Trump faces trial on criminal charges related to hush money: What should you know?

Donald Trump has used every legal tool at his disposal to attempt to dismiss, reduce or delay the four active criminal cases against him.

But on Monday, barring last-minute court intervention, Trump will become the first former president ever to stand trial on criminal charges.

The trial in New York Supreme Court centers on allegations that Trump falsified business records as part of a scheme to hide a $130,000 payment in 2016 to porn star Stormy Daniels, who says she had an extramarital affair with Trump years earlier.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accused Trump of using a “catch and kill” tactic to hide damaging information from voters ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

The case may be the only one of 88 criminal charges against Trump in four separate cases to go to trial before the November 5 presidential election.

If convicted in the case, the 77-year-old former president could be sentenced to serve time at New York's notorious Rikers Island prison complex or in a state prison.

Here's what to know about the historic trial:

Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.

Under New York law, a person is guilty of that crime when his or her records are falsified with the intent to commit or conceal another crime.

The prosecutor alleges that Trump and others violated election laws in order to carry out an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 election by purchasing and suppressing negative information about him.

At the center of Bragg's case is Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges related to hush money payments to two women ahead of the 2016 election.

Cohen is expected to be a key witness in the trial, where he will say that Trump ordered him to make those payments.

To secretly pay Daniels, the prosecutor alleges, Cohen opened a bank account for a shell company he created specifically to facilitate the payment. He then transferred $131,000 to this account from a home equity line of credit. On October 27 — less than two weeks before the 2016 election — Cohen sent Daniels' lawyer $130,000 in exchange for her silence about the alleged meeting with Trump.

After the election, Bragg says, Trump repaid Cohen through a series of monthly checks, processed by the Trump Organization, which it recorded as payment for legal services provided in 2017 through a retainer agreement.

The DA claims these records were false.

Trump and Cohen are also allegedly involved in a 2016 payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who received $150,000 from the then-publisher of the National Enquirer to remain silent about her alleged affair with Trump.

Bragg also cites a $30,000 payment by that publisher, American Media Inc., to a former doorman at Trump Tower for the rights to a story about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock. After determining that the story was untrue, the publisher's CEO, David Pecker, wanted to terminate the deal, but he held off until after the 2016 election on Cohen's instructions, the prosecutor alleges.

The trial was originally scheduled to begin on March 25, but was postponed until Monday in order to give Trump's team enough time to consider some recently obtained documents.

The trial will begin with the selection process of 12 jurors plus alternates.

Merchan said he expected the trial to last about six weeks.

Yes. New York law requires defendants to attend their trials, with few exceptions.

Trump has voluntarily attended a number of hearings in the silent money case and his other criminal cases, generating waves of mainstream media attention that his regular campaign events no longer muster.

Trump was also scheduled to sit to testify on Monday in a separate lawsuit related to the public merger of his media company. Trump Media and Technology GroupBut this appearance has reportedly been postponed.

First-degree falsification of business records is a Class E felony punishable by a maximum of four years in prison.

But the sentence a defendant ultimately gets is often far less than the maximum, and Trump's age and lack of prior conviction could play to his advantage in any potential sentencing decision.

However, his animosity toward Chief Justice Juan Merchan and others connected to the case — including the judge's daughter — may work against him.

“I think there is a significant risk that he will be convicted and that he will face prison time,” Norm Eisen, a legal analyst who helped House Democrats during Trump's first impeachment, said at a Thursday news conference reviewing the secret money trial. .

“When you falsify business records with the intention of assisting, concealing or committing serious crimes, you are regularly sentenced to prison,” Eisen said.

Trump could continue to run for president even if he is convicted and imprisoned.

Cohen and Daniels are expected to take the stand at trial. But prosecutors have compiled a list of nearly a dozen other potential witnesses, including McDougall and Baker, a source familiar with the situation told NBC News.

The same source told NBC that the list of potential defense witnesses could include Trump himself.

Trump has not yet said whether he plans to testify in his own defense. When he took the stand in November in New York's civil commercial fraud case, Trump angrily lashed out at the judge, the state's attorney general and several other “haters.”

Bradley Smith, a former Federal Election Commission commissioner, is another potential defense witness, NBC reported.

Trump's lawyers threw the kitchen sink at the trial in hopes of a delay. They made more than 10 attempts to push it later, three of which came in last-minute appeals filed in the final week before jury selection.

Trump, as he has in his other legal battles, has used his public following as a weapon against the issue.

In his diatribes and regular interviews on social media, he has criticized the judge, the prosecutor, key witnesses and others, while claiming that all the criminal charges against him are part of a Biden administration plot to damage his presidential bid.

Merchan imposed a gag order on Trump, then expanded it after the former president repeatedly criticized the judge's daughter for working for a Democratic political consultant. Trump's legal team has repeatedly demanded that Merchan step down due to his daughter's political activities. Merchan refused to do so last year.

In a video posted to Truth Social on Thursday, Trump denounced the gag order, falsely claiming that “this only happens to me,” and asserting that “there has never been a more conflicted judge than this judge.”