New York
Who Are Key Players in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial?
On Monday, Donald J. Trump is set to become the first former U.S. president to face a criminal trial. Manhattan prosecutors charged him last year with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, accusing Mr. Trump of covering up a sex scandal with the porn star Stormy Daniels around the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has pleaded not guilty.
The Court
Justice Juan M. Merchan
Presiding Judge
Justice Merchan presided over the 2022 criminal trial and conviction of the Trump Organization and some of its executives, fining the company the maximum penalty of $1.6 million. A 17-year veteran of the court, Justice Merchan has been subject to verbal attacks by Mr. Trump, who has also targeted the judge’s family.
Central Figures
Stormy Daniels
Porn Director, Producer and Actress
Just before the 2016 election, Ms. Daniels received a $130,000 hush-money payment from Mr. Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, in exchange for her silence about her story of a 2006 sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. The former president has denied the encounter, and has frequently attacked Ms. Daniels since the payment became public in 2018.
Michael Cohen
Former Trump Lawyer and “Fixer”
Mr. Cohen has said that the hush-money payment he made to Ms. Daniels was paid at Mr. Trump’s direction. He has also said that Mr. Trump covered up the deal through a series of reimbursements to Mr. Cohen, in order to avoid a sex scandal during and after the 2016 election. Mr. Cohen later served time in prison after pleading guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance charges related to the hush-money scheme. Mr. Trump has called Mr. Cohen a liar and tried to block his testimony in this case by accusing him of perjury.
David Pecker
Former Publisher of The National Enquirer
Leading up to the 2016 election, Mr. Pecker, who was the publisher at the time, agreed to work with Mr. Cohen to suppress negative stories about Mr. Trump, a practice known in the tabloid world as “catch and kill.” Mr. Pecker, a longtime Trump friend, brokered the hush-money deals with Ms. Daniels and a former former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.
Dylan Howard
Former Editor of The National Enquirer
In the effort to bury negative stories about Mr. Trump before the 2016 election, Mr. Howard, who was the editor at the time, connected Mr. Cohen with a lawyer for Ms. Daniels, setting the hush-money deal in motion.
Karen McDougal
Former Playboy Model
As part of the scheme to suppress negative stories about Mr. Trump before the 2016 election, American Media Inc., the parent company to the National Enquirer, paid Ms. McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story of an affair with Mr. Trump in order to bury it. Mr. Trump denies the affair.
Keith Davidson
Stormy Daniels’s Lawyer
In October 2016, Mr. Davidson negotiated the hush-money deal with Mr. Cohen to buy Ms. Daniels’s silence about the sexual encounter she said she had with Mr. Trump.
Hope Hicks
Former Trump Spokeswoman
Ms. Hicks, who worked on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and served in the White House until 2018, spoke with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen in 2016 on the day they learned that Ms. Daniels wanted money for her story, and again with Mr. Cohen on the day after he wired the $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels’s lawyer.
Jeffrey McConney
Former Trump Organization Controller
Mr. McConney facilitated payments to Mr. Cohen – which served as reimbursement for the $130,000 paid to Ms. Daniels – that were falsely described as “legal expenses” in Trump Organization payment records.
Alan Garten
Trump Organization Chief Legal Officer
Mr. Garten previously told a federal judge that payments by the Trump Organization to Mr. Cohen in 2017 were to reimburse him for a settlement payment to Ms. Daniels, and to compensate him for private counsel services for Mr. Trump.
Prosecution Team at Manhattan District Attorney’s Office
Alvin Bragg
District Attorney
Out of various Trump investigations he inherited when he took office in 2022, Mr. Bragg zeroed in on the hush-money deal and resurrected the case, leading last year to Mr. Trump’s first criminal indictment. Now Mr. Bragg is set to be the first criminal prosecutor to put Mr. Trump on trial, which has made him a frequent target of the former president’s attacks.
Matthew Colangelo
Senior Counsel
A former high-ranking official at the New York attorney general’s office, Mr. Colangelo previously led a civil inquiry into Mr. Trump and oversaw an investigation into the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which led to its dissolution.
Joshua Steinglass
Senior Trial Counsel
After helping to lead the effort to convict the Trump Organization in 2022, Mr. Steinglass was recently added to the prosecution team. He typically prosecutes significant violent crime and secured a conviction against two Proud Boy extremists for a violent brawl in 2019.
Christopher Conroy
Investigations Division Senior Advisor
Mr. Conroy, who has been at the Manhattan district attorney’s office since 1996 and previously led the major economic crimes unit, has worked on the investigations into Mr. Trump longer than any other member of the team.
Rebecca Mangold
Assistant District Attorney
She joined Mr. Bragg’s major economic crimes unit in 2022 after clerking for a U.S. District Court judge in New Jersey and working in private practice on criminal and regulatory investigations.
Defense Team
Todd Blanche
Trump Lawyer
A former federal prosecutor, Mr. Blanche left a large law firm to defend Mr. Trump in this case. He is also representing Mr. Trump in the federal classified documents case and the federal election interference case.
Susan Necheles
Trump Lawyer
A lawyer for Mr. Trump since 2021, Ms. Necheles also represented the Trump Organization in the criminal tax fraud trial in Manhattan, which resulted in a conviction and $1.6 million fine. She previously represented defendants in major organized-crime and public-corruption cases.
Gedalia M. Stern
Trump Lawyer
As a law partner to Ms. Necheles, Mr. Stern also defended the Trump Organization in its criminal tax fraud trial and has previously represented clients charged with bribery, fraud and conspiracy.
The newest addition to Mr. Trump’s trial team, Mr. Bove served as a federal prosecutor in New York before turning to private practice where he has represented defendants charged with white-collar crimes.
