The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s “hush-money” trial in Manhattan affirmed Monday that he will not allow the playing of an “Access Hollywood” tape featuring the former president, and he denied prosecutors’ requests to enter other allegations of sexual assault into the evidence.
In denying a prosecutor’s request to bring into evidence allegations of assault against President Trump that emerged after the release of an “Access Hollywood” tape in 2016, Judge Juan Merchan described them as rumors.
“They are very prejudical, and at this point, given what we know today, it was just a rumor,” Judge Merchan said in court on Monday. But the judge said he would allow video footage that features President Trump denying the allegations at various campaign rallies.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the court that the district attorney’s office wants to admit a transcript of the “Access Hollywood” tape that resurfaced ahead of the 2016 presidential election, claiming that the tape contains an alleged admission of a sexual assault. The judge said that the prosecution cannot play the tape during the trial, making note of a previous ruling he had issued, but stipulated that prosecutors can read the words aloud.
“It’s not a little point,” Judge Merchan said, according to court reporters. “My ruling that we were not to play the tape was, and remains, that the tape itself is so prejudicial ... the tape itself should not come in.”
The judge also ruled Monday that video footage from President Trump’s deposition in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial should not be played in front of the jury. But the judge did allow alleged Trump campaign interactions with the National Enquirer and claims about an alleged affair with former model Karen McDougal to be allowed in the trial. The former president has denied the McDougal allegations.
“I believe this is necessary to complete the narrative of what took place,” Judge Merchan said of the National Enquirer stories claims.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche had argued in court that those two topics are a “sideshow” that would “do nothing but confuse the jury about the actual crime charged,” adding that some allegations that prosecutors want to enter are “literally just salacious with no value.”
The day began with Judge Merchan denying defense requests to recuse himself from the case and to expand the questionnaire filled out by jurors. Additional legal arguments and housekeeping matters were expected before the formal start of jury selection.
Judge Merchan had written that the key is “whether the prospective juror can assure us that they will set aside any personal feelings or biases and render a decision that is based on the evidence and the law.”
The former president has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records that arose from an alleged effort to keep stories that he describes as false out of the press. He has denied having an affair with adult actress Stormy Daniels, who may be called in as a witness in the case.
The charges center on $130,000 in payments that President Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He had paid that sum on the former president’s behalf to Ms. Daniels about a month before the 2016 election.
Prosecutors say the payments to Mr. Cohen were falsely logged as legal fees in order to cloak their actual purpose. But the former president’s lawyers say the disbursements indeed were legal expenses, not a cover-up.
President Trump’s lawyers will likely attack the case by trying to undermine the credibility of prosecution witnesses like Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels. The former president has described the two as liars. The former president’s lawyers are expected to paint Mr. Cohen, who has been a frequent Trump critic on mainstream media programs, as a con man and point to his conviction on multiple federal crimes as well as his disbarment to try to persuade jurors that he can’t be believed.
This month, the former president posted on social media a picture of a 2018 written statement from Ms. Daniels in which she denied any relationship. But the adult actress claimed that it was part of a non-disclosure agreement that she had signed.
Before entering the court on Monday, President Trump said he is a victim of “political persecution” and is being unfairly targeted due to his position as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. He also faces three other criminal cases in Georgia, Washington, and Florida, and has pleaded not guilty to those charges, too.
