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‘Criminal Conspiracy’ Alleged as Jury Starts Hearing Trump Trial

Court adjourned for the day after opening statements from both sides and the start of testimony from the longtime publisher of The National Enquirer. A lawyer for Donald Trump told jurors the former president did nothing illegal.

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Jesse McKinley and Kate Christobek

Five takeaways from the fifth day of Trump’s criminal trial.

Monday marked another key moment in the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump: opening statements, during which the former president listened quietly to the prosecution’s allegations of crimes, and the defense’s counterargument that he was a simple man, wrongly accused.

The jury that will decide Mr. Trump’s case concentrated intently on the statements, which began the presentation of what will be weeks of testimony and other evidence, all in a tense courtroom in Lower Manhattan.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee once more, Mr. Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records in an attempt to cover up a payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, in the days before the 2016 election. Ms. Daniels, who may testify, says that she and Mr. Trump had a sexual encounter in 2006, a claim the former president denies.

Mr. Trump has also denied the 34 felony charges, calling them orchestrated by Democrats; if convicted, the former president could face probation or up to four years in prison.

Here are five takeaways from Mr. Trump’s fifth day on trial:

The prosecution has a big story to tell.

The charges faced by Mr. Trump may sound bland — “falsifying business records” doesn’t really set the heart racing — but the prosecution made clear on Monday that it plans on painting a much broader picture.

Matthew Colangelo, a prosecutor, laid out in his opening statement a tale that touched on tabloid journalism , tawdry affairs and covertly recorded phone calls . Jurors will likely be told about events inside fancy hotel rooms, Trump Tower and even the Oval Office. And the stakes? The presidency.

All that suggests that the case will keep jurors wide-awake during the six or so weeks it is projected to take. Indeed, when asked if they wanted paper and pens to take notes, more than half of the people in the jury box (12 jurors and six alternates) raised their hands.

Who Are Key Players in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial?

The first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump is underway. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.

The defense wants to destroy prosecution witnesses.

Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, used his opening statement to cast Mr. Trump’s actions leading to this case as run-of-the-mill business, and said that Mr. Trump is defending himself at trial, just as “any of us would do.”

He argued that the use of a nondisclosure agreement — the document Ms. Daniels signed after receiving the payment — was typical among the wealthy and the famous and “nothing illegal.” He continued that there was nothing wrong with trying to influence an election, adding: “It’s called democracy.”

Mr. Blanche also attacked Mr. Cohen, a former lawyer and fixer for Mr. Trump. He said Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance crimes in 2018, was a “criminal” who “can’t be trusted.” He added that Ms. Daniels was “biased” against Mr. Trump and made a living off her story about the sexual encounter.

He called the heart of the prosecution case just “34 pieces of paper” that don’t involve Mr. Trump.

Trump was muted during the abbreviated day in court.

On Mr. Trump’s way into the courtroom on Monday, he addressed reporters for about three minutes and blasted a range of perceived enemies, including New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the judge in a recent civil fraud case that resulted in a $454 million judgment against him.

But Mr. Trump’s behavior during opening statements reflected that he understood the gravity of the moment.

Mr. Trump made no outbursts during the prosecution’s opening statement, although he occasionally showed displeasure: He shook his head slightly at arguments that he orchestrated a scheme to corrupt the presidential election and then more strenuously when prosecutors said he was guilty of felonies.

During his own side’s opening statement, Mr. Trump sat largely motionless and expressionless watching his lawyer Mr. Blanche. Mr. Trump’s behavior was muted compared with his volatility during past Manhattan court appearances.

But at the conclusion of the trial day, Mr. Trump took his preferred spot in front of a television camera in the hallway, and spoke for more than nine minutes, attacking the prosecutor’s case — once again — as unfair.

David Pecker used to live on celebrity news. Now, he is the news.

Prosecutors’ first witness was David Pecker, the longtime publisher of The National Enquirer . He ambled to the stand and promptly gave a lesson in the ways of tabloid journalism, including the purchasing of articles — anything more than $10,000, he had to approve — and the significance of putting a famous face right out front.

“The only thing that was important is the cover of a magazine,” Mr. Pecker testified.

In about 30 minutes of testimony, Mr. Pecker also laid out trade secrets on sourcing, saying hotel workers and limo drivers could be a font of information on the rich and famous.

He seemed at ease: laughing at a prosecutor’s jokes, and sometimes directly addressing the jury just a few feet away.

