Trump trial live: Court wraps for day one of opening statements in historic hush money case

A witness who spoke to federal investigators about Donald Trump was so afraid of repercussions for cooperating with the FBI that he asked agents not to record his voluntary interview.

The FBI officials were speaking to the witness — whose name is redacted in documents — as part of their probe into how documents with classification markings ended up at the former president’s Palm Beach, Florida home long after the end of his term in office.

Alex Woodward reports for The Independent from the courthouse in Lower Manhattan:

Donald Trump unloaded on reporters and news cameras for nine minutes outside of a Manhattan criminal courtroom on Monday, after jurors heard opening statements and the first witness took the stand to testify in the first-ever criminal trial of an American president.

“It’s very unfair what’s going on and I should be allowed to campaign,” he said as he left the courthouse. “We did nothing wrong.”

The former president is on trial charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of what prosecutors called a “criminal conspiracy” to bury politically compromising stories of his alleged affairs by paying off publishers and the women he allegedly had relationships with. The alleged scheme was part of a months-long plan to protect Mr Trump’s reputation and deceive voters ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Following the hearing, Ms Habba fumed that it was “wasted time” and a waste of taxpayer dollars as she accused Ms James of waging unnecessary complaints about the bond and tried to draw comparisons with his criminal case.

It’s the case that many thought might never make it to trial, and yet at 9.30am ET on Monday 22 April, twelve jurors, six alternates, two teams of attorneys, one former president, and the world’s press were in attendance as Judge Juan Merchan called the court to order.

Here’s what you need to know about what happened in court today:

Donald Trump is having to face the realities of being on trial for criminal charges — he has to be in court every day it is in session. That includes missing oral arguments in the Supreme Court that will greatly impact his other criminal cases…

The former president wrote on Truth Social this afternoon:

The Supreme Court will address the historic question of Presidential Immunity on Thursday, but unfortunately, I will not be able to attend. The Highly Conflicted Judge in the Manhattan D.A. “case” (Soros-backed Alvin Bragg) has prohibited me from attending. Without Presidential Immunity, the President cannot function, as his Political Opponents will blackmail and extort him with the threat of wrongful prosecution at every turn. We look forward to presenting our case to the Supreme Court.

He has been thinking about presidential immunity a lot, spending much of Saturday posting about it too.

Mr Trump also wrote the following this afternoon:

Without Immunity, the Presidency, as we know it, will no longer exist. Many actions for the benefit of our Country will not be taken. This is in no way what the Founders had in mind. Legal Experts and Scholars have stated that the President must have Full Presidential Immunity. A President must be free to make proper decisions. His mind must be clear, and he must not be guided by fear of retribution!

Without Presidential Immunity, a President will not be able to properly function, or make decisions, in the best interest of the United States of America. Presidents will always be concerned, and even paralyzed, by the prospect of wrongful prosecution and retaliation, after they leave office. This could actually lead to extortion and blackmail of a President. The other side would say, “If you don’t do something, just the way we want it, we are going to go after you when you leave office, or perhaps even sooner.” A President has to be free to determine what is right for our Country, with no undue pressure!

Here’s what special counsel Jack Smith has to say about the subject:

Donald Trump’s legal fees are taking a chunk out of his campaign funds – with one of the groups that has underwritten many of those costs having spent nearly $3.7m last month.

Figures released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show this is what the Save America political action committee (PAC) spent in March, amounting to nearly three in every four dollars it raised during the same period.

Martha McHardy has the details:

In a typical presidential election year, candidates will spend the 11 months leading up to election day shaking hands and kissing babies at rallies as the primaries unfold.

Instead, the ex-president will be forced to juggle his campaign for the White House while also defending himself in federal and state courts in four different cases that have hearings and trial dates scattered throughout 2024.

Ariana Baio takes us through Trump’s calendar of chaos:

And just like that, after months of dragged out negotiations and false starts, the House of Representatives passed legislation to assist Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The vote showed a stunning about-face for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who as a backbencher opposed aid to Ukraine. Since then, he’s been hailed for standing up to his party — even though he only did so after he’d exhausted all other options. (Readers of Inside Washington may remember I called Johnson a coward a few months ago for refusing to put the Ukraine bill to the floor).

But the vote means Johnson has to consider whether Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the right-wing conspiracy theorist and acolyte of Donald Trump, will carry through with her threats and actually topple him from his job.

A member of Donald Trump’s legal team divulged the defence’s plan to “focus on the facts” to show that the former president did nothing wrong, one day before the opening arguments are set to begin in the landmark hush money trial.