Will a Mountain of Proof Be Sufficient to Convict Trump?

Within the official report, the case is named the Individuals of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, and, for now, the folks have the stronger hand: They’ve insider witnesses, a good jury pool and a lurid set of details a few presidential candidate, a payoff and a porn star.

On Monday, the prosecutors will formally introduce the case to 12 all-important jurors, embarking on the primary prosecution of an American president. The trial, which may model Mr. Trump a felon as he mounts one other White Home run, will reverberate all through the nation and take a look at the sturdiness of the justice system that Mr. Trump is attacking in a means that no different defendant could be allowed to do.

Although the district lawyer, Alvin L. Bragg, has assembled a mountain of proof, a conviction is hardly assured. Over the subsequent six weeks, Mr. Trump’s attorneys will seize on three obvious weak factors: a key witness’s credibility, a president’s culpability and the case’s authorized complexity.

Prosecutors will search to maneuver round these vulnerabilities, dazzling the jury with a story that mixes politics and intercourse, as they confront a shrewd defendant with a decades-long monitor report of skirting authorized penalties. They will even search to bolster the credibility of that key witness, Michael D. Cohen, a former fixer to Mr. Trump who beforehand pleaded responsible to federal crimes for paying the porn star, Stormy Daniels.

Daniel J. Horwitz, a veteran protection lawyer who beforehand labored within the Manhattan district lawyer’s workplace prosecuting white-collar instances, stated prosecutors may be anticipated to corroborate Mr. Cohen’s story wherever attainable.

“The prosecution has layers upon layers of evidence to back up what Michael Cohen says,” Mr. Horwitz stated.

Each side will lay out their instances in opening statements on Monday, providing dueling interpretations of the proof some six years after the payoff to Ms. Daniels entered the general public consciousness and briefly imperiled Mr. Trump’s presidency.

However in previewing the case for potential jurors final week, Manhattan prosecutors emphasised neither the payoff that secured Ms. Daniels’s silence, nor the intercourse scandal that was buried within the course of. One prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, as a substitute distilled the trial’s stakes to a elementary query: “This case is about the rule of law and whether or not Donald Trump broke it.”

Mr. Steinglass’s boss, Mr. Bragg, has supplied a loftier interpretation, casting Mr. Trump’s actions as election interference. Though Mr. Trump’s attorneys would possibly declare he was merely making an attempt to cover embarrassing tales from his household, Mr. Bragg says Mr. Trump orchestrated a scheme to hide simmering intercourse scandals from voters as they headed to the polls in 2016. All informed, his allies struck three hush-money offers, paying off individuals who had tales to inform — tales that would have derailed Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors will search to show that 2016 marketing campaign technique in opposition to him: The ways that helped propel Mr. Trump to victory shall be admitted as proof and reconsidered far past the courtroom. Aides and pals who lied on Mr. Trump’s behalf will take the witness stand to testify in opposition to him.

They embody: David Pecker, the tabloid writer who purchased and buried damaging tales about Mr. Trump; Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman who tried to spin reporters; and Mr. Cohen, the fixer who paid Ms. Daniels. Mr. Pecker, who ran the corporate that owned The Nationwide Enquirer, is about to go first, and is predicted to recount for the jury a number of conversations with Mr. Trump in regards to the hush cash, in response to an individual accustomed to the plan.

Mr. Trump faces 34 felony counts, and as much as 4 years behind bars, however extra than simply his freedom is at stake. If convicted, he would possibly lose the best to vote, together with to forged a poll for himself. If he have been to win again the White Home, he could be the primary convicted felony to function commander in chief. And the query of how he would possibly serve a jail sentence, ought to it come to that if he doesn’t obtain probation, may throw the nation into turmoil.

America has grown accustomed to seeing Mr. Trump smash by its customs and is now witnessing a phenomenon that could be a first within the 248 years of its historical past. Presidents have been impeached, pushed from workplace and rejected on the polls. Mr. Trump is about to be the primary to have his destiny determined not simply by voters, however by 12 residents in a jury field.

They usually all hail from Manhattan, the borough that made Mr. Trump well-known, and the place he’s now deeply unpopular. A positive jury pool, authorized consultants say, has given Mr. Bragg a leg up on the trial.

But the jury, which was made last on Friday and consists of six alternates, isn’t any rubber stamp: It consists of not less than two individuals who have expressed some affection for the previous president, and it takes just one skeptical member to drive a mistrial, an consequence that Mr. Trump would rejoice as a win.

The stakes are excessive for Mr. Bragg as properly. He’s betting his profession and his legacy on a prosecution he inherited, rejected after which remodeled.

When he took workplace in 2022, he declined to convey a monetary fraud case in opposition to Mr. Trump that his predecessor had ready, prompting an uproar when two prosecutors resigned in protest.

However Mr. Bragg continued to research and shortly revisited the hush-money deal — an episode that had grow to be recognized internally as “the zombie case,” as a result of it saved coming again to life. Little greater than a 12 months after taking workplace, Mr. Bragg indicted the previous president.

