Trump’s Trial and Campaign Collide as Historic Prosecution Begins

NEW YORK—As he walked into court for the first day of his first criminal prosecution, Donald Trump hoped to make clear that it was the system, not him, that was really on trial.

“This is an assault on America,” said Trump, his voice echoing in the hallway of the Manhattan courthouse where he stood behind a row of barred metal barriers and gestured with both hands. “This is political persecution, this is a persecution like never before. It is a case that should have never been brought.”

He then walked into the courtroom where he would spend much of the week and many to come, in a scene that seems fated to become this election’s defining tableau: a former president and current presumptive Republican nominee sitting at the defendant’s table as the prosecutors and defense lawyers seek to convince a jury of his peers that he is or isn’t guilty of a felony for having covered up a hush-money payment to an adult film star on the eve of the 2016 election.

At stake, Trump and his opponents agree, is far more than the particulars of the charges. The case, in both sides’ telling, stands to be a referendum on the rule of law, the integrity of elections and the nature of accountability in an age when all have been called into question. After a week of jury selection, opening arguments in the case were scheduled to start Monday. In the weeks to come, a cast of characters harking back to the early days of Trump’s presidency—Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, David Pecker, Hope Hicks and many others—could parade before the court as the prosecution seeks to prove that, as State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan summarized the charges on Monday, “Donald Trump falsified business records to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election.”

As the jury selection process showed, most Americans have already made up their minds about Trump. They love him or revile him. They are inspired or exhausted. Trump faces four separate felony trials, but this one, in a drab New York courtroom, might well be the only one he sees before the election—and thus the only verdict for voters to consider in November.

This prosecution’s case strikes at the heart of Trump’s improbable political career: It charges, in effect, that he cheated to win the only election in which he has ever prevailed. That the years of conflict with rules and norms that ensued—from the firing of former FBI Director James Comey to the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to the Ukraine quid pro quo to the Jan. 6 riot to the raid on Mar-a-Lago, to name a few—were all the product of this one original sin, the actions of a man who never believed the rules applied to him, behaved accordingly, and for most of his life appeared to get away with it.

“What this case is about is election interference,” said Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a former Obama administration lawyer and diplomat, and editor of “Trying Trump,” a new book about the case, who has been observing the proceedings from the courtroom. “My own view is that Donald Trump interfered with the 2016 election by deceiving voters and covering it up, and he got away with it, and as a result of that was emboldened to try again in 2020.”

The trial comes against the backdrop of an astonishing array of legal issues facing Trump. Already this year he has twice been found liable in civil court, first for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, second for business fraud in the way he reported the value of his properties to banks and insurers. On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution for any actions taken during his presidency, including during and after the 2020 election. Trump faces federal criminal charges brought by the special counsel, Jack Smith, and state charges in Georgia for his conduct surrounding Jan. 6, as well as a federal indictment over his handling of classified documents. Because of delays, it’s unclear if these cases will go to trial this year. A single criminal charge against a former president or current presidential nominee would be a historic event, but Trump faces a multi-front barrage.

If opponents believe Trump is finally reaping the consequences of a lifetime of putting himself above the law, supporters see the onslaught as proof of his unique victimization. No other American has been so targeted by the many prongs of the legal system, and the charges all happen to have come during an election cycle, after Trump declared his candidacy for a second term. The threat Trump poses to the establishment, the “deep state” and the Democrats has forced them to unload the full force of their arsenal in a twisted bid to stop the political force he represents, supporters argue. The apparatus of government from top to bottom has been “weaponized,” Trump and his allies contend, in a coordinated offensive aimed at preventing the American people from putting him back in power—that is to say, election interference.

“It dignifies this assault to even pretend there’s a legal theory here,” the Trump ally Stephen Miller said on Newsmax. “The only legal theory in question is trying to throw Joe Biden’s political opponent behind bars—that is it. So when you hear them say that democracy is on trial, they’re right. Democracy is on trial. Freedom is on trial. The rule of law is on trial. All of these things are on trial. They’re on trial with Donald Trump, because if Donald Trump is convicted, then all of these principles are convicted and destroyed with him.”

As jury selection proceeded over the course of this week, Trump sat impassively between his lawyers, his expression rarely changing. Sometimes he seemed to be looking at his phone, and posts continued to appear on his Truth Social account as he sat in the courtroom: “WITCH HUNT,” “LAWFARE!” Occasionally he appeared to nod off.

As a man accustomed to noisy domination of his surroundings, being forced to sit silently wasn’t something he suffered lightly. At one point Tuesday, as a female prospective juror was being questioned about social-media posts that defense lawyers contended betrayed an anti-Trump bias, Trump muttered something inaudible in her direction. Merchan, who has overseen the proceedings with a steady, tolerant demeanor, ordered the juror out of the room and sharply upbraided Trump’s defense lawyer Todd Blanche: “Mr. Blanche, while the juror was at the podium, maybe 12 feet from your client, your client was audibly uttering something. He was audibly gesturing, speaking in the direction of the juror. I won’t tolerate that. I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. ”

“Yes, your honor,” Blanche replied.

