Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy “to hoodwink voters” in 2016, a prosecutor told jurors on May 28 during closing arguments in the former President’s hush money trial, while a defence lawyer branded the star witness as the “greatest liar of all time” and pressed the panel for an across-the-board acquittal.

The lawyers’ duelling accounts, wildly divergent in their assessments of witness credibility, Mr. Trump’s culpability and the strength of evidence offered both sides one final chance to score points with the jury before it started deliberating the first felony case against a former American President.

The landmark case, the only one of four criminal prosecutions against Mr. Trump to reach trial, centred on allegations that Mr. Trump and his allies conspired to stifle potentially embarrassing stories during the 2016 presidential campaign through hush money payments — including to a porn actor who alleged that she and Mr. Trump had sex a decade earlier.

“This case, at its core, is about a conspiracy and a cover-up,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors, who are expected to begin deliberations on May 29. He later added: “We’ll never know if this effort to hoodwink voters made the difference in the 2016 election, but that’s not something we have to prove.”

Mr. Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche told jurors that neither the actor, Stormy Daniels, nor the Trump attorney who paid her, Michael Cohen, can be trusted.

“President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period,” Mr. Blanche said.

Following more than four weeks of testimony, the summations tee up a momentous and historically unprecedented task for the jury as it decides whether to convict the presumptive Republican presidential nominee ahead of the November election. The political undertones of the proceedings were unmistakable as President Joe Biden’s campaign staged an event outside the courthouse with actor Robert De Niro while Mr. Blanche reminded jurors the case was not a referendum on their views about Mr. Trump.

In a marathon five-hour argument that stretched deep into the evening, Mr. Steinglass stressed to jurors the trove of evidence they had viewed but also sought to defray potential concerns about witness credibility. Mr. Trump and his legal team, for instance, have repeatedly denounced Mr. Cohen as a liar.

The prosecutor acknowledged that Ms. Daniels’ account of the alleged 2006 encounter in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite, which Mr. Trump has denied, was at times “cringeworthy.” But he said the details she offered — including about decor and what she said she saw when she snooped in Trump’s toiletry kit — were full of touchstones “that kind of ring true.”

He said the story matters because it “reinforces (Mr. Trump’s) incentive to buy her silence.”

“Her story is messy. It makes people uncomfortable to hear. It probably makes some of you uncomfortable to hear. But that’s kind of the point,” Mr. Steinglass said. He added: “In the simplest terms, Stormy Daniels is the motive.”

The payoff unfolded against the backdrop of the disclosure of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump could be heard bragging about grabbing women sexually without their permission. Had the Daniels story emerged after that recording, it would have undermined his strategy of spinning away his words, Mr. Steinglass said.

“It’s critical to appreciate this,” Mr. Steinglass said. At the same time he was dismissing his words on the tape as “locker room talk,” Trump “was negotiating to muzzle a porn star,” the prosecutor said.

Mr. Blanche, who spoke first, sought to downplay the fallout by saying the “Access Hollywood” tape was not a “doomsday event.”

Mr. Steinglass also maintained that the prosecution’s case did not rest solely on Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer who paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. Mr. Cohen later pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in the hush money payments, as well as to lying to Congress. He went to prison and was disbarred, but his direct involvement in the transactions made him a key trial witness.

“It’s not about whether you like Michael Cohen. It’s not about whether you want to go into business with Michael Cohen,” Mr. Steinglass said. “It’s whether he has useful, reliable information to give you about what went down in this case, and the truth is that he was in the best position to know.”

Mr. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, charges punishable by up to four years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

The two sides also differed on a recording Mr. Cohen made of himself and Mr. Trump discussing what prosecutors say was a plan to buy the rights to the story of a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, from the National Enquirer, after the publication’s parent company paid her $150,000 to keep quiet about an affair she says she had with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump has denied that affair too.

Mr. Blanche said the September 2016 recording, which cuts off before the conversation finishes, is unreliable and isn’t about Ms. McDougal at all, but rather about a plan to buy a collection of the material the tabloid had hoarded on Mr. Trump. Mr. Steinglass said the recording was part of a “mountain of evidence” against Mr. Trump.

Though the case featured sometimes seamy discussion of sex and tabloid industry practices, the actual charges concern something decidedly less flashy: reimbursements Mr. Trump signed for Mr. Cohen for the payments.

The reimbursements were recorded as being for legal expenses, which prosecutors say was a fraudulent label designed to conceal the purpose of the hush money transaction.

