Trump trial: In fiery opening statement, prosecutor says the 'case is about a criminal conspiracy and a coverup'

• Opening statements began in Donald Trump's hush-money trial on Monday.

• Trump faces 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in the historic case.

• "This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a coverup," ADA Matthew Colangelo said.

Opening arguments in former President Donald Trump's historic hush-money criminal trial got underway on Monday with a prosecutor describing the case as being about a "criminal conspiracy."

"This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a coverup," Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo told the 12-person jury.

Prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office allege Trump illegally falsified business records by covering up a $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

The payment was made to Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election to buy her silence over a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, prosecutors allege.

Trump, who faces 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, has repeatedly denied having an affair with Daniels.

"He falsified those business records because he wanted to conceal his and others' criminal conduct," Colangelo said of Trump.

Trump was not watching Colangelo at the start of his opening statement. Rather, he was looking straight ahead from his seat at the defense table.

Interestingly, in describing the reason for the coverup of the $130,000 payment to Daniels, the prosecutor did not refer to an "alleged" sexual encounter with the adult film star.

Instead, Colangelo said the hush-money was paid to make sure voters "did not learn about a sexual encounter with the candidate."

During his opening statement, Colangelo told jurors about a similar scheme to silence ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, who has said that she had a nearly year-long sexual relationship with Trump beginning in 2006. Trump has also denied having any affair with McDougal.

McDougal's claim of an extramarital affair with Trump, too, was repeatedly described to jurors without an "allegedly" by Colangelo in his opening statement.

Colangelo said her claim that she had an affair with Trump was found to be credible by editors with the National Enquirer. The prosecutor told the jury McDougal was paid $150,000 "to make sure that she didn't publicize her affair with Donald Trump before the 2016 election."

In contrast, Colangelo referred to the National Enquirer paying a Manhattan doorman $30,000 earlier in 2015, to "catch and kill" a story about "an alleged illegitimate child" of Trump that lived in the building.

This rumor proved untrue — the so-called illegitimate child was a fiction, prosecutors have said.

Before Trump headed into the 15th-floor courtroom Monday morning to hear opening statements in the case, he ignored a shouted question from a reporter asking him where his wife Melania Trump was. Instead, Trump took the opportunity to bash the case against him as a political "witch hunt."

"I'm here instead of being able to be in Pennsylvania and Georgia, and lots of other places campaigning, and it's very unfair," Trump told reporters in the courtroom hallway.

Prior to openings, Trump lost his bid to keep jurors from seeing the infamous Access Hollywood "grab 'em" transcript.

And much of Trump's prior court losses will be fair game for prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney's office on cross should Trump take the stand.

Prosecutors can cross-examine Trump about his civil New York fraud trial and his E. Jean Carroll losses, but they can't ask Trump about the total monetary value of the judgments from these trials, which surpasses $500 million combined.

Additionally, prosecutors can also bring up that Trump twice violated his fraud-trial gag order and was fined $15,000 for doing so.

Finally, prosecutors can touch on a stipulation with the New York Attorney General's Office, in which the Trump Foundation was dissolved due to what the presiding judge, New York Supreme Justice Juan Merchan, on Monday called Trump's "self-dealing."

Before openings, there were a few juror wobbles. The day was shortened by half — until 12:30 p.m. — so that juror number 6, a software engineer, could make her 1 p.m. emergency dental appointment for a toothache.

And the day began with juror number 9, a speech therapist, being briefly questioned in private after she expressed concern about media attention.

"Juror number 9 is going to remain with us, so again that is not going to be an issue," the judge said after they conferred with her for a few minutes in the judge's robing room.

This is a developing news story and will be updated.

Read the original article on Business Insider