Former United States President Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to all as he becomes the first current or former president in the nation’s history to go on trial.
Reuters reports that Trump’s hush-money trial is currently underway, with his lawyers saying that he did not commit any crimes.
The New York prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, and Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, made their opening statements in what may be the only one of Trump’s four criminal prosecutions to go to trial before his November 5 election rematch with President Joe Biden.
Colangelo told jurors that Trump engaged in a “catch and kill” conspiracy with Pecker and his former lawyer Michael Cohen to help him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
He said, “The case is about a conspiracy and a cover-up, an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of a presidential election, and then the steps that Donald Trump took to conceal that illegal election fraud”.
He also told the jury that they would hear Trump working out the details of the scheme in recorded conversations.
However, Trump’s lawyer, Blanche, spoke shortly after prosecutors told jurors that the former President broke the law by deceiving voters.
According to him, “There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy. They put something sinister on this idea, as if it’s a crime.”