The first criminal trial of an American president will begin Monday as prosecutors and defense lawyers convene in a Manhattan courtroom to begin selecting the jury that will decide Donald J. Trump’s fate.
The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has charged Mr. Trump with 34 felonies, accusing him of falsifying documents to conceal a sex scandal involving a porn star.
The case, one of four indictments facing the former president and presumptive Republican nominee, could reshape the political landscape ahead of Election Day.
Jury selection could last two weeks or more and the trial may spill into June. Mr. Trump is expected to be in the courtroom for much of it, bringing campaign theatrics to the sober atmosphere of a criminal proceeding.
The spectacle will be remarkable: a former president face-to-face with a part of his past that he has tried to bury but that could instead make him a felon. In 2016, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, paid $130,000 to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, to buy her silence about a story of having had sex with Mr. Trump a decade earlier.
Mr. Trump, who might take the witness stand in his own defense, has denied the sexual encounter. But prosecutors say that he falsified a series of documents to hide reimbursements to Mr. Cohen.
As Mr. Trump seeks to defend himself in court and on the campaign trail, he is likely to test the patience of the judge and the limits of the justice system. Already, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, has imposed a gag order, barring the former president from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and the judge’s family.
The 12 jurors, once selected, will have to judge Mr. Cohen’s story themselves: He is expected to be the prosecution’s star witness, confronting a boss he once idolized and now despises.
Jury selection will be crucial for both sides; a good case means little to an unfriendly jury. Prosecutors have some advantage, as the jury pool is drawn from Manhattan, one of the most Democratic counties in America. Mr. Trump’s team will be looking for red needles in a blue haystack.
Here’s what else to know about Mr. Trump’s trial:
Which Case Is This?
This is the Manhattan criminal case against Mr. Trump. It was brought by Mr. Bragg in March 2023. Mr. Trump is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and, if convicted, could face up to four years in prison. It is the former president’s first criminal trial and may be the only one that takes place before the 2024 presidential election.
His three other criminal cases — involving accusations that he mishandled classified documents and plotted to overturn his 2020 election loss — are mired in delays. And two recent civil cases, one for defamation and the other for fraud, concluded early this year with Mr. Trump facing more than $500 million in judgments.
Jury Selection
Hundreds of potential jurors have been summoned. Nearly all will be dismissed. Justice Merchan plans to excuse jurors who say they cannot be fair and impartial or who are otherwise unwilling to serve.
Those remaining will answer 42 questions compiled before the trial, including about which media outlets they follow, whether they are adherents of the pro-Trump QAnon movement or the far-left antifascist group Antifa and whether they have read any of Mr. Cohen’s books.
Each side will be able to remove a limited number of jurors without explanation. The lawyers can also ask that jurors be removed “for cause” by providing specific reasons they believe a juror cannot be fair and impartial. The 12 who remain — along with several alternates in case any of the first dozen have to be excused during the trial — will be impaneled.
The Lawyers
Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer is Todd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor and white-collar defense lawyer who has bet his professional future on representing the former president.
Also on the defense team are Susan Necheles, an experienced New York defense lawyer who represented Mr. Trump’s company in a Manhattan criminal trial in 2022, and Emil Bove, who worked as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and who has taken the lead on some of Mr. Trump’s delay efforts.
Mr. Bragg, a veteran of the same prosecutor’s office as Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove, has assembled some of the same lawyers who convicted Mr. Trump’s company. They include Joshua Steinglass, a longtime homicide prosecutor, and Susan Hoffinger, the office’s head of investigations.
Matthew Colangelo, a former Justice Department official recruited by Mr. Bragg, and Chris Conroy, who has been part of the team investigating Mr. Trump from the very beginning, are also on the team.
The Other Hush-Money Deals
Although the charges relate to the payment to Ms. Daniels, Mr. Bragg’s office is expected to highlight two other deals. Both involve the National Enquirer, which has longstanding ties to Mr. Trump.
In the first deal, the tabloid paid $30,000 to a former doorman employed by the Trump Organization who had heard that Mr. Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock, a rumor that turned out to be false. The publication later determined the claim to be untrue.
In the other deal, the National Enquirer paid Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who wanted to sell her story of an affair with Mr. Trump. She reached a $150,000 agreement with the tabloid, which bought the rights to her story in order to suppress it — a practice known as “catch and kill.”
Prosecutors say the hush-money deals show that Mr. Trump orchestrated a wide-ranging scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election by keeping damaging stories under wraps.
The Witness List
A list of potential witnesses will be revealed in court on Monday, and it is expected to resemble a 2016-era roster of Mr. Trump’s campaign aides, employees and friends.
In addition to Mr. Cohen, Mr. Bragg’s office is expected to call David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, as well as Hope Hicks, a former campaign and White House aide to Mr. Trump. Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal could be witnesses as well.
And Mr. Trump said on Friday that he plans to testify in his own defense, though that is not a certainty.
The Gag Order
The trial is the realization of Mr. Trump’s long-held fear that prosecutors would flip trusted aides into dangerous witnesses. To avoid a situation like this, he has sought to exert control over potential witnesses, mixing enticements (covering their legal bills) with threats (assailing them on social media and at rallies).
Mr. Cohen has felt the brunt of the attacks: Mr. Trump has called him a “rat” and “death.” On Saturday, Mr. Trump risked violating Justice Merchan’s gag order when he again attacked Mr. Cohen on social media, calling him a “disgraced attorney and felon.”
Mr. Trump has also taken aim at Justice Merchan’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant, and called for the judge’s recusal. Justice Merchan has declined to step aside from the case, citing a ruling by a judicial ethics commission that found his daughter’s work posed no conflict for the judge.
Courthouse Security
The courthouse at 100 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan will be crawling with security.
The U.S. Secret Service will protect Mr. Trump, court officers will search anyone who enters the building and police officers will patrol the neighboring streets, where protesters and counterprotesters could clog public plazas.