We’re moving right along.

Over the past five trial days, the judge overseeing the case, Juan M. Merchan, has shown that he is eager to keep this trial on schedule. He seems serious about keeping his word to the jurors that the trial will last six weeks.

On Monday, truncated by a juror’s dental emergency and the Passover holiday, he decided to start with the first witness — Mr. Pecker — despite having only half an hour left on his schedule.

On Tuesday, the court will first consider a prosecution motion to hold Mr. Trump in contempt over recent comments that they say violated a gag order meant to keep him from attacking participants in the trial and their families.

Then, Mr. Pecker will continue on the stand, probably diving deeper into the “catch-and-kill” scheme used to buy up — and cover up — unflattering stories, a central element of the prosecution’s narrative.

Court will end early again, at 2 p.m., for further observance of Passover and then will have its weekly Wednesday break.

But there is little indication that as the weeks pass, Justice Merchan will let the pace slacken.

Jonah E. Bromwich and Kate Christobek

The opening statements gave a preview of how the two sides will present the case.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office and lawyers for Donald J. Trump presented opening statements to jurors on Monday, with prosecutors accusing the former president of entering a criminal conspiracy while the defense sought to discredit two key witnesses.

A prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, began by telling jurors that Mr. Trump had conspired with his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, and the publisher of The National Enquirer, David Pecker, to conceal damaging stories during his 2016 campaign.

“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up,” Mr. Colangelo said, telling a story about a hush-money payment to a porn star and insisting that the former president was ultimately responsible.

In the end, Mr. Colangelo said, there would be “only one conclusion: Donald Trump is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.”

Immediately after Mr. Colangelo’s presentation, Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, directly disagreed, insisting that the jury acquit the former president. Mr. Trump, he said, had engaged in actions that were legal and normal.

“President Trump did not commit any crimes,” Mr. Blanche told the jury, using the former president’s preferred form of address. The lawyer told jurors that Mr. Trump had earned the right to be referred to as “president” and reminded them that he was the presumptive Republican nominee.

Mr. Blanche argued that there was nothing illegal about nondisclosure agreements, which he said companies, the wealthy and the famous all use frequently. And, he said, prosecutors were wrong to suggest something criminal about Mr. Trump’s efforts to win the White House.

“I have a spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election,” Mr. Blanche said. “It’s called democracy.”

Mr. Blanche asserted that Mr. Cohen, a key prosecution witness, was paid for legal services, and he attempted to undermine Mr. Cohen’s credibility. Mr. Blanche called Mr. Cohen a “criminal” who “can’t be trusted” and suggested that he was testifying only because he didn’t get a job in the Trump administration.

He also took aim at Stormy Daniels, the former porn star who claimed she had sex with Mr. Trump, characterizing her as an opportunist who had used a brief encounter with Mr. Trump related to his reality show, “The Apprentice,” to make huge sums of money.

He added that Ms. Daniels was “biased” against the former president and made a living off her story about the sexual encounter.

Mr. Blanche also sought to minimize the charges, saying the records at the heart of the case were just “34 pieces of paper” that the former president had nothing to do with.

Mr. Trump is accused of falsifying business records — which is a felony if prosecutors can show the records were altered with an intent to commit or conceal a second crime.

A year ago, when the former president was formally charged with 34 felonies, the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, told reporters that he did not have to specify what the second crime was, and listed three options. During opening statements, Mr. Colangelo made it clear he believed that the strongest case relied on one of those options: convincing jurors that Mr. Trump concealed the violation of a state law that forbids “conspiracy to promote or prevent an election.”

Justice Juan M. Merchan

Presiding Judge

Joshua Steinglass

Todd Blanche

Trump Lawyer

David Pecker

Former Publisher of The National Enquirer

Michael Cohen

Former Trump Lawyer and “Fixer”

Stormy Daniels

Porn Director, Producer and Actress

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There’s some good news for people who want to follow the Trump trial in detail, but can’t make it to the courthouse. The New York state court system has just agreed to publish a transcript of each day’s proceeding by the end of the following day on its website. You can find the daily transcripts here .

Olivia Bensimon

Trump’s motorcade left the courthouse just after 1:05 p.m., wrapping up the trial’s first day of testimony. The view was blocked by an N.Y.P.D. dump truck, to many reporters’ great frustration. Inside Collect Pond Park, across from the courthouse, a lone pro-Trump protester’s “Trump for President ’24” banner flaps meekly in the light breeze.