Defense lawyers say Mr. Cohen actually did substantive legal work for Mr. Trump and his family. But Mr. Steinglass said that argument is undermined by a 2018 Trump tweet in which the then-president described the arrangement with Mr. Cohen as a “reimbursement” while insisting it was unrelated to his candidacy.

“Mr. Cohen spent more time being cross-examined at this trial than he did doing legal work for Donald Trump in 2017,” Mr. Steinglass quipped. “Do you think there’s any chance Donald Trump would pay $42,000 an hour for legal work by Michael Cohen?”

In his own address to the jury, Mr. Blanche castigated the case’s entire foundation.

He said Mr. Cohen, not Mr. Trump, created the invoices submitted to the Trump Organization for reimbursement, and he rejected the prosecution’s caricature of a details-oriented manager, suggesting instead that Trump was preoccupied with the presidency and not the checks he was signing. And he mocked the idea that the alleged hush money scheme amounted to election interference.

“Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people who are working together to help somebody win,” Mr. Blanche said.

He reserved his most animated attack for Mr. Cohen, with whom he tangled during a lengthy cross-examination.

Mimicking the term “GOAT,” used primarily in sports as an acronym for “greatest of all time,” Mr. Blanche labelled Mr. Cohen the “GLOAT” — greatest liar of all time — and called him “the human embodiment of reasonable doubt.”

“He lied to you repeatedly. He lied many, many times before you even met him. His financial and personal well-being depends on this case. He is biased and motivated to tell you a story that is not true,” Mr. Blanche said, a reference to Mr. Cohen’s social media attacks on Mr. Trump and the lucrative income he has derived from books and podcasts about Mr. Trump.

The attorney’s voice became even more impassioned as he revisited one of the more memorable moments of the trial: when Mr. Blanche sought to unravel Mr. Cohen’s claim that he had spoken to Mr. Trump by phone about the Ms. Daniels arrangement on Oct. 24, 2016.

Mr. Cohen testified that he had contacted Mr. Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, as a way of getting a hold of Trump, but Mr. Blanche asserted that at the time Mr. Cohen was actually dealing with a spate of harassing phone calls and was preoccupied with that problem when he spoke with Mr. Schiller.

“That was a lie,” Mr. Blanche said, “and he got caught red-handed.”

In his testimony, Mr. Cohen acknowledged a litany of past lies, many of which he said were intended to protect Trump. But he said he had subsequently told the truth, at great cost: “My entire life has been turned upside-down as a direct result,” he said.

A New York appeals court on May 14 upheld the gag order in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, finding that the judge “properly determined” that Mr. Trump’s public statements “posed a significant threat to the integrity of the testimony of witnesses and potential witnesses in this case as well.” Mr. Trump had asked the state’s intermediate appeals court to lift or modify the gag order, which bars him from commenting publicly about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the case, including Judge Juan M. Merchan’s family and prosecutors other than District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

At an emergency hearing last month, just days before the trial started, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the gag order is an unconstitutional curb on the presumptive Republican nominee’s free speech rights while he’s campaigning for President and fighting criminal charges.

In its ruling, the five-judge appeals panel noted that Mr. Trump wasn’t claiming that the gag order had infringed on his right to a fair trial. Rather, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that prohibiting him from commenting restricted his ability to engage in protected political speech and could adversely impact on his campaign.

The appeals court ruled that Judge Merchan “properly weighed” Mr. Trump’s free speech rights against the “historical commitment to ensuring the fair administration of justice in criminal cases, and the right of persons related or tangentially related to the criminal proceedings from being free from threats, intimidation, harassment, and harm”. Mr. Trump’s fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen returned to the witness stand on May 14, testifying in detail about how the former President was linked to all aspects of the hush-money scheme that prosecutors say was an illegal effort to purchase and then bury stories that threatened his 2016 campaign.

Mr. Trump, the first former U.S. President to go on trial, was joined at the courthouse by an entourage of GOP lawmakers that included House Speaker Mike Johnson and others considered vice presidential contenders for Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign. Their presence was a not-so-subtle show of support meant not just for Mr. Trump, but also for voters tuning in to trial coverage and for the jurors deciding Mr. Trump’s fate.

As proceedings began, Mr. Johnson held a news conference outside the courthouse, using his powerful pulpit to attack the U.S. judicial system. It was a remarkable moment in American politics as the person second in line to the presidency sought to turn his political party against the rule of law by declaring the Manhattan criminal trial illegitimate.

