On first day of Trump hush money trial, prosecutors say ex-president corrupted 2016 election

Trump is charged with falsifying records to cover up payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about a sexual encounter before 2016 election

Prosecutors portrayed US$130,000 payment as criminal effort to deceive voters when Trump was facing other accusations of crude sexual behaviour

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Former US president Donald Trump at Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday,. Photo: AP

Published: 11:34pm, 22 Apr 2024Updated: 6:02am, 23 Apr 2024

New York prosecutors said on the first day of Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial that the former president broke the law and corrupted the 2016 election by trying to cover up sexual encounters with a porn star and a Playboy model, while his defence lawyer said he committed no crime.

Jurors in the historic trial also heard briefly from the prosecution’s first witness: former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who prosecutors say took part in a “catch and kill” scheme to suppress unflattering stories about Trump and help him get elected.

In the first-ever trial of a former US president, Trump is charged with falsifying business records to cover up a US$130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she claims they had 10 years earlier. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies the encounter took place.

Prosecutors portrayed the payment as a criminal effort to deceive voters at a time when Trump was facing other accusations of crude sexual behaviour.

In a courtroom sketch, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, left, speaks as former US president Donald Trump sits among his lawyers Todd Blanche, Emil Bove and Susan Necheles during a hearing before his trial. Photo: Reuters

“This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behaviour,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.”