Jonah Bromwich

The charges against Trump, which accuse him of falsifying records, are felonies because prosecutors say he sought to conceal another crime. Prosecutors had said before the trial that they had a menu of three crimes to choose from. The one they emphasized most strongly today is a violation of state election law: “conspiracy to promote election.” It’s not one of the actual charges, but they say it was baked into the overall crime.

And its worth emphasizing that when the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, was first asked about this, at a news conference directly after Trump was formally charged, he said that prosecutors did not have to specify which crime they were alleging Trump concealed. But today, Colangelo took the opposite tack: hitting the word “conspiracy” again and again.

William Rashbaum

With the trial now underway, here’s the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump by the numbers: The case was born as “Investigation No. 2018-00403803 – Investigation Into the Business Affairs of John Doe.” That’s how the Manhattan district attorney’s office identified the six-year inquiry that led to today’s proceedings, with the number and name appearing on subpoenas and the correspondence case. Arrest No. M23613757 was given to Mr. Trump when he surrendered last year on April 4. And when the former president was arraigned later that day, his indictment was given a Docket Number, IND-71543-23, which the court system uses to track the case.

Nate Schweber

A courthouse park becomes a stage, and a sideshow, outside Trump’s trial.

Andrew Giuliani, the son of Donald J. Trump’s former lawyer and a regular strutting presence on the periphery of the courthouse where the former president is on trial, posed for photos inside Collect Pond Park.

Grinning and wearing a campaign jacket, Mr. Giuliani, who has made a career as a right-wing media figure, hugged supporters of Mr. Trump on Monday. From one, he borrowed a flag with Mr. Trump’s face that promotes him for president in 2024.

“Two-thousand twenty-four years in prison!” taunted Ricky Caballero, 56, from Brooklyn. “He owes your dad money. Why you out here supporting him?”

Mr. Caballero wore a tank top with a Puerto Rican flag. He said that was his heritage, and that he remembers watching Mr. Trump lob paper towels at survivors of Hurricane Maria in 2017. Mr. Caballero said he was still furious.

Mr. Giuliani circulated like a celebrity among Mr. Trump’s supporters and ignored Mr. Caballero.

It was one of a number of loud exchanges between supporters and detractors of Mr. Trump that were noticeably monitored by the police. There were no police in the park on Friday, when a man amid a mental health crisis burned himself to death in an anti-government protest.

On Monday, there were six community affairs officers and six regular uniformed officers watching closely for trouble.

At one point, the sound of the national anthem wafted through the park, courtesy of the flute-playing activist Marc Crawford Leavitt.

“I’m just playing and no one can argue with my playing patriotic songs,” he said, a sign decrying Trump as a liar hanging around his neck.

Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.

The judge leaves the stand. We are done with the jurors’ first day of trial.

Trump looks angry as he leaves the courtroom, again patting the bench behind him on the way out. His eyes scan over the reporters seated in the gallery as he goes.

The defense just told us that they did not learn who would be testifying first for the prosecution until about 3 p.m. yesterday. Prosecutors had declined to tell them earlier, given that Trump has made something of a habit of attacking witnesses.

I’m again struck at just how quickly we went today. We started late, and by the end of a very short day had finished both opening statements and started in on our first witness. This trial was expected to last six weeks. It may end even more quickly.

Jesse McKinley

A short day, but we got a sense of the details that the prosecution intends to offer in its case, and the contours of the defense. David Pecker was just starting, and will continue tomorrow at 11 a.m. There’s a hearing on possible gag order violations by Trump tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m.

Maggie Haberman

Pecker is dismissed from the stand. We expect him back tomorrow.

Justice Merchan tells the jurors about the schedule and asks them, as he will before they leave the courtroom each time, not to discuss the case with anyone and not to read about it. He asks them to put it out of their minds.

Pecker greets someone at the defense table politely as he leaves the room. It’s not clear who.

As he answers Steinglass's questions, Pecker sometimes speaks directly to him, but other times he directs his comments to the jurors. Right now he's describing the types of people tabloids typically use as sources: hotel workers, limo drivers, lawyers.

Trump’s lawyers have sought to cast the tabloid that Pecker presided over as a media company like any other. But Pecker’s comment that they practiced “checkbook journalism,” and his description of their editorial practices, may undermine that argument, as we continue to hear about how the publication operated.

Checkbook journalism is one of the things that sets supermarket tabloids apart from more traditional news outlets.