“I do have a lot of surrogates, and they’re speaking very beautifully,” Mr. Trump said before court as the group gathered in the background. “And they come … from all over Washington. And they’re highly respected, and they think this is the greatest scam they’ve ever seen.” Mr. Cohen, meanwhile, resumed his place on the witness stand as prosecutor Susan Hoffinger worked to paint him as a Trump loyalist who committed crimes on behalf of the former President.

Mr. Cohen told jurors that he lied to the Congress during an investigation into potential ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign to protect Mr. Trump. He also described for jurors the April 2018 raid by law enforcement on his apartment, law firm, a hotel room where he stayed and a bank where he stashed valuables.

“How to describe your life being turned upside-down. Concerned. Despondent. Angry,” he said.

“Were you frightened?” Ms. Hoffinger asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” But he said he was heartened by a phone call from Mr. Trump that he said gave him reassurance and convinced him to remain “in the camp.” He said to me, Don’t worry. I’m the President of the United States. There’s nothing here. Everything’s going to be OK. Stay tough. You’re going to be OK,’” Mr. Cohen testified.

Mr. Cohen told jurors that “I felt reassured because I had the President of the United States protecting me … And so I remained in the camp.” But their relationship soured, and now Mr. Cohen is one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal critics. His testimony is central to the Manhattan case.

Mr. Cohen testified that after paying out $1,30,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels in order to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter, Mr. Trump promised to reimburse him. He said Mr. Trump was constantly apprised of the behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.

Jurors followed along as Ms. Hoffinger, in a methodical and clinical fashion, walked Mr. Cohen through that reimbursement process. It was an attempt to show what prosecutors say was a lengthy deception to mask the true purpose of the payments. As jurors were shown business records and other paperwork, Mr. Cohen explained their purpose and reiterated again and again that the payments were reimbursements for the hush-money. They weren’t for legal services he provided or for a retainer, he said.

It’s an important distinction, because prosecutors allege that the Mr. Trump records falsely described the purpose of the payments as legal expenses. These records form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Mr. Trump with falsifying business records. All told, Mr. Cohen was paid $4,20,000, with funds drawn from a Trump personal account.

“Were the descriptions on this check stub false?” Ms. Hoffinger asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Cohen said.

“And again, there was no retainer agreement,” Ms. Hoffinger asked.

“Correct,” Mr. Cohen replied.

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty and also denies that any of the encounters took place.

During his time on the witness stand, Mr. Cohen delivered matter-of-fact testimony that went to the heart of the former President’s trial: “Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” Mr. Cohen said. He told jurors that Mr. Trump did not want Ms. Daniels’ account of a sexual encounter to get out. At the time, Mr. Trump was especially anxious about how the story would affect his standing with female voters.

A similar episode occurred when Mr. Cohen alerted Mr. Trump that a Playboy model was alleging that she and Mr. Trump had an extramarital affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” was Mr. Cohen’s message to Mr. Trump, according to testimony. The woman, Karen McDougal, was paid $1,50,000 in an arrangement that was made after Mr. Trump received a “complete and total update on everything that transpired.” “What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Prosecutors believe Mr. Cohen’s insider knowledge is critical to their case. But their reliance on a witness with such a checkered past — Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments — also carries sizable risks with a jury.

The men, once so close that Mr. Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Mr. Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The sedate atmosphere was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff in October, when Mr. Trump walked out of the courtroom after his lawyer finished questioning Mr. Cohen during his civil fraud trial.

Throughout Mr. Cohen’s testimony on May 14, Mr. Trump reclined in his chair with his eyes closed and his head tilted to the side. He shifted from time to time, occasionally leaning forward and opening his eyes, making a comment to his attorney before returning to his recline. Even some of the topics that have animated him the most as he campaigns didn’t stir his attention.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers will get their chance to question Mr. Cohen as early as Tuesday, when they’re expected to attack his credibility. He was disbarred, went to prison and separately pleaded guilty to lying about a Moscow real estate project on Mr. Trump’s behalf.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump was intimately involved with all aspects of a scheme to stifle stories about sex that threatened to torpedo his 2016 campaign, his former lawyer said Monday in matter-of-fact testimony that went to the heart of the former president’s hush money trial.

“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” said Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer-turned-foe and the prosecution’s star witness in a case now entering its final, pivotal stretch.

