Donald Trump oversaw a “planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election,” which included hush money payments to an adult-film actress, prosecutors told a jury Monday in the opening salvo of the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.
“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo told the jury inside a packed and heavily-guarded courtroom, illustrating the sky-high stakes of a criminal trial in which the defendant is also the presumptive GOP nominee for president in the November election.
In the hallway outside the courtroom, Trump denounced the case, and other legal battles he is fighting, with his usual bluster and vitriol against a system that he claims is targeting him unfairly for political reasons.
“I should be in Georgia now, I should be in Florida now,” Trump said.