Kate Christobek

Trump is leaning on the defense table as he listens to Pecker’s testimony. As Pecker talks about the editor meetings, Trump passes notes to two of his lawyers before glaring up at Pecker on the witness stand.

Steinglass has a banter going with Pecker as he asks Pecker to recount his work cell phone number at the time.

That may seem small but it’s important — it’s a good bet that those numbers will come up when evidence is presented.

Steinglass gets a loud cackle from Pecker while asking him his phone numbers. “This isn’t a quiz,” Steinglass says.

As Pecker begins to describe The National Enquirer's editor meetings, it again strikes me that these jurors have a really entertaining case before them. They will be taken into a lot of different environments — these editorial meetings, the Trump campaign and the Trump White House, and small meetings of New York operators in which, prosecutors will argue, the history of the country was shaped.

Jurors appear to be taking copious notes.

“We used checkbook journalism, and we paid for stories,” Pecker says of his time at The National Enquirer. Steinglass, the prosecutor, asks him whether he had "final say" over editorial decisions. Anything over $10,000 for a story, Pecker says, had to be approved by him.

Pecker says in his experience, the only thing that’s important “is the cover” of a magazine.

Michael Rothfeld

A look at how tabloids used ‘catch-and-kill’ to trade on the secrets of celebrities.

“Catch-and-kill” is a term coined by old-time tabloid editors for buying the exclusive rights to stories, or “catching” them, for the specific purpose of ensuring the information never becomes public. That’s the “killing” part.

Why would anyone want to spend money on a story that it never intends to publish? In the world of tabloid journalism, where ethical lines are blurry, deciding what to publish and why is often a calculus that covers favors doled out and chits called in.

David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, who also oversaw other tabloids such as Star and lifestyle publications such as Men’s Fitness, was a master of the technique , according to people who have worked for him.

In 2003, Mr. Pecker’s company, American Media Inc., bought several muscle magazines founded by a mentor of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilding legend and movie star. When Mr. Schwarzenegger, who was often featured in those magazines, jumped into the recall election to replace California’s governor, Mr. Pecker ordered his staff to buy up negative stories about him in order to protect his investment, former employees said.

Staff members called it “the David Pecker Project.” American Media paid $20,000 to a former mistress of Mr. Schwarzenegger so that she would not speak about their affair — though news of it had previously been published. The company paid another $1,000 to her friend and $2,000 to a man who had a video of Mr. Schwarzenegger dancing lewdly in Rio de Janeiro 20 years earlier. Mr. Schwarzenegger was elected governor.

Mr. Pecker’s publications made deals with other celebrities as well, though not always for money. He traded away dirt about the golfer Tiger Woods in exchange for an exclusive interview in Men’s Fitness in 2007, according to people with knowledge of that episode.

And, according to the prosecutors in the Manhattan trial of Donald J. Trump, Mr. Pecker employed “catch-and-kill” tactics in the 2016 presidential election, paying a doorman and a Playboy model to suppress negative stories about Mr. Trump and boost the candidacy of his longtime associate.

Justice Merchan has shown so far that he is eager to keep this trial on schedule. Court will be adjourned for the day in less than a half an hour, but yet the judge has chosen to start the first witness. He seems serious about keeping his word to the jurors that the trial will last six weeks.

What will be interesting about Pecker’s testimony, if it goes as opening statements suggested it would, is that he won’t really be describing Trump’s involvement in any actual criminal activity. Rather, he will serve as a tour guide to the seamy way in which Trump used The National Enquirer to his political advantage — a storytelling point on the way to alleged criminal activity.

And yet, prosecutors have framed Pecker’s involvement here as part of a “conspiracy.” This could be a risk for them — conspiracy is not one of the charged crimes. And this jury has at least two lawyers.

Who is David Pecker, the trial’s first witness?

The first witness in Donald J. Trump’s criminal is David Pecker, who was the publisher of The National Enquirer, and had traded favors with Mr. Trump since the 1990s.

Mr. Pecker, who was sometimes referred to as the “tabloid king,” had long used his publications to curry favor with Mr. Trump and other celebrities, in exchange for tips or for business reasons. Staff members called Mr. Trump, like other favored stars who were off limits, an “F.O.P.” — “Friend of Pecker.”

Mr. Trump and Mr. Pecker, along with Mr. Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, hatched a plan in August 2015 to boost his upstart presidential campaign, prosecutors say. The former Trump allies are each expected to take a turn on the witness stand, giving testimony that could help make him the first president convicted of a felony.