In hours of highly anticipated testimony, Mr. Cohen placed Mr. Trump at the centre of the hush money plot, saying the then-candidate had promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.

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“We need to stop this from getting out,” Mr. Cohen quoted Mr. Trump as telling him in reference to porn actor Stormy Daniels’ account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump a decade earlier. The then-candidate was especially anxious about how the story would affect his standing with female voters.

A similar episode occurred when Mr. Cohen alerted Mr. Trump that a Playboy model was alleging that she and Mr. Trump had an extramarital affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” was Mr. Cohen’s message to Mr. Trump, the lawyer said. The woman, Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 in an arrangement that was made after Mr. Trump received a “complete and total update on everything that transpired.”

“What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied having sexual encounters with the two women.

Mr. Cohen is by far the prosecution’s most important witness, and though his testimony lacked the electricity that defined Ms. Daniels’ turn on the stand last week, he nonetheless linked Mr. Trump directly to the payments and helped illuminate some of the drier evidence such as text messages and phone logs that jurors had previously seen.

The testimony of a witness with such intimate knowledge of Mr. Trump’s activities could heighten the legal exposure of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee if jurors deem him sufficiently credible. But prosecutors’ reliance on a witness with such a checkered past — Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments — also carries sizable risks with a jury and could be a boon to Mr. Trump politically as he fundraises off his legal woes and paints the case as the product of a tainted criminal justice system.

The men, once so close that Mr. Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Mr. Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The sedate atmosphere was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff, when Mr. Trump walked out of the courtroom in October after his lawyer finished questioning Mr. Cohen during his civil fraud trial.

This time around, Mr. Trump sat at the defence table with his eyes closed for long stretches of testimony as Mr. Cohen recounted his decade-long career as a senior Trump Organization executive, doing work that by his own admission sometimes involved lying and bullying others on his boss’s behalf.

Jurors had previously heard from others about the tabloid industry practice of “catch-and-kill,” in which rights to a story are purchased so that it can then be quashed. But Mr. Cohen’s testimony, which continues Tuesday, is crucial to prosecutors because of his direct communication with the then-candidate about embarrassing stories he was scrambling to suppress.

Mr. Cohen also matters because the reimbursements he received from a $130,000 hush money payment to Ms. Daniels, which prosecutors say was meant to buy her silence in advance of the election, form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose. Defence lawyers say the payments to Mr. Cohen were properly categorised as legal expenses.

Under questioning from a prosecutor, Mr. Cohen detailed the steps he took to mask the payments. When he opened a bank account to pay Ms. Daniels, an action he said he told Mr. Trump he was taking, he told the bank it was for a new limited liability corporation but withheld the actual purpose.

“I’m not sure they would’ve opened it,” he said, if they knew it was ”to pay off an adult film star for a nondisclosure agreement.”

To establish Mr. Trump’s familiarity with the payments,Mr. Cohen told the jury that Mr. Trump had promised to reimburse him. The two men even discussed with Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization chief financial officer, how the reimbursements would be paid as legal services over monthly instalments, Mr. Cohen testified.

And though Mr. Trump’s lawyers have said he acted to protect his family from salacious stories, Mr. Cohen described Mr. Trump as preoccupied instead by the impact they would have on the campaign.

He said Mr. Trump even sought to delay finalising the Ms. Daniels transaction until after Election Day so he wouldn’t have to pay her.

“Because,” Mr. Cohen testified, “after the election it wouldn’t matter” to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cohen also gave jurors an insider account of his negotiations with David Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer, who was such a close Mr. Trump ally that Mr. Pecker told Mr. Cohen his publication maintained a “file drawer or a locked drawer” where files related to Mr. Trump were kept.

That effort took on added urgency following the October 2016 disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women sexually.

The Daniels payment was finalised several weeks after that revelation, but Monday’s testimony also centred on a deal earlier that fall with Ms. McDougal.

Mr. Cohen testified that he went to Mr. Trump immediately after the National Enquirer alerted him to a story about the alleged Ms. McDougal affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” he said Mr. Trump told him.

Mr. Trump checked in with Mr. Pecker about the matter, asking him how “things were going” with it, Mr. Cohen said. Mr. Pecker responded, ‘We have this under control, and we’ll take care of this,” Mr. Cohen testified.

Mr. Cohen also said he was with Mr. Trump as he spoke to Mr. Pecker on a speakerphone in his Trump Tower office.

