Trump’s Criminal Trial, Explained (2024)

Stormy Daniels was on the witness stand, Donald Trump was at the defense table and I could feel a queasy energy flow through the Manhattan courtroom. Daniels, an adult film star, told jurors about having sex with Trump in 2006. The former president radiated disgust, shaking his head and muttering obscenities.

I’ve been in the courtroom every day, and in today’s newsletter I want to share a bit about what it’s like to watch this spectacle unfold in person. This is the third of Trump’s trials that I’ve covered, but there’s still something striking about seeing a ubiquitous media figure in the flesh. He strides into the courtroom just before proceedings begin each morning: a real, heavily made-up person who directs grimaces, glowers and occasionally winks toward the reporters. His face falls when he thinks he is not being observed. And sometimes, when he stands up from the defense table, I can see him ready himself to face the press — jutting out his jaw before turning toward our seats.

Trump is not on trial for sleeping with Daniels, which he denies, or for paying her to keep silent. He is charged with something significantly less provocative: 34 counts of falsifying business records. Pundits have lamented the quotidian nature of the case — the only jury trial he may face before the election — given the monumental misdeeds of which he is accused elsewhere, including efforts to overturn election results. But the Manhattan district attorney says that his case, too, is about manipulating an election — the 2016 race. Prosecutors here are trying to convince jurors that Trump did something illegal by authorizing the hush-money payment and then seeking to conceal it once he was elected.

Even though it’s a documents case, the trial has thrummed with high-octane moments like his face-off with Daniels. Each time the prosecution calls a witness, rows of onlookers watch a figure from Trump’s past swear an oath that could threaten his future.

The big show

Prosecutors have called 19 witnesses to bring their story to life. They say that after Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels to be quiet, the president and his associates concocted 34 business documents, supposedly for legal services, that actually repaid Cohen for the hush money.

Each witness performed differently on the stand.

• David Pecker, the mustachioed ex-publisher of The National Enquirer, delivered damning testimony in a mild tone against a man he said he still considered a friend. At the campaign’s behest, he said, he paid other accusers not to tell their stories about Trump. Reporters nicknamed him the tabloid grandfather, for his apparently kindly manner, even as he told ruthless stories about tarring Trump’s political enemies with mocking headlines.

• Daniels entered the courtroom in a long black cloak with a hood. Her testimony was riveting. She appeared nervous at first as she recalled an encounter she says she had with Trump in a Nevada hotel room. But when Trump’s lawyer rose to question her, Daniels sat up straighter and fought back. “You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real,” the defense lawyer said. Daniels shot back: “The sex in the films, it’s very much real. Just like what happened to me in that room.”

• Cohen, who took the stand on Monday and was still testifying yesterday, is the prosecution’s most important witness. Only he ties Trump directly to the alleged crime. On two occasions, he said, Trump acknowledged of the scheme to disguise reimbursem*nts for the hush money. Cohen’s tale is a parable of loyalty and betrayal: He says that he turned on the former president after Trump failed to support him in 2018, when federal prosecutors originally began investigating the hush-money payment.