It’s a blockbuster legal case that will be making headlines for weeks to come.
On Monday, Donald Trump will become the first former or current US president to go on trial in a criminal case. The jury selection is scheduled to take place this week.
At the heart of the trial in New York are sensational allegations: Trump made hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had an affair. He is accused of falsifying business documents in 34 cases.
But despite the tabloid-worthy details, legal experts say something more fundamental is at the heart of the trial: how American elections are unfolding — and how candidates should be held accountable.
The hush-money payments allegedly came amid the backdrop of the 2016 presidential campaign, and prosecutors are expected to focus on whether efforts to hide information may have influenced Trump’s victory.
The grittier details still dominated public perception of the case, said Shanlon Wu, a former federal prosecutor and political commentator.
Finally, Trump is accused of trying to buy Daniel’s silence about an affair that allegedly took place while his wife Melania Trump was pregnant with their child Barron.
“The term ‘hush money case’ or, even worse, ‘porn star case’ has now become shorthand,” Wu said.
But make no mistake, Wu said: The trial will have far-reaching consequences, and its outcome could impact the three other criminal charges against Trump, particularly those involving his conduct during the 2020 election.
Prosecutors will argue that the hush money payments were “part of a deliberate plan to aid Trump’s election in 2016,” Wu said.
A key pillar of this argument will be to demonstrate Trump’s “willingness to circumvent normal rules and laws governing the conduct of elections in order to win.”
“This is a really important point,” Wu added, calling the trial “a preview of his whole stance toward the election.”
Historical indictment
The road to Monday’s trial began in April last year. That’s when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg unsealed his indictment against Trump.
In doing so, he made history: never before had a sitting or former president been prosecuted.
Trump has since been indicted in three additional criminal cases. He is facing an election interference case in Georgia. And at the federal level, he faces one charge of attempting to overturn the 2020 election and a second charge of allegedly hoarding secret documents.
However, the New York prosecution relies on a state law that classifies falsifying business records as a misdemeanor – but falsifying business records with “intent to defraud and with intent to commit another offense” is a felony.
The indictment did not initially name the other crime in question, and Trump was not charged with a secondary crime.
However, prosecutors released a subsequent “statement of fact” saying Trump “violated election laws.”
They said the fabrications were part of “a plan with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him in order to suppress its publication.”
Months of court filings have further outlined the possible secondary crimes in question, including violations of federal election spending disclosure laws and a New York state law that criminalizes efforts to “promote or prevent the election of any person.”
“exercise public office by unlawful means.”
Such laws are intended to protect voters’ “interest in information,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a law professor and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice
“The heart of the Manhattan district attorney’s case against former President Trump is that he allegedly illegally used his company to hide his infidelity from American voters on the eve of the 2016 election,” she told Al Jazeera.
Torres-Spelliscy pointed to court precedent establishing voters’ rights to certain information about spending and campaign activities during an election season.
This transparency is intended to ensure that voters have the information they need to select the candidate who they believe best represents their interests.
“The [US] The Supreme Court has specifically held that disclosure helps citizens make decisions in the political marketplace,” Torres-Spelliscy said.
“Concealing the hush money payments – if they were to influence the 2016 election – would undermine this important interest of the American people.”
The judge overseeing Monday’s trial, Juan Merchan, had previously ruled in February that the possible federal and state election violations were “legally sufficient” to proceed with felony charges.
The prosecutors’ strategy
Legal experts believe prosecutors will have a relatively easy chance of proving that Trump falsified business records by misrepresenting payments he made to his former lawyer and recruiter Michael Cohen.
Prosecutors have alleged that Trump claimed these allegations as business expenses, when in fact they were used to reimburse Cohen for payments to Daniels.
But forgery alone would only constitute a misdemeanor. Additionally, hush money payments are not necessarily illegal.
So the real battle is to prove that the hush money payments were intended to rig the 2016 presidential election or commit some other related crime.
According to Cheryl Bader, a professor at Fordham University School of Law in the Bronx, District Attorney Bragg will most likely have to address higher issues related to U.S. democracy to secure a felony conviction.
“I think Bragg has to overcome the challenge of this outsized defendant being confronted with what at first glance feels like a minor technical reporting violation,” Bader told Al Jazeera.
“He must convince the jury that Stormy Daniels’ silence amounted to election manipulation – and that Trump knew he had to falsify a paper trail to hide the hush money payments so it wouldn’t look like he paid them out.”
In their indictment, New York prosecutors also detail other cases in which Trump’s team tried to suppress potentially damaging information to avoid political consequences.
They claim Trump entered into a “catch and kill” agreement with the publisher of the tabloid National Inquirer to suppress two other stories: one about an alleged affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal and another by a former bouncer who claimed that Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock.
The agreement, they said, called for the Inquirer to buy the rights to the stories, then bury them on Trump’s behalf as he ran for office.
From the perspective of legal observers, the timing of payments is therefore particularly important. They emerged in the final days of the 2016 election, following the release of an Access Hollywood videotape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.
Bader added that prosecutors “don’t have to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt.” [Trump’s actions] would have actually affected the election.” However, you must prove that the forgeries were made with the “intent” of committing another crime.
“How specifically the prosecution will examine the case with respect to these types of underlying campaign finance violations is still an open question,” she said.
A broader “atmosphere” is likely to impact the process
But those questions will likely be answered in later weeks as the trial unfolds.
Monday will focus on jury selection, paring a pool of hundreds of potential jurors down to just 12 names and six alternates. This process is expected to take up to two weeks.
There will then be opening statements and witness statements. Daniels and Cohen are both expected to testify. It is not known whether Trump or his wife Melania will take the stand. This is followed by closing arguments, jury deliberations and finally a verdict.
The trial is expected to end before the November presidential election, perhaps the only one of Trump’s four pending trials to do so.
Wu, the former prosecutor, said it would likely be nearly impossible for Trump’s defense to fully separate the 2016 allegations from events that have occurred since then.
In particular, he referred to Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election and his role in inciting his supporters who later stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, both in the New York case and in subsequent criminal charges of election interference.
But Wu believes the New York trial setting could be an advantage for the prosecution because the region is known for its left-leaning leanings.
While other parts of the country may be more sympathetic to Trump’s claims, New Yorkers are more likely to see the allegations of 2016 election violations as “a big part of the continuum for Trump and his enablers.”
The jurors “will all know pretty well what’s going on, and that doesn’t bode well for Trump,” Wu said. “I think that atmospherically this is a great help for the prosecution.”