Prosecutors for Alvin L. Bragg , the Manhattan district attorney, will try to show that the hush money payment to a porn star at the center of the trial was part of a larger effort to suppress negative news about Mr. Trump to sway the election. That scheme, they will contend, includes two other deals, both involving Mr. Pecker.

Mr. Trump had announced his presidential campaign in June 2015. The plan the men laid out two months later was simple, according to court documents, interviews with people involved in the events or familiar with them, private communications and other records.

Mr. Pecker would use The Enquirer to publish positive stories about Mr. Trump’s campaign and negative stories about his rivals. He would alert Mr. Trump, through Mr. Cohen, when The Enquirer learned of stories that might threaten Mr. Trump. The Enquirer could buy the rights to those stories in order to suppress them, a practice known in the tabloid world as “catch and kill.”

In late 2015, Mr. Pecker’s company paid $30,000 to suppress a claim by a former doorman at a Trump building who said he had heard Mr. Trump fathered a child out of wedlock — a rumor that was apparently untrue. Then in August 2016, The Enquirer’s parent company paid $150,000 to a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, to keep her account of an affair with Mr. Trump quiet. Two months later, Mr. Pecker and The Enquirer’s editor helped Mr. Cohen negotiate a $130,000 hush-money payment with Stormy Daniels, the former porn star who also said she had sex with Mr. Trump. He has denied both women’s claims.

Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance crimes in 2018.

The Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., made a deal that year to avoid federal prosecution, acknowledging that it had illegally tried to influence the election .

Merchan stops testimony, says he realizes jurors weren’t given writing materials to take notes. At least 10 raise their hands when asked if they’d like some.

This jury is an attentive crew, if the number of note-takers is any indication.

Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, will question Pecker. He begins by asking him how old he is, apologizing for asking the question. Pecker is 72, married for 36 years. He begins to talk about his biography, starting with his educational background.

David Pecker is the first witness for the prosecution, and their choice looks to be a good one for them. The National Enquirer’s master of “Catch and Kill,” he was part of the conspiracy that Colangelo described in his opening statement, working with Trump and Cohen to bury negative stories about Trump and publish negative ones about his rivals. He’s expected to tell the jury about his conversations with Trump and Cohen about killing the bad stories, including the one about Stormy Daniels. And he’ll provide much of the broad arc of the case – and the motive — corroborating elements of Cohen’s expected testimony along the way.

The judge instructs the people to call their first witness and as expected, they call David Pecker.

With opening statements and a witness, we are squeezing a full day into this half day. Pecker enters. He’s got a trim white mustache and is wearing a grey suit. His grey hair hits his collar. He heads to the witness stand and is sworn in with his hand raised.

Pecker has aged considerably over the last several years. He spells his name and gives his place of residence.

Trump has some support from a group of his lawyers — Alan Garten, the Trump Organization general counsel is here, and the pool reporters saw Alina Habba and Chris Kise in the hallway.

Meet the team defending Donald J. Trump in his criminal trial.

Donald J. Trump has assembled a team of defense lawyers with extensive experience representing people charged with white-collar crimes to defend him against the charges filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Some have worked for Mr. Trump for years. Others are more recent additions, but are involved in the former president’s broader legal defense, also representing him in other criminal cases.

Here’s a look at Mr. Trump’s defense team:

Mr. Blanche started representing Mr. Trump last year, leaving a prestigious position as a partner at Wall Street’s oldest law firm to take him on as a client. He is also representing Mr. Trump in his federal classified documents case in Florida and his federal election interference case in Washington.

Mr. Blanche has also represented Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, as well as Boris Epshteyn, an adviser to Mr. Trump. Before turning to private practice, Mr. Blanche was a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, where he supervised violent-crime cases.

Susan Necheles

Ms. Necheles has been a lawyer for Mr. Trump since 2021 and represented the Trump Organization during its criminal tax fraud trial in Manhattan. The business was convicted of 17 felonies and ordered by Justice Juan M. Merchan to pay the maximum penalty of $1.6 million.

Ms. Necheles previously represented defendants in major organized-crime and public-corruption cases, including Venero Mangano, the Genovese crime family underboss who was known as Benny Eggs.

Mr. Bove, the newest addition to Mr. Trump’s legal team, is a legal partner to Mr. Blanche. He is a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York who turned to private practice and now represents defendants charged with white-collar crimes.

