In just one week, Donald J. Trump will go on trial in Manhattan — the first former U.S. president to be criminally prosecuted.
The trial, which will begin with jury selection and last up to two months, will oscillate between salacious testimony on sex scandals and granular detail about corporate documents.
Mr. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, all of which are tied to the former president’s role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels.
But that payoff is not the only hush-money deal that prosecutors plan to highlight. The prosecutors, from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, have accused Mr. Trump of orchestrating a broader scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election by purchasing damaging stories about him to keep them under wraps.
It is the first of Mr. Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial — and it could be the only one to do so before Election Day.
Mr. Trump, who is again the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has denied all wrongdoing. He also assailed the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, for bringing the charges, accusing him of carrying out a politically motivated witch hunt. And he has attacked the judge presiding over the case, Juan M. Merchan.