“David had stated that it’s going to cost them $150,000 to control the story,” Mr. Cohen said. He quoted Mr. Trump as saying: “No problem, I will take care of it,” which Mr. Cohen interpreted to mean that the payment would be reimbursed.

To lay the foundation that the deals were done with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, prosecutors elicited testimony from Mr. Cohen designed to show Trump as a hands-on manager. Acting on Trump’s behalf, Cohen said, he sometimes lied and bullied others, including reporters.

“When he would task you with something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed. Let me know what’s going on,’” Mr. Cohen testified. He said that was especially true “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”

Defence lawyers have teed up a bruising cross-examination of Mr. Cohen, telling jurors during opening statements that he’s an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump.”

Prosecutors aim to blunt those attacks by acknowledging Mr. Cohen’s past crimes to jurors and by relying on other witnesses whose accounts, they hope, will buttress Mr. Cohen’s testimony. They include a lawyer who negotiated the hush money payments on behalf of Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal, as well as Mr. Pecker and Ms. Daniels.

After Mr. Cohen’s home and office were raided by the FBI in 2018, Mr. Trump showered him with affection on social media and predicted that Mr. Cohen would not “flip.” Months later, Mr. Cohen did exactly that, pleading guilty to federal campaign-finance charges.

Besides pleading guilty to the hush money payments, Mr. Cohen later admitted lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that he had pursued on Mr. Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 campaign. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but spent much of it in home confinement.

Former President Donald Trump, with his attorney Todd Blanche, speaks to reporters following the day’s proceedings in his trial on May 7, 2024, in New York.
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump returns to his hush money trial on May 7 facing a threat of jail time for additional gag order violations as prosecutors gear up to summon big-name witnesses in the final weeks of the case.

Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who has said she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, and Michael Cohen, the former lawyer of Mr. Trump and personal fixer who prosecutors say paid her to keep silent in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, are among those who have yet to take the stand but are expected to in the coming weeks.

The jury on May 6 heard from two witnesses, including a former Trump Organisation controller, who provided a mechanical but vital recitation of how the company reimbursed payments that were allegedly meant to suppress embarrassing stories from surfacing and then logged them as legal expenses in a manner that Manhattan prosecutors say broke the law.

The testimony from Jeffrey McConney yielded an important building block for prosecutors trying to pull back the curtain on what they say was a corporate records cover-up of transactions designed to protect Mr. Trump’s Republican presidential bid during a pivotal stretch of the race. It focused on a $130,000 payment from Mr. Cohen to Ms. Daniels and the subsequent reimbursement Mr. Cohen received.

Mr. McConney and another witness testified that the reimbursement checks were drawn from Mr. Trump’s account. Yet even as jurors witnessed the checks and other documentary evidence, prosecutors did not elicit testimony May 6 showing that Mr. Trump dictated that the payments would be logged as legal expenses, a designation that prosecutors contend was intentionally deceptive.

Mr. McConney acknowledged during cross-examination that Mr. Trump never asked him to log the reimbursements as legal expenses or discussed the matter with him at all. Another witness, Deborah Tarasoff, a Trump Organisation accounts payable supervisor, said under questioning that she did not get permission to cut the checks in question from Mr. Trump himself.

“You never had any reason to believe that President Trump was hiding anything or anything like that?” Mr. Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked.

”Correct,” Ms. Tarasoff replied.

The testimony followed a stern warning from Judge Juan M. Merchan that additional violations of a gag order barring Mr. Trump from inflammatory out-of-court comments about witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case could result in jail time.

The $1,000 fine imposed May 6 marks the second time since the trial began last month that Mr. Trump has been sanctioned for violating the gag order. He was fined $9,000 last week, $1,000 for each of nine violations.

“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent. Therefore going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction,” Mr. Merchan said before jurors were brought into the courtroom. Mr. Trump’s statements, the judge added, “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.”

Mr. Trump sat forward in his seat, glowering at the judge as he handed down the ruling. When the judge finished speaking, Mr. Trump shook his head twice and crossed his arms.

Yet even as Mr. Merchan warned of jail time in his most pointed and direct admonition, he also made clear his reservations about a step that he described as a “last resort.”

“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Mr. Merchan said. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings.”

The latest violation stems from an April 22 interview with television channel Real America’s Voice in which Mr. Trump criticised the speed at which the jury was picked and claimed, without evidence, that it was stacked with Democrats.

