Trump arrives at New York court for start of hush money trial

Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrived at a New York courthouse on Monday to hear prosecutors explain why his alleged cover-up of a hush money payment to a porn star during his 2016 campaign broke the law, as the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president begins.

Though Trump called for supporters to protest peacefully at courthouses "all over the Country," few were on hand to greet him when he arrived at the downtown courthouse.

"Lower Manhattan surrounding the Courthouse, where I am heading now, is completely CLOSED DOWN. SO UNFAIR!!!" he wrote on social media.

Lawyers for the Republican presidential candidate will also make their opening statement in what may be the only one of Trump's four criminal prosecutions to go to trial before his November 5 election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden.

Prosecutors say Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen's $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier deceived voters in the waning days of Trump's 2016 campaign when his candidacy was struggling from other revelations of sexual misbehavior.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and denies having had a sexual encounter with Daniels.

Many legal experts see the case as the least consequential of the Trump prosecutions. A guilty verdict would not bar him from taking office, but it could hurt his candidacy.

Prosecutors have said the Daniels payment was part of a broader "catch and kill" scheme hatched by Trump, Cohen and David Pecker – the former chief executive of tabloid publisher American Media – to pay off people with potentially damaging information about Trump before the November 2016 election. Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Pecker is the first witness prosecutors plan to call after opening statements, the New York Times and CNN reported on Sunday. According to prosecutors, Pecker agreed during an August 2015 meeting with Trump and Cohen to act as the campaign's "eyes and ears" by looking out for negative stories about Trump.

American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer, admitted in 2018, as part of a deal to avoid criminal prosecution, that it paid $150,000 to former Playboy magazine model Karen McDougal for rights to her story about a months-long affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. American Media said it worked "in concert" with Trump's campaign and never published a story.

The tabloid reached a similar deal to pay $30,000 to a doorman who was seeking to sell a story about Trump allegedly fathering a child out of wedlock, which turned out to be false, according to prosecutors.

Trump has said the payments were personal and did not violate election law. He has also denied the affair with McDougal.

In the New York trial, Trump is charged with falsely recording his 2017 reimbursement of Cohen for the Daniels payment as a legal expense in his real estate company's books. Prosecutors say he did so to conceal the fact that Cohen's payment exceeded the $2,700 limit on individual campaign contributions at the time.

According to Trump's defense team, prosecutors plan to call at least 20 witnesses. The trial could last six to eight weeks.

Trump faces three other criminal indictments stemming from his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021. He has pleaded not guilty in those cases, and he portrays all of them as a broad-based effort by Biden's Democratic allies to undercut his campaign.