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The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump is an ongoing criminal trial against Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States. Trump faces 34 felony charges of falsifying business records with the intent to commit or conceal other crimes relating to payments made to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence about an earlier alleged affair between them. The Manhattan District Attorney accused Trump of falsifying these business records with the intent to violate federal campaign finance limits, unlawfully influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and commit tax fraud. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if Trump is convicted on five or more counts. The indictment, the first of a former U.S. president, was approved by a Manhattan grand jury on March 30, 2023. Trump traveled from his residence in Florida to New York City on April 3, 2023, where he surrendered to the Manhattan District Attorney's office and was arraigned the next afternoon. The trial began on April 15, 2024, and is expected to take about seven weeks. Trial arguments began on April 22. On April 30, Trump became the first U.S. president ever to be held in criminal contempt of court, due to comments he made earlier in the month about individuals involved with the trial. Months before he was indicted, Trump announced his intention to campaign in the 2024 presidential election; neither the indictment nor any resulting conviction would disqualify his candidacy. Background Stormy Daniels–Donald Trump scandal In July 2006, Stormy Daniels, an American pornographic film actress, met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada. At the time, Trump was the host of the reality TV series The Apprentice and was married to Melania Trump. According to Daniels, Trump invited her to his penthouse at Harrah's Lake Tahoe where the two had sex and talked about making her a guest on The Apprentice. In 2011, Daniels considered selling the story to the celebrity magazine Life & Style for US$15,000 as Trump began exploring a potential presidential bid. His lawyer, Michael Cohen, threatened to sue Life & Style when it asked the Trump Organization for comment. Daniels' agent, Gina Rodriguez, leaked the story to gossip blog The Dirty in October. The post was taken down following complaints by Trump's lawyers, and Daniels disputed the story's veracity. Cohen would acknowledge during court testimony in May 2024 that he advised for the story's removal. As Trump's 2016 presidential campaign began, Rodriguez approached multiple publications—including the National Enquirer—and attempted to sell the story. Following the publication of a lewd tape between Trump and the television host Billy Bush, the National Enquirer sought to suppress the story. Rather than paying Daniels, the National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard negotiated a $130,000 non-disclosure agreement between Daniels and Michael Cohen. As the election neared, Cohen attempted to find the money and repeatedly delayed her payment. Keith Davidson, Daniels' lawyer, canceled the deal in October 2016. Ultimately, Cohen drew the money from his home equity line of credit and sent it through a shell company incorporated in Delaware. Trump initially denied knowing about the check made out to Daniels. In April 2018, aboard Air Force One, he told a reporter he did not know where Cohen got the money. Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for Trump, refuted these claims in a Fox News interview, saying that Trump was aware of the payments. Trump wrote several checks, totaling $420,000, to Cohen. The checks reimbursed him for the non-disclosure agreement and covered the costs for Cohen to manipulate online polls to boost Trump's status. The $180,000 paid to Cohen was doubled to offset taxes, and $60,000 was added. These payments were made throughout 2017, during Trump's first year of his presidency. The payments made to Cohen were declared as a legal expense. Nine monthly checks from Trump to Cohen, dating April to December 2017, exist as evidence. In January 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported on Cohen's payment to Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts relating to the payment—as well as another payment made to Karen McDougal—in August. In his admission of guilt, Cohen implicated Trump, stating that he acted "at the direction of a candidate for federal office". In December 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison. Manhattan DA investigation and grand jury Following Cohen's August 2018 admission of guilt, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. opened an investigation against the Trump Organization and two of its executives. The office paused its inquiry when the office of the federal U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York began a separate investigation into the payments, but the federal inquiry concluded without charges in July 2019. The Manhattan district attorney's office then issued a subpoena for the Trump Organization in August, seeking documents relating to the payments. Additionally, the office subpoenaed accounting firm Mazars USA, demanding eight years of Trump's corporate tax returns. Trump's lawyers sued Vance to block the subpoena, citing Trump's immunity from criminal inquiries as the president of the United States. In Trump v. Vance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7–2 in favor of Vance, allowing the subpoena to continue. Following the 2021 New York County District Attorney election, Alvin Bragg succeeded Vance as the Manhattan District Attorney. In January 2023, the Manhattan district attorney's office impaneled a grand jury, and began presenting evidence of Trump's role in the Stormy Daniels payment. Cohen extensively met with the DA's office and the grand jury, and by March 3, Cohen had met with the DA's office 18 times. and had given his cellphones to the DA's prosecutors, who wanted evidence of communications including voice recordings of Daniels' former lawyer Keith Davidson. Several other witnesses met with the DA's office or the grand jury in March 2023, including Kellyanne Conway; Hope Hicks, two organization employees, two former National Enquirer executives who helped broker the hush-money deal, and a lawyer for Daniels; Daniels herself; Trump-aligned lawyer Robert Costello, who provided testimony including emails in which he attempted to discredit Cohen's reliability; and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker. As early as that February, prosecutors confirmed that they might leverage additional charges including insurance fraud against Allen Weisselberg to pressure him to testify against Trump, and in May, The New York Times reported that they were considering perjury charges against him. In March 2023, prosecutors signaled an indictment was likely. By March 9, prosecutors had offered Trump a chance to testify before the grand jury the following week, indicating that they were likely preparing to indict him. Around that time, T.... 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