Prosecutors are continuing to build toward their star witness, Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments. He is expected to undergo a bruising cross-examination from defence attorneys seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.

Mr. Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments but has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. The trial, the first of his four criminal cases to come before a jury, is expected to last another month or more.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s police booking mugshot released by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in Atlanta, Georgia.
| Photo Credit: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via Reuters

The story so far: Donald Trump on August 24 became the first President, either sitting or former, to have his mugshot taken at a jail in the country, on racketeering and conspiracy charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

According to official records, he was booked on 13 charges at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta and released on a $200,000 bond. This was the fourth criminal case against Mr. Trump since he became the first former U.S. President to be indicted earlier this year.

The Hindu looks at charges against Mr. Trump so far.

New York

Mr. Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on charges related to payments made to hush claims of an extramarital sexual encounter, prosecutors and defence lawyers said on March 31, 2023.

Mr. Trump was allegedly involved with adult actor Stormy Daniels in 2006. During the 2016 presidential campaign , Mr. Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen arranged a $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels to stop her from disclosing any information. He also arranged for the publisher of the tabloid National Enquirer o pay Playboy model Karen McDougal $1,50,000 to suppress her story of Mr. Trump’s affair.

Mr. Cohen officially surrendered to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in August 2018 and was sentenced to three years in prison for the hush money to Ms. Daniels, characterised as “excessive campaign contribution”. He spent most of his sentence in home confinement.

Mr. Trump pled not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Florida

In the State of Florida, Mr. Trump has been charged with mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. He was also accused of obstructing government efforts to recover the records. Mr. Trump held on to classified documents that contained information on national defence when he left the White House in January 2021.

Out of the 37 charges against him, 31 relate to violations under the U.S. Espionage Act. This Act was enacted by the Congress in 1917, just months after the U.S entered World War I. Some of the charges levied against Mr. Trump under this Act carry a potential sentence of 20 years in prison.

Mr. Trump pled not guilty to 37 federal criminal charges relating to possession of classified documents. Later, three more charges were added by the prosecutors, bringing the total count to 40.

Washington

Mr. Trump was charged on four counts in the State of Washington for his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat. This was the third criminal case against Mr. Trump, after those in New York and Florida.

The former President appeared in a federal courthouse in Washington D.C. on August 3 before Indian American Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya. The indictment was filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith who led an investigation into the allegations that Mr. Trump tried to overturn the election result.

Charges levied against Mr. Trump included conspiracy to defraud, witness tampering, conspiracy against the rights of citizens, and obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.

While the indictment does not directly accuse Mr. Trump of being responsible for the January 6, 2021 riots when a mob entered Capitol Hill, the obstruction charges indirectly relate to it.

Mr. Trump pled not guilty to four criminal charges alleging he tried to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to current U.S. President Joe Biden.

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan has approved March 4, 2024, as the trial date in Mr. Trump’s election subversion conspiracy case. It’s right before Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen States will vote in a primary to pick the Republican presidential candidate for 2024. Despite his legal troubles, Mr. Trump appears to be among the favourites to secure the nomination.

Georgia

Mr. Trump and 18 of his allies were indicted in Georgia on August 14 with charges related to scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss in the State. He was booked on 13 charges in Atlanta’s Fulton County jail on August 24 and had his mugshot taken.

Other defendants in the case include former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Mr. Giuliani surrendered on August 23 and had his mugshot taken, while Mr. Meadows surrendered on August 24.

The indictment against Mr. Trump and allies also mentions an alleged scheme to tamper with voting machines in one county of Georgia to steal data.

The defendants will be arraigned next week, on September 6.

Do the charges disrupt Mr. Trump’s presidential plans?

Apparently not.

The Trump campaign reportedly raised more than $7 million since he was booked at a jail in Georgia and his mugshot was released.

According to survey research company Morning Consult, Mr. Trump is the leading candidate among Republicans aspiring to be the party’s face in the presidential polls scheduled to be held in late 2024. Despite not attending the first Republican presidential primary debate held on August 23, Mr. Trump has retained the top rating among the party’s candidates. Morning Consult’s survey reveals Mr. Trump polled 58% as of August 29, while his closest contender Ron DeSantis polled only 14%. The survey also reveals that Mr. Trump’s popularity has consistently grown since December 2022, but the same cannot be said about other Republican presidential hopefuls.

(With inputs from news agencies)