Gedalia Stern

Mr. Stern is a law partner to Ms. Necheles and also defended the Trump Organization in its criminal tax-fraud trial. He has previous experience representing clients charged with bribery, fraud and conspiracy.

If Trump testifies, he can be grilled about cases he lost and gag order violations.

The judge in Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial ruled on Monday morning that prosecutors could ask the former president about a range of previous cases that he has lost, as well as past violations of gag orders, in the event that he decides to testify in his defense.

Among other cases, the ruling by the judge, Juan M. Merchan, would allow prosecutors to question Mr. Trump about the civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, in which the former president was found to have inflated his net worth to obtain favorable loans. That case resulted in a $454 million judgment against Mr. Trump .

Justice Merchan will also allow the Manhattan district attorney’s office — which brought the case against Mr. Trump — to question him about civil cases brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll. Those cases found that Mr. Trump was liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll in the first instance and for defamation in the second. (Justice Merchan did not mention the sexual abuse finding, only the defamation, in his ruling regarding the Carroll cases on Monday.)

Justice Merchan will also let prosecutors ask about Mr. Trump’s attack on a law clerk in a civil fraud case , in violation of a gag order, as well as a 2018 decision that led to the dissolution of the Donald J. Trump Foundation to resolve a case brought by the New York attorney general at the time , Barbara Underwood, over financial irregularities.

The former president suggested in early April that he would testify in the criminal trial , saying that prosecutors “have no case.” That said, Mr. Trump has promised to testify in previous cases only to back out, and Justice Merchan’s decision could change his thinking on such a maneuver.

Justice Merchan said that, in the event that Mr. Trump did testify, he would give jurors “careful and specific” instructions about the scope of prosecutors’ queries, adding that he had “greatly curtailed” what specifics could be the target of questions.

However, Justice Merchan warned Mr. Trump that his ruling was “a shield and not a sword” and that the former president’s testimony could open “the door to questioning that has otherwise been excluded.”

Mr. Trump is being tried on charges that he falsified business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election. He has denied the charges.

Meet the team prosecuting Donald J. Trump.

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has assembled an accomplished team to take on perhaps the most high-profile case in his office’s history: the first criminal trial against former President Donald J. Trump. The group includes veteran prosecutors and former white-collar criminal defense lawyers who have extensive experience going up against Mr. Trump.

Here’s a look at the prosecution team:

Joshua Steinglass, Senior Trial Counsel

Mr. Steinglass, who has served as an assistant district attorney since 1998, is a recent addition to this case; in 2022 he helped lead the team that secured a conviction against the Trump Organization for conspiracy, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. He typically prosecutes significant violent crimes, such as a violent brawl on the Upper East Side that led to the conviction of two Proud Boy extremists in 2019.

Susan Hoffinger, Chief of the Investigations Division

After starting her career at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Ms. Hoffinger founded her own firm and spent 20 years as a defense lawyer focusing on white-collar criminal defense. She rejoined the district attorney’s office in 2022 and worked with Mr. Steinglass to obtain the conviction of the Trump Organization in its criminal tax fraud trial.

Christopher Conroy, Senior Adviser to Investigations Division

A prosecutor for 28 years, Mr. Conroy previously led the Manhattan district attorney’s office’s major economic crimes unit, where he was involved in the prosecution of the bankrupt law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf and supervised investigations into multinational financial institutions for falsification of business records. Mr. Conroy is the longest serving member of this trial team.

Matthew Colangelo, Senior Counsel to the District Attorney

Mr. Colangelo joined the district attorney’s office in 2022 after serving for two years as a senior official at the U.S. Department of Justice. He previously worked for the New York attorney general’s office, where he oversaw the investigation into the Trump Foundation, which led to its dissolution . He was also, for a time, one of the lead lawyers on the civil fraud inquiry into Mr. Trump.

Rebecca Mangold, Assistant District Attorney

Before joining Mr. Bragg’s major economic crimes unit in 2022, Ms. Mangold clerked for a U.S. District Court judge in New Jersey and worked in private practice for over 10 years. As a partner at the law firm Kobre & Kim, Ms. Mangold focused on criminal and regulatory investigations related to financial misconduct.

Katherine Ellis, Assistant District Attorney

Ms. Ellis joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office in 2018 after working as an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. Before becoming a lawyer, Ms. Ellis worked as a legal analyst at Goldman Sachs, the investment bank.

