Trump Faces First-ever Criminal Trial of Former US President

2024 · VOA Learning English

This speaker is a general-american model. Each line below can be recorded and scored against it.

Transcript

1. The first criminal trial of a former American president opened Monday in New York City. Donald J.

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2. Trump faces 34 charges of falsifying business records.

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3. Trump also is considered the likely Republican Party nominee for president in November’s general elections in the United States.

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4. Jury selection is the first step in the trial process. Over the coming days, the defense and the prosecution will consider possible jury candidates.

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5. The final group will number 12 jurors and six possible substitutes, or alternates.

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6. Trump is accused of hiding a $130,000 payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels just ahead of the 2016 election.

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7. Prosecutors say the money was provided in exchange for her silence about a reported sexual interaction between them years earlier.

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8. The indictment also alleges that model and actor Karen McDougal had a months-long relationship with Trump while he was married.

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9. She says a newspaper publisher paid $150,000 for the rights to her story but did not publish it, reportedly at Trump’s request.

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10. The charges also involve a payment to a Trump Tower employee. The doorman reported to know of a child Trump had fathered outside his marriage.

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11. Trump has denied all of the charges and any involvement in sexual relationships outside his marriage.

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12. That includes the charge that he directed his one-time political adviser, Michael Cohen, to make the payment to Daniels.

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13. Cohen says he made the payment and Trump paid him back during the first year of his presidency in 2017.

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14. The monthly payments to Cohen were recorded in Trump’s business records as legal expenