Donald Trump has arrived at a New York court for the start of jury selection in his hush money trial, marking a singular moment in US history.
It is the first criminal trial of a former US leader and the first of Trump’s four indictments to go to trial.
Because Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, the trial in Manhattan will also produce the split-screen effect of a candidate for the White House spending his days in court and, he has said, “campaigning during the night”.
At the outset of Monday’s court proceedings, Judge Juan M Merchan denied a defence request to recuse himself from the case.
Additional legal arguments and housekeeping matters were expected before the formal start of jury selection.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged effort to keep salacious – and, he says, bogus – stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaign.
The charges centre on 130,000 US dollars (about £104,000) in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen.
He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public, a month before the election, with her claims of a sexual encounter with the married mogul a decade earlier.
Prosecutors say the payments to Mr Cohen were falsely logged as legal fees in order to cloak their actual purpose.
Trump’s lawyers say the disbursements were legal expenses, not a cover-up.
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