several office and cell phone number by their last four digits.
Senior legal analyst Elie Honig commented that prosecutors were asking these questions because they were “trying to lay a foundation” from the phone records about who called whom and what Trump knew about the alleged arrangements being made to cover up stories about extramarital affairs.
Tapper added that Pecker just testified that he “had two email addresses, one for general work and a private one” for emails he was quoted as saying “I didn’t want my assistant to see.”
“Well, that’s interesting, I’m sure that jury is now saying, well, I can’t wait to see the emails from the latter one, the secret email account,” said Honig and read from a new update that Pecker said he “used the more restrictive email for sensitive matters — I’m sure that’s they’ve whet the jury’s appetite for those.”
Anchor and chief legal analyst Laura Coates commented that Pecker’s testimony was also interesting because he had the “expertise” as a tabloid publisher “what was going to capture the attention of a nation” and “what was going to make people lean in and pick up that magazine,” with so many stories about “airing the dirty laundry of all sorts of famous or semi-famous people.”
Other evidence from Packer concerned the former top editor, Dylan Howard, who was directly involved in both discovering stories to publish and organizing the stories they would suppress.
The court ended early because one juror had a previously scheduled dentist appointment and will start again on Tuesday morning.
Watch the video above via CNN.
