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Opening arguments were made Monday in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in a Manhattan court room. The prosecution contends that Trump falsified records to use money to cover up his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, while the 45th President’s lawyers say no crime was ever committed. Meanwhile, the first witness has been called, and Trump is already accused of violating a gag order.
Law and Crime Network anchor Jesse Weber, who co-hosts “Always in Fashion” on WOR every Saturday and Sunday night at seven, feels the Trump case lays out a reasonable argument. Perhaps more importantly, as Weber said on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program, the prosecution seems to have a mountain of chicken scratch that they are calling chicken salad.
“Is it easy to say that records were not accurate? You could make that argument,” Weber explained to Riedel and Larry Mendte, sitting in for Berman. “Pretty simple, that would be a misdemeanor. But, in order to get to a felony, you need to show that Donald Trump acted with criminal intent, that he had the intent to commit another crime or that he intended to cover up another crime. And I will tell you, I listened to these opening statements, and they kept saying it was an illegal conspiracy to undermine the election. Well, if I’m sitting on that jury, the first thing I would say is, what is the crime? If you don’t do it at the beginning, I would be skeptical if I were sitting on that jury.”
Trump has stated that he wants to take the stand; it’s a strategy that Weber says is fraught with too many risks for any defendant, but worth it if you can pull it off. “[A defense attorney] can advise them that this is not something you should do. A, because it’s always risky- how are you going to come off to this jury? B, you open yourself up to really tough questioning from the prosecution. C, as we learned yesterday, the judge is allowing the prosecution to question Donald Trump on a number of different areas. So they would be able to bring up the civil fraud ruling, the E Jean Carol situation… [however, you need to] convince one juror to have pause and you get a hung jury and that’s a win for Donald Trump.”
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