A FilAm legal expert gives his take on the possible outcomes of the historic hush money trial of former president Donald Trump, which officially began in New York. Lenn Almadin Thonrhill reports. #TFCNews Like and follow TFC News Facebook: https://facebook.com/TFCNewsNow Twitter: https://twitter.com/TFCNewsNow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tfcnewsnow/ Threads: https://www.threads.net/@tfcnewsnow Website: https://mytfc.com/news News website: https://news.abs-cbn.com/tfcnews Subscribe to the ABS-CBN News channel! - http://bit.ly/TheABSCBNNews Watch full episodes on iWantTFC for FREE here: http://iwanttfc.com Visit our website at http://news.abs-cbn.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abscbnNEWS Twitter: https://twitter.com/abscbnnews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abscbnnews #TFC #TheFilipinoChannel #TFCNewsNewYork #ABSCBNNews #TVPatrol #DonaldTrump #Trump

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This is a persecution like never before. Nobody's ever seen anything like it.

And again, it's a case that should have never been brought.

It's an assault on America. And that's why I'm very proud to be here.

For the first time in U.S. history, a former president is on trial facing criminal charges.

Donald Trump in court on Monday in Manhattan, New York,

facing 34 counts of falsification of business records

related to hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels

and a scheme to bury stories that could hurt his 2016 presidential bid.

The prosecution is going to try to show during the trial

is that Trump not only knew about the payments,

but that he intended for the payments to essentially help him win the election,

to conceal it from the voting public.

Right?

And so what they're trying to do is,

what this case is really going to come down to is what evidence do they have to prove that.

Filipino-American Matthew Halandoni is a criminal attorney and a former Ohio State prosecutor.

Halandoni says not only do the prosecutors face a big hurdle

in connecting the dots to prove their case to the jury,

but also the credibility of their witnesses.

Michael Cohen, his former attorney, the attorney who made the quote-unquote hush payments,

is going to be very prominent.

He's featured in this case.

And his credibility is going to be very important.

Does the jury believe him?

Do they think that he is lying because Trump threw him under the bus?

Or he's now himself a convicted felon?

Can you trust him?

So that's going to be a big part of it.

But then are there other witnesses that observed conversations or communications?

Do they have any documentary evidence that Trump ordered these payments

and knew about?

As a former state prosecutor, Halandoni knows how crucial it is to bring a solid case to trial.

Not only do you have to believe in your case,

but you have to look at it objectively and say that I've had the evidence that I can win this case.

And not only win this case, but make sure that it stands up on appeal.

Even if he is convicted, many legal experts doubt that 77-year-old Trump

will be sentenced to trial.

Typically, for defendants in the position that Mr. Trump would be in if he's convicted,

he's a first-time convicted offender.

This is a financial crime, not a crime of violence necessarily.

It's the lowest level felony.

Typically, if you look at that, that's going to generally result in probation rather than jail time.

But Halandoni notes that there's no guarantee the judge will order one way or the other.

Judges are going to consider a number of other factors like punishing a particular offender,

whether someone accepts responsibility during the sentencing phase,

protecting the public, and deterrence, right?

So they want to show the public that essentially this type of behavior won't be tolerated

and the way that a judge might want to do that is by sentencing the defendant to jail.

Trump is not a...

...required to attend the trial each day, which is expected to last through May.

Len Amadin, Thornhill, ABS-CBN News, Manhattan, New York.

...

Thank you for watching!