The Case Trump Really Hates

For the past couple of weeks, the spotlight has been focused on the timing of Donald Trump’s four criminal trials and the prospect that at least two of them might not go to a jury before this fall’s election. And the one trial that seems certain to be held before Election Day — his so-called hush money case — has often been dismissed by experts and observers as old, legally dubious and lacking in the sort of weighty issues that sit at the heart of, say, his two election interference cases.

But the hush money case arguably is an election interference case, centering on allegations that, on the eve of the 2016 presidential race, Trump falsified business records as part of a scheme to buy the silence of a porn star to keep her from going public with claims that they had an affair.

And as the trial draws nearer — it is set to start on March 25 in Manhattan — it’s become apparent that prosecutors would like to tell a wide ranging story full of tabloid details, one that could be personally embarrassing to Trump.

The hush money case, which is being prosecuted by Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in Manhattan, has always been an awkward mix of the serious and the profane, based around a seamy tale of extramarital sex, business records and presidential politics. Trump’s aides are blunt that he particularly hates this case given the nature of the story that prosecutors intend to put in front of the jury.

The basics are these: In the waning days of Trump’s first run for the White House, the porn star Stormy Daniels threatened to reveal an affair she says she had with him — a scandalous development that could have damaged his campaign. So, according to prosecutors and their star witness, the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump arranged to buy her silence. In so doing, employees working at his direction falsified a series of invoices, checks and ledger entries to cover his tracks.

But recently, Bragg and his team asked Justice Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the trial, for permission to tell a much more sweeping tale, one involving not just a single secret payoff but three of them. They also want to relate in detail how Trump used his ties to a publisher of supermarket tabloids to preemptively stop embarrassing accounts about him from seeing the light of day, a process known as “catch and kill.”

And if that were not enough, the prosecutors want to introduce evidence about the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape. In the tape, which surfaced in the closing weeks of the 2016 campaign and captured a conversation from years earlier, Trump spoke openly about grabbing female body parts without permission.

The broader story

It’s not uncommon for prosecutors to mention things at trial that fall outside the four corners of a criminal indictment. And in this instance, Bragg wants the jury to hear about hush money given to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who also claims she had an affair with Trump. A discussion of the McDougal payment between Trump and Michael Cohen was captured on an audio recording by Cohen.

Bragg also wants to tell the jury about a payment reportedly made to Dino Sajudin, a former doorman at Trump Tower in New York, to keep him from going public with an apparently baseless allegation that Trump had fathered an out-of-wedlock child with one of his housekeepers.

The purpose of all of this, prosecutors say, is to provide the “necessary background” to the jury and to clarify Trump’s “motive and intent” as Election Day 2016 was approaching.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s lawyers have vehemently objected, describing the broader story that the district attorney wants to tell as “an extraordinary effort to prejudice the jury with salacious and irrelevant details from years before the entries in question.”

In fact, the defense has asked Justice Merchan to keep Bragg from making any arguments at all that Trump was seeking to influence the election by squelching negative stories. In an effort to reframe the case entirely, his lawyers claim that he wasn’t committing fraud by making hush money payments, but was merely seeking to “prevent adverse publicity about himself” from getting out.

“Candidates are not required to disclose everything about their personal life during an election,” the lawyers wrote, “and attempts by a candidate to keep certain matters personal are neither inappropriate nor illegal.”

Presenting evidence

When Justice Merchan makes his decision about how much of this extra evidence to allow into the trial, it could have political — and not just legal — ramifications.

Trump’s aides have long regarded the hush money trial as the least legally impactful, given that it relates to allegations of behavior between consenting adults. His supporters viewed the indictment as a partisan attack when it was handed down last March, and that perspective has only hardened as Trump has insisted he’s facing a “witch hunt.”

But the details of Trump’s behavior could also further alienate women and swing voters whose backing he needs in a general election. The details being made public also upset Trump, according to people who’ve spoken with him, and the impact the case may have on his behavior inside and outside court remains to be seen.

Your questions

We’re asking readers what they’d like to know about the Trump cases: the charges, the procedure, the important players or anything else. You can send us your question by filling out this form.

Isn’t there a law in your country that prevents a convicted felon from becoming president of the United States? After all, Donald Trump has been legally convicted of sexual abuse and defamation as well as fraud. — Hanno Hasselmeier, Jena, Germany

Alan: There are a handful of crimes on the books in the United States that disqualify people found guilty of them from holding public office. But none of the 91 counts that Trump is currently facing contain that provision. So, in theory, he could be found guilty of everything he is charged with and still become president. Among the crimes that does have a disqualification provision is incitement to insurrection. But Trump has not been charged under that statute.

Where does each criminal case stand?

Trump is at the center of at least four separate criminal investigations, at both the state and federal levels, into matters related to his business and political careers. Here is where each case currently stands.