Outside the courtroom, Trump criticized the trial as politically motivated (File)
For weeks, Donald Trump sat silently in a New York courtroom as former employees and associates testified in his criminal trial to hide the money. On Monday, the former US president will be able to take the opportunity to tell his side of the story.
It is unclear whether Trump will take the witness stand.
Although he said before the trial began that he planned to testify, his attorney, Todd Blanche, told the judge last week that he was unsure whether he would. Trump himself has refused to tell reporters whether he will testify or not.
The first former president to face criminal trial has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment that bought porn star Stormy Daniels’ silence just before the 2016 election. Daniels threatened to go public with his account of an alleged sexual encounter in 2006 – a connection Trump denies.
Outside the courtroom, Trump, 77, criticized the trial as a politically motivated effort to thwart his bid to reclaim the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election.
Inside the chamber, Trump sat at the defendant’s table listening to Daniels recount her account of their time together in lurid detail. Other witnesses discussed efforts to bury unflattering stories at a time when Trump was facing multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.
Prosecutors said last week that they expected to wrap up their presentation on Monday after remaining testimony from former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who made the payment to Daniels.
At that point, Trump’s legal team will have the opportunity to make its own presentation, although defense lawyers often skip that step when they believe prosecutors have failed to make their case.
Trump’s lawyers said they didn’t think they would need much time to call their own witnesses — unless Trump chose to testify.
“That’s another decision we need to consider,” Blanche said Thursday.
If he decides to testify, Trump will have the opportunity to convince jurors that he was not responsible for the paperwork at the center of the case and refute Daniels’ detailed account of their encounter in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
He would not be prevented by a gag order that would prevent him, in other settings, from criticizing witnesses, jurors and relatives of the judge and prosecutors.
However, he would face questioning from prosecutors, who could try to expose inconsistencies in his story. Any lie told under oath could expose you to further criminal charges of perjury.
Trump could risk tarnishing his credibility or alienating the jury if he goes off on confusing tangents or loses patience on the stand, said George Grasso, a retired New York judge.
“If he went into campaign mode, he could play the archetype of Donald Trump as a person who can’t control himself, as a person who is lost with the truth,” Grasso said. “He could blow up your whole case with one explosion.”
Trump last appeared as a witness in a civil corporate fraud trial last year, giving defiant and incoherent testimony that angered Judge Arthur Engoron, who was overseeing the case. Engoron would order him to pay $355 million in fines after finding that he fraudulently exaggerated his net worth to deceive creditors.
Defendants in white-collar criminal cases typically do not testify in their own defense, but Trump would not be the only one to do so. Cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes are among the recent high-profile defendants who have taken the stand. Both were convicted of defrauding investors and are now serving prison sentences.
The silent trial is widely seen as the least consequential of the four criminal cases Trump faces, but it is likely the only one to go to trial before the election. Trump faces accusations in Washington and Georgia of trying to overturn his 2020 defeat to Biden and accusations in Florida of improperly handling confidential documents after leaving the White House in 2021. He has pleaded not guilty in all three cases.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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