Three different indictments adopted in three different cities, however with these instances mired in delay, Mr. Bragg’s trial might now be the one one which Mr. Trump will face earlier than Election Day.

The Manhattan case contains the three hush-money offers: with Ms. Daniels, with a former Playboy mannequin and with a onetime doorman who informed a story of Mr. Trump fathering a toddler out of wedlock.

Mr. Pecker and his tabloid purchased the silence of the doorman, whose story turned out to be false. Additionally they purchased the rights to the story informed by the mannequin, Karen McDougal, after which by no means wrote it, a follow often called “catch and kill.”

Then there was Ms. Daniels, who was thinking about promoting her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. Mr. Pecker drew the road there: Her worth was too excessive.

As an alternative, he and a prime editor alerted Mr. Cohen, who quickly paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to not inform her story a few sexual encounter with Mr. Trump a decade earlier.

Mr. Cohen has stated he acted at Mr. Trump’s course, however the former president is just not charged over the cost itself. As an alternative, he stands accused of masking up the transaction by disguising reimbursements to Mr. Cohen.

In inside data, Mr. Trump’s firm marked these funds as authorized bills, citing a retainer settlement. But no such bills existed, prosecutors say, and the retainer settlement was bogus.

Mr. Trump is accused of engineering — or, not less than, approving — the coverup. His firm, prosecutors argue, produced 34 false data that underpin the counts in opposition to him: 11 checks, 11 month-to-month invoices Mr. Cohen submitted and 12 entries within the normal ledger for Mr. Trump’s belief.

Mr. Trump signed a number of of the checks within the White Home, as prosecutors will certainly level out on the trial.

However straight linking Mr. Trump to the plot to falsify these data is one other matter altogether.

His attorneys shall be more likely to argue that he was oblivious, and that Mr. Cohen dealt with the specifics. Mr. Cohen hashed out the reimbursement plan with Mr. Trump’s chief monetary officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, who’s serving jail time for perjury and won’t testify, data present.

The dearth of a firsthand witness to verify Mr. Cohen’s account is a possible flaw within the case, but it surely might not be deadly. Prosecutors plan to introduce a doc containing Mr. Weisselberg’s handwritten notes in regards to the reimbursements — a key piece of proof demonstrating that Mr. Cohen didn’t act alone.

And beneath the regulation, the prosecutors needn’t show that Mr. Trump personally falsified the data. Already in the course of the trial’s first week, Mr. Steinglass laid the groundwork with a easy analogy: He requested potential jurors whether or not they may settle for that, if a husband employed successful man to homicide his spouse, the husband was simply as responsible as the person who pulled the set off.

“Can you all follow the same kind of logic in this case?” Mr. Steinglass requested the possible jurors. Many stated they may.

Mr. Cohen is predicted to supply the closest factor this case has to a smoking gun: He’s more likely to say that, in early 2017, he and Mr. Trump mentioned the reimbursement scheme within the Oval Workplace.

If Mr. Trump testifies in his personal protection, that would pit Mr. Cohen’s phrase in opposition to Mr. Trump’s — a he-said, he-said story, with two questionable narrators.

Whether or not or not Mr. Trump takes the stand, the trial may grow to be a referendum on Mr. Cohen’s credibility, with the decision presumably hinging on a convincing efficiency.

In 2018, Mr. Cohen pleaded responsible to quite a lot of federal crimes, admitting to taking part within the hush-money offers with Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal and mendacity to Congress about plans for a Trump enterprise deal in Russia. Mr. Trump’s attorneys will search to emphasise Mr. Cohen’s checkered previous at each flip.

And, on cross-examination, Mr. Trump’s attorneys are more likely to painting Mr. Cohen as a serial liar with a grudge in opposition to his former boss.

Susan Necheles, considered one of Mr. Trump’s attorneys, started that marketing campaign throughout jury choice. She referenced Mr. Cohen’s 2022 e book “Revenge,” questioning the credibility of “someone who says that they want revenge against President Trump.”

But the prosecution is predicted to notice that Mr. Cohen informed lots of his lies for Mr. Trump. And prosecutors will provide proof corroborating the broad strokes of Mr. Cohen’s story, which may persuade jurors when they’re weighing his testimony in regards to the essential Oval Workplace assembly.

Mr. Trump’s White Home govt assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, who has been recognized as a possible witness, may verify that Mr. Cohen did certainly meet with Mr. Trump, even when she can not verify what they mentioned. Mr. Pecker can help not less than a few of Mr. Cohen’s testimony about Mr. Trump’s involvement within the hush-money offers. And a recording Mr. Cohen manufactured from a name he had with Mr. Trump will seize the previous president discussing the take care of Ms. McDougal.

“The prosecution’s argument is that you can trust Michael Cohen beyond a reasonable doubt as to their isolated conversation,” stated Mr. Horwitz, the previous prosecutor. He known as the method “Prosecuting 101.”

William Okay. Rashbaum, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Michael Rothfeld contributed reporting.