“Take a minute to speak to your client about it,” the judge said.

The jurors who survived the process—seven men and five women by week’s end, plus six alternates—were simultaneously a typical and atypical bunch. An investment banker, a physical therapist, a security engineer, a retired wealth manager: They were a representative cross-section of Manhattanites. Yet for New Yorkers, they were an uncommonly un-opinionated bunch, chosen for their professed lack of preconceptions about the most polarizing politician of the era. This unusual focus group yielded some surprising takes. “I find him fascinating and mysterious,” one prospective juror told the court when asked his view of the defendant. “He walks into a room and he sets people off, one way or the other.”

Despite a gag order intended to protect the court and jury from intimidation, Trump continues to attack all aspects of the process, especially Merchan, who isn’t covered by the gag order and who Trump has repeatedly described as “conflicted” because of his daughter’s employment by a firm that does work for progressive political campaigns. Next week, Merchan, a Colombian immigrant and former prosecutor, will rule on whether Trump has violated the gag order with his attacks on witnesses and jurors. Trump posted a quotation Wednesday from the Fox News host Jesse Watters asserting that “undercover Liberal Activists” were “lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury.” He is appealing the gag order, which he calls an unconstitutional attempt to silence him.

Trump’s attacks on the judiciary are part of a dangerous strategy to undermine the legitimacy of public institutions by inviting violence, said Amanda Carpenter, an editor at the legal nonprofit Protect Democracy. “The throughline through all the Trump trials is a test of whether we as a country are capable of holding a former president accountable for his actions by putting him through the same process as every other American,” said Carpenter, a former GOP staffer. “What makes it so challenging is that he continually tries to destabilize the institutions of accountability by disrupting the proceedings, just as we saw on Jan. 6.”

Outside the court, in a small, barren park surrounded by barricades and blocked-off streets, a smattering of protesters gathered at the outset. Beneath a waving Trump flag, right-wing activist Laura Loomer led a “Donald Trump did nothing wrong!” chant through a bullhorn, while a countervailing group marched up the street behind a banner reading “NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.” By midweek, the protesters had dissipated, and the park benches were repopulated by the usual group of work lunchers and vagrants. On Friday afternoon, a man set himself on fire behind the row of television cameras outside the court. He was taken to a Manhattan hospital and was in critical condition, according to a New York Police Department official.

The jury of Trump’s peers will convene on Nov. 5, and it isn’t clear how Trump’s abundance of legal entanglements will bear on their verdict. A poll conducted earlier this month by Ipsos for Reuters found that two-thirds of Americans think the New York charges are serious, and 58%, including a quarter of Republicans, say they wouldn’t vote for Trump if he were convicted of a felony by a jury. At the same time, nearly half agree with the statement that “the prosecutions of Donald Trump are excessive and politically motivated.” The pollster didn’t test the potential political effect of a Trump acquittal.

Trump has complained that the trial is taking him off the campaign trail: “I’m supposed to be in New Hampshire, I’m supposed to be in Georgia, I’m supposed to be in North Carolina, South Carolina, I’m supposed to be a lot of different places campaigning,” he said as he departed the courthouse Thursday. Yet in practice, the campaign and the trial have become one. On the stump and at the courthouse alike, Trump articulates a seamlessly coherent theory of the case: that he is the victim of a broad government conspiracy to avert the threat his disruptive politics pose to the established order. A vote for him is a vote to overthrow the corrupt system, just as a vote against him is a vote to maintain the institutions he has so ruthlessly and constantly tried to undermine. He has applied his longstanding divide-and-conquer M.O. to the legal and political systems alike, forcing America to choose between him and them.

When the court adjourned Tuesday, Trump rode uptown to a bodega in Harlem where in 2022 a clerk fatally stabbed a man who tried to assault him behind the counter. The clerk, Jose Alba, was initially charged with murder by Alvin Bragg, the Democratic district attorney who is also prosecuting Trump. After weeks of outcry from those, including Mayor Eric Adams, who believed the clerk was acting in self-defense, Bragg dropped the charges.

Trump’s motorcade pulled up to the humble storefront of Sanaa Convenient Store, its windows adorned with pictures of snack foods. He raised a hand to the crowd of supporters that had gathered to chant his name. He was there to show his support for small businesses, he said, and to make a point about the topsy-turvy justice system that lets the real criminals off the hook while crime runs rampant.

“There are hundreds of murderers all over the city,” he said. “They know who they are, they don’t pick them up. They go after Trump.”

“You know what we’re going to be doing, right?” he added.” We’re going to be saving America. Our country is under siege.”

Alex Leary, Corinne Ramey and James Fanelli contributed to this article.

Write to Molly Ball at [email protected]