Ben Protess and Alan Feuer

The landmark case won’t play out in front of TV cameras.

The Manhattan criminal trial of Donald J. Trump will be closely followed around the world. But you will not be able to watch the proceedings on TV.

There will be no video feed aired live from the courtroom. Nor will there be an audio feed, as some federal courts allow.

New York courts generally do not permit video to be broadcast from courtrooms, although a feed is being transmitted into an overflow room for the reporters covering the trial. And cameras will be stationed in the hallway outside the courtroom to capture Mr. Trump’s remarks as he enters and leaves.

Shortly after court adjourned on Monday, the state’s chief administrative judge, Joseph A. Zayas, issued a statement saying that transcripts of each day of the trial would be published online by the end of the following day on the court system’s website .

Judge Zayas was responding to a request for public transcripts filed last week by a New York lawyer, Jim Walden, on behalf of a civic group and the news website New York Focus.

“With current law restricting the broadcasting of trial proceedings and courtroom space for public spectators very limited, the release of the daily transcripts on the court system’s website is the best way to provide the public a direct view of the proceedings in this historic trial,” Judge Zayas wrote in his statement.

Court will be in session, for the most part, every weekday except Wednesdays, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., until the trial ends.

Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess

Here’s the latest in the trial.

Prosecutors in the first criminal trial of an American president began laying out their case for a jury of 12 New Yorkers on Monday, saying Donald J. Trump engaged in a conspiracy to cover up a sex scandal in order to get elected president in 2016.

The first witness called was the tabloid publisher David Pecker, whom prosecutors described as one member of a three-man plot to conceal damaging stories — including a porn star’s account of a sexual tryst — as Mr. Trump mounted his bid for the presidency.

Mr. Pecker was on the stand for only a few minutes in the afternoon before court adjourned for the day. He described how his publication, The National Enquirer, paid for stories, a practice he called “checkbook journalism.” He is expected to return to the stand on Tuesday.

Matthew Colangelo, one of the prosecutors for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, told the jury in his opening statement that the case was about “a criminal conspiracy and a coverup,” describing how Mr. Trump, his longtime counsel Michael D. Cohen, and Mr. Pecker engaged in a strategy to “catch and kill” negative stories.

The lead lawyer for Mr. Trump, Todd Blanche, insisted in his opening statement that the former president had done nothing wrong. “President Trump is innocent,” he told the jury. “President Trump did not commit any crimes.”

The case centers on a $130,000 hush-money payment that Mr. Cohen made to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, to buy her silence as the 2016 campaign was winding down. Prosecutors say he was reimbursed by Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump falsified business records to conceal his conduct.

Mr. Colangelo said the payment to Ms. Daniels came on the heels of another scandal — the “Access Hollywood” tape, on which Mr. Trump bragged about groping women. Ms. Daniels’s account, he said, “could have been devastating to his campaign.”

He added, “With pressure mounting and Election Day fast approaching, Donald Trump agreed to the payoff and directed Cohen to proceed.”

Mr. Cohen, who was an executive vice president at the Trump Organization and counsel to Mr. Trump, and Mr. Pecker are expected to be central witnesses.

Mr. Blanche attacked Mr. Cohen’s credibility, saying that his livelihood hinges on attacking the former president, and insisted that prosecutors were attempting to present perfectly legal activities, such as entering into nondisclosure agreements, in a negative light.

He continued: “They put something sinister on this idea as if it were a crime. You’ll learn it’s not.”

Here’s what else to know about the trial:

The Manhattan criminal case against Mr. Trump was unveiled a year ago by the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. Mr. Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and if convicted could face up to four years in prison . Those are felonies because prosecutors say Mr. Trump sought to conceal another crime. On Monday, they strongly emphasized a violation of state election law — conspiracy to promote election — that is not one of the actual charges, but they say is baked into the overall crime.

The case is the former president’s first criminal trial, although he has been indicted three other times in three other cities. With those other cases tied up in appeals and other delays, the Manhattan case may be the only one he faces before the 2024 presidential election. The trial is expected to last six weeks.

Before opening statements, the judge overseeing the case delivered a crucial ruling that determined what prosecutors can question Mr. Trump about should he decide to take the stand in his own defense. The ruling, a significant victory for prosecutors that might prompt Mr. Trump to decide not to testify, allows them to question him about several recent losses he suffered in unrelated civil trials, including a fraud case this year in which the former president was found liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and was penalized $454 million.

