Donald Trump Prosecutors Started Trial With 'Unexpected Bang'—Legal Analyst

Prosecutors in former President Donald Trump's criminal hush money case started the trial with an "unexpected bang," according to legal analyst Joyce Vance on Friday.

Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, became the first former president in U.S. history to stand trial in a criminal case earlier this month. Following an investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, Trump was indicted in March 2023 on charges of falsifying business records relating to hush-money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels had alleged she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which he has denied. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges and said the case against him is politically motivated.

On Monday, jurors heard from its first witness in the trial, David Pecker, a longtime friend of the former president and former chairman, president and CEO of American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer, as he took the stand throughout the week.

In a Friday interview with MSNBC's The Beat with Ari Melber, Vance a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama under the Barack Obama administration and current legal analyst for the network, discussed the events that occurred this past week in Trump's criminal hush money trial.

When asked by Melber about what the prosecution has achieved in the opening week of trial and what they have to worry about moving forward, Vance pointed out the prosecution started with an "unexpected bang" when it came to Pecker's testimony.

"The prosecution really did start off with an unexpected bang. No one knew what to expect out of David Pecker. We learned that he had been cooperating with prosecutors and he brought Trump straight into the essential conspiracy, the election fraud conspiracy, which is necessary to turn the misdemeanor that is charged here into a felony," she said.

Vance added: "Important testimony, he stood up pretty well on testimony, on cross examination. They did not seem to come after him with a lot. They tried to pick away at his credibility, question some of the key pieces of evidence, but he was thoroughly rehabilitated on redirecting examination. Prosecution has to be feeling good."

During Pecker's testimony on Tuesday, he confirmed that he had met with Trump and Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen at the Trump Tower in August 2015 and agreed that he would publish positive stories about Trump and publish negative stories about his political opponents.

He also offered to be the "eyes and ears" of the campaign, so that if he heard any negative stories were being shopped to news outlets about Trump, he would tell Cohen, who would then make sure those stories were killed.

Prosecutors had argued that the three men "orchestrated a coverup to interfere" with the 2016 presidential election by concealing negative information about Trump.

Newsweek has reached out to Trump's spokesperson via email for comment.

Vance's comments also come after Pecker laid out the details of the three hush money payments that were made ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Across three days of testimony, the former chairman testified that his company made two of those payments, one to Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin and one to former Playboy model Karen McDougal who also claimed to have had an affair with Trump during his marriage to Melania Trump. The third, which was made to Daniels, was paid by Cohen.

Pecker testified that in the fall of 2015, then-editor in chief of the National Enquirer Dylan Howard flagged a tip from Sajudin who wanted to sell a story alleging that Trump fathered an illegitimate child.

Sajudin received $30,000 while McDougal received $130,000. Pecker said that neither he nor AMI were reimbursed for those payments.