Who Are Key Players in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.