The jury was drawn from a pool of residents of Manhattan, where Mr. Trump is deeply unpopular; during jury selection, dozens of prospective jurors were excused because they said they could not be impartial. But the jurors who were selected each pledged to decide the case based only on the facts. Read more about them.

The case will receive vast media attention, but the proceedings won’t be shown on television .

Dismissed prospective jurors describe intense days in a glaring spotlight.

Follow our live coverage of Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan.

The two Manhattan residents were led into the courtroom to fulfill a foundational civic duty: to be interviewed as prospective jurors.

But in the room when they arrived was a defendant, Donald J. Trump, unlike any in American history.

Both would-be jurors, a man and a woman, were eventually excused. But the experience thrust them into the spotlight in a way they never had imagined.

One was challenged by Mr. Trump’s lawyers over his past social media posts relating to the former president. The other has a medical practice that she could not shut for six weeks while serving on the jury.

While they were not chosen as jurors, their experiences illustrate the intensity of the attention focused on Mr. Trump’s trial — and on the first jury to ever weigh the fate of a former United States president in a criminal proceeding.

Both contacted The New York Times only after they were excused from serving. Though the court’s rules protecting prospective jurors’ identities end when they are dismissed from serving, The Times is withholding their names and most identifying characteristics about them.

Like the other prospective jurors who were considered, both included detailed personal information on the juror questionnaires they filled out, including where they work.

They were made to answer those questions by speaking into a microphone in open court; soon, both were blindsided as details of their lives ricocheted around the internet. They said they were frustrated that so much attention was devoted to prospective jurors and ascertaining information about them.

While they later learned that the judge in the case, Justice Juan M. Merchan, had ordered the redaction of some of the information jurors were ordered to reveal publicly, they felt that he had acted too late. As with many things connected to the trial, the rhythms and even some of the parameters are being written in real time.

Their experiences mirrored some that other prospective jurors who were dismissed have described. One, a man who gave his name as Mark to NBC News, said he had “satirized Mr. Trump often in my artwork,” and because of that, he had expected not to be chosen.

A woman who gave her name as Kara, who said the nature of her job made serving extremely difficult, told NBC News that she realized the gravity of serving on any criminal jury, but particularly this one.

Seeing Mr. Trump in person, she said, was “very jarring.” He was, she realized, just “another guy.”

One of the prospective jurors who spoke with The Times, the man, did not immediately realize what case he was involved in when he was led into the courtroom on the 15th floor of the Manhattan criminal courthouse. The woman had a sense a week earlier, having read a news story about the trial beginning the week she was supposed to respond to a juror summons.

The man, sitting a few rows behind the prosecutors’ table when the two were part of the first panel of 96 prospective jurors brought into the courtroom Monday afternoon, felt a sense of calm about five minutes into being there. Trump was simply a defendant, he thought. It was a business-records trial. Prosecutors were on one side, the defense lawyers on the other.

The woman was struck by the fact that Mr. Trump stood and waved to prospective jurors, she said, as he and his lawyers were introduced to the group. It felt more to her like the behavior of a campaigning candidate than of a criminal defendant. (Mr. Trump, of course, is both.)

Both were put off by efforts by Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, to assess prospective jurors’ views of Mr. Trump. The man said Mr. Blanche seemed “folksy” in a way he found disingenuous, while the woman was sharper, describing a “witch hunt” to root out people sympathetic to Democrats on the panel — a phrase Mr. Trump uses often to criticize the various prosecutors investigating his conduct.

The man in particular was frustrated that he was asked about past social media posts in which he had been critical of Mr. Trump, which Mr. Blanche’s team raised and which Justice Merchan ultimately agreed meant the man should be excused.

The man believed he could have been fair and resented the implication that he could not have been. Both he and the woman, who said they believed in the system of jury service, noted that they had begun the day taking sworn oaths vowing to render a fair and impartial judgment on the evidence. The man believed his own views — especially views from years ago — had no bearing on his ability to judge the evidence. If anything, he said, he would have been hyper-conscious in doing so.

Both had realized the magnitude of what serving on that jury would mean.

But they were also conscious of the threats and blowback that could come with weighing evidence against Mr. Trump — particularly with their personal details traceable in public. And both had concerns about being chosen because of that; the man in particular said his spouse had been worried.

Both would have valued being part of the historic trial. But both also had a sense of relief that they were not picked.