FilAm legal expert: Solid case in Trump hush money trial crucial | TFC News New York, USA
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00:00.0
This is a persecution like never before. Nobody's ever seen anything like it.
00:05.0
And again, it's a case that should have never been brought.
00:08.7
It's an assault on America. And that's why I'm very proud to be here.
00:13.5
For the first time in U.S. history, a former president is on trial facing criminal charges.
00:20.4
Donald Trump in court on Monday in Manhattan, New York,
00:23.2
facing 34 counts of falsification of business records
00:26.4
related to hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels
00:30.4
and a scheme to bury stories that could hurt his 2016 presidential bid.
00:35.2
The prosecution is going to try to show during the trial
00:40.3
is that Trump not only knew about the payments,
00:44.2
but that he intended for the payments to essentially help him win the election,
00:50.1
to conceal it from the voting public.
00:55.8
And so what they're trying to do is,
00:56.4
what this case is really going to come down to is what evidence do they have to prove that.
01:00.7
Filipino-American Matthew Halandoni is a criminal attorney and a former Ohio State prosecutor.
01:08.2
Halandoni says not only do the prosecutors face a big hurdle
01:12.0
in connecting the dots to prove their case to the jury,
01:15.7
but also the credibility of their witnesses.
01:18.7
Michael Cohen, his former attorney, the attorney who made the quote-unquote hush payments,
01:24.4
is going to be very prominent.
01:26.4
He's featured in this case.
01:28.1
And his credibility is going to be very important.
01:31.3
Does the jury believe him?
01:32.8
Do they think that he is lying because Trump threw him under the bus?
01:38.7
Or he's now himself a convicted felon?
01:41.1
Can you trust him?
01:42.9
So that's going to be a big part of it.
01:44.8
But then are there other witnesses that observed conversations or communications?
01:50.6
Do they have any documentary evidence that Trump ordered these payments
01:56.4
As a former state prosecutor, Halandoni knows how crucial it is to bring a solid case to trial.
02:04.5
Not only do you have to believe in your case,
02:07.3
but you have to look at it objectively and say that I've had the evidence that I can win this case.
02:14.2
And not only win this case, but make sure that it stands up on appeal.
02:19.7
Even if he is convicted, many legal experts doubt that 77-year-old Trump
02:25.2
will be sentenced to trial.
02:26.4
Typically, for defendants in the position that Mr. Trump would be in if he's convicted,
02:33.7
he's a first-time convicted offender.
02:38.2
This is a financial crime, not a crime of violence necessarily.
02:41.7
It's the lowest level felony.
02:43.6
Typically, if you look at that, that's going to generally result in probation rather than jail time.
02:51.0
But Halandoni notes that there's no guarantee the judge will order one way or the other.
02:56.4
Judges are going to consider a number of other factors like punishing a particular offender,
03:03.5
whether someone accepts responsibility during the sentencing phase,
03:07.6
protecting the public, and deterrence, right?
03:10.6
So they want to show the public that essentially this type of behavior won't be tolerated
03:17.8
and the way that a judge might want to do that is by sentencing the defendant to jail.
03:23.8
Trump is not a...
03:26.4
...required to attend the trial each day, which is expected to last through May.
03:31.5
Len Amadin, Thornhill, ABS-CBN News, Manhattan, New York.
03:56.4
Thank you for watching!
