… Thursday: And in the biggest event of the week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Trump’s claims of presidential immunity from prosecution. … Wednesday: In the classified documents case in Florida, the grand jury testimony of Trump aide WALT NAUTA, who was indicted for obstruction of justice, will be publicly released. Today: In a separate Manhattan courthouse, there’s a hearing scheduled in Trump’s New York civil fraud case to litigate whether the $175 million bond he put up is legitimate or not.

What else to watch for …It will be a packed week of Trump legal news. On Sunday, the campaign sent out a news release that included this statement: “The government’s case against President Trump relies entirely on testimony of some of the most disreputable and fame-thirsty characters on the planet.” (While this was a campaign statement and not from Trump’s mouth or his social media account, the language of the Merchan gag order prohibits “making or directing others to make” statements about witnesses in the case.) The long list of alleged violations already before the judge did little to tame Trump world over the weekend. What to watch tomorrow …On Tuesday, testimony will pause as Judge JUAN MERCHAN holds a hearing to decide whether Trump should be sanctioned for violating his gag order. There’s lots of concern about the safety of the jurors and speculation about how the pressure of serving on this high-profile trial will affect them. This is a scenario that came up the most since Friday in conversations we’ve had with potential witnesses in the case, reporters covering the trial and legal analysts. COLD FEET? Finally, watch to see whether any jurors had a change of heart over the weekend and come to court today asking to be dismissed from the case. In this scenario, the scheme would be laid out in great detail first and then Cohen, batting clean-up, will provide a master narrative that matches the facts the jurors have already heard, thus bolstering his credibility. The main sources of this information will come from AMI (Pecker and National Enquirer editor DYLAN HOWARD), the Trump Organization (accounting staffer DEBORAH TARASOFF, controller JEFFREY McCONNEY and executive assistant RHONA GRAFF) and the Trump campaign and White House (top comms aide HOPE HICKS and Trump assistant MADELEINE WESTERHOUT). The strategy here will be to use the earlier witnesses in the case to establish facts and develop a narrative from testimony and documentary evidence that pre-corroborate what Cohen will ultimately say. SETTING THE TABLE? Sources close to the case say to watch also for how the prosecution uses Pecker and other witnesses to begin laying the foundation for their most critical task: rehabilitating the credibility of MICHAEL COHEN, who may be the most important witness in the case.

Pecker has said little in public, so his testimony will be closely watched for any new information - especially about his private conversations with Trump when they are said to have first hatched the scheme in 2015. Pecker was granted immunity in that investigation. In 2018, AMI struck a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors admitting that the company had paid Playboy model KAREN McDOUGAL $150,000 to bury her story of an affair with Trump - a payment AMI conceded had violated campaign finance laws. NEW DETAILS? Pecker is a fitting place to begin the unspinning the hush-money tale given his central role in the buying and suppressing of negative stories about Trump. Norm Eisen makes this smart point to Josh: “Trump’s lawyers and Bragg’s team are going to be having an argument about: Was this a serious case of campaign corruption and cover-up? Was this a scheme to interfere with an election? … Or is it a case about an affair, a few wrong words on the books and making a mountain out of a molehill?”

SEX OR CORRUPTION? In opening arguments, watch to see how the prosecution tries, as Josh Gerstein writes today, to reframe the case from one about an embarrassing affair to a one about criminal “election interference.” The former is something the public - and jurors - might be quick to forgive or dismiss, while the latter can be seen as “a precursor to Trump’s bid to hang on to power by illegitimate means four years later.” Pecker is a longtime Trump friend, the former chairman of American Media Inc., the National Enquirer’s parent company, and the architect of the alleged “catch and kill” approach to Trump’s accusers. SHOWTIME IN NYC - Opening arguments in the DONALD TRUMP hush money case are expected to begin this morning up on the 15th floor of the Criminal Courts Building in lower Manhattan.Īfter the prosecution and defense lay out their initial statements, Manhattan DA ALVIN BRAGG’s team is set to call DAVID PECKER as the first witness, per the NYT. This will be a packed week of Donald Trump legal news.

Nytimes 2018 election results