David Pecker, former publisher of The National Enquirer, testified that Donald J. Trump thanked him for burying stories during the 2016 campaign. Jonah Bromwich, a criminal justice reporter at The New York Times, gives takeaways from Pecker’s testimony.
The 2020 conviction of Harvey Weinstein on felony sex crime charges in Manhattan was overturned on Thursday by New York’s top court. The ruling by the New York Court of Appeals said the trial judge in Mr. Weinstein’s case, Justice James M. Burke, erred in letting prosecutors call some women as witnesses who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them, but whose accusations were not included as charges.
The appeals court found that Mr. Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer whose case ignited the #MeToo movement, had not received a fair trial. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said, “We will do everything in our power to retry this case and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault.” Donna Rotunno, Mr. Weinstein’s lead trial lawyer in New York, praised the ruling, saying, “They were prosecuting him for sins, not crimes.”
Mr. Weinstein, who was also sentenced to 16 years in prison in a California conviction, could be sent to that state to continue his sentence there, according to his spokesman.
The New York Times annotated the ruling.
Download the original PDF.
New York Times Analysis
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1
The overturning of Harvey Weinstein’s New York sex crimes conviction, and the ordering of a new trial, may feel like a sudden, shocking turn. In the public mind, he is a fully disgraced figure: sentenced to long prison terms in two cities, defined by the public testimonies of nearly 100 alleged victims whose stories formed the cornerstone of the #MeToo movement. But in legal terms, his New York conviction was always controversial, and his appeals always stood a chance.
New York Times Analysis
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2
Central to the decision to overturn the conviction was something called “Molineux witnesses,” which refers to witnesses in a trial who are allowed to testify about criminal acts that the defendant has not been charged with committing.
3
During the Weinstein trial, prosecutors sought to persuade jurors that he had a long history of using his prominence as a Hollywood producer to lure young women to hotel rooms and sexually assault them. They did this by calling other women to the stand who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them, including Dawn Dunning, Tarale Wulff and Lauren Young. Mr. Weinstein was not charged with assaulting those women, but Justice James Burke allowed them to appear for the prosecution as Molineux witnesses, also known as “prior bad act” witnesses.
New York Times Analysis
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4
Complainant A is Miriam Haley, who previously went by the name Mimi Haleyi. At trial, she testified that she first met Mr. Weinstein at a movie premiere in London when she was a young production assistant.
5
Complainant B is Jessica Mann, who was an aspiring actress when she met Mr. Weinstein and who testified at the trial. Prosecutors said she maintained a relationship with Mr. Weinstein to save her career.
New York Times Analysis
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Complainant C is Annabella Sciorra, the actress best known for her roles in “The Sopranos” and “Jungle Fever.” She met Mr. Weinstein at a party in Los Angeles in the early 1990s when he was a young producer. She testified at the trial.
New York Times Analysis
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Witness 1 is Dawn Dunning, who was a waitress and aspiring actress when she met Mr. Weinstein. He offered to help with her acting career, and she had initially believed him to be a mentor, prosecutors said. She testified at the trial.
New York Times Analysis
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Witness 2 is Tarale Wulff, who was an aspiring actress waiting tables at an exclusive lounge in Manhattan when she met Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein, the restaurant owner’s friend, always sat at the owner’s table, where staff were expected to treat him well. She testified at the trial.
9
Witness 3 is Lauren Young, a model who wanted to break into the film business. She brought a script to a meeting with Mr. Weinstein at a hotel bar in Beverly Hills, which prosecutors say was a ruse for Mr. Weinstein to sexually assault her. She testified at the trial.
New York Times Analysis
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Thursday’s ruling in New York also raised questions about whether a separate conviction in California in 2022 — on rape and sexual assault charges — can survive a similar legal challenge. That case also relied in part on witnesses whose accusations did not lead to charges. Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer in the California case said she planned to file an appeal next month.
New York Times Analysis
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New York Times Analysis
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The majority of the court appeared to take umbrage with the fierce statements of the dissenting judges, defending their ruling in numerous footnotes and throughout the opinion, a back-and-forth that suggested the decision had given rise to considerable tension among the judges.
New York Times Analysis
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13
The appeals court agreed with Mr. Weinstein that the trial judge violated his right to testify in his own defense. The trial judge had ruled that if Mr. Weinstein took the stand, prosecutors would be allowed to question him about a long history of bad behavior, including allegations that he threw food at an employee and punched his brother at a business meeting. The appeals ruling said this “impermissibly” affected Mr. Weinstein’s decision not to testify at trial.
New York Times Analysis
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14
Thursday’s decision did not discount the credibility of the accusations against Mr. Weinstein. Rather, it found fault with the admission of the testimony of women whose descriptions of abuse fell outside the criminal case.
15
The reversal of the conviction was determined by a single vote, by a majority female panel of judges, who in February held a searching public debate about the fairness of the trial.
New York Times Analysis
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Judge Madeline Singas wrote in a dissent that the witness testimony of the additional women, who described their disgust and horror at Mr. Weinstein’s advances, had made it clearer to the jury that the former producer had to have known that he did not have the women’s consent.
New York Times Analysis
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Judge Singas’s fiery dissent accused the court of making it more difficult for victims to seek justice against their assailants in future cases.
New York Times Analysis
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Judge Anthony Cannataro, who also dissented, wrote that the additional witnesses the prosecution presented were vital to show Mr. Weinstein’s pattern of manipulation and coercion.
David Pecker spoke about buying and burying the Playboy model Karen McDougal’s claim that she had a sexual relationship with Donald J. Trump. He also described how the porn star Stormy Daniels shopped a similar story, which is at the heart of the case.
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