Prosecutors outline ammo they'll hit Trump with if he takes stand in hush money trial
Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney have filed a notice of the prior bad acts they intend to interrogate former President Donald Trump on, should he choose to take the witness stand in his hush money trial.
The case, which began jury selection at the start of this week, centers on Trump's alleged falsification of business records to conceal a hush payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleges this was effectively a scheme to interfere with the 2016 election by trying to keep information from voters.
Trump denies any wrongdoing and does not concede the affair even happened.
According to MSNBC analyst Adam Klasfeld, the so-called "Sandoval notice" outlines a number of past actions Trump took that prosecutors will use to undermine his credibility to the jury.
Among the things the prosecutors intend to bring up are Trump's civil fraud trial, where he was found liable for over $450 million for systematically manipulating property values in New York, his civil sexual battery and defamation trial brought by E. Jean Carroll, and the criminal tax fraud case against the Trump Organization, which saw his former CFO Allen Weisselberg sent to jail.
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Prosecutors also plan to note that "Court sanctioned defendant and ordered him to pay $937,989 in fees for filing a frivolous, bad-faith lawsuit" brought against former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential rival Hillary Clinton, that he was fined multiple times for violating gag orders in his legal cases, and that he agreed to shut down his charitable foundation in 2018 following "breach of fiduciary duty and waste, failure to properly administer charitable assets, improper political activity, unlawful coordination with the Trump political campaign, and repeated and willful self-dealing transactions."
Judge Juan Merchan must now review the prior acts the prosecutors want to bring up at trial, and could potentially bar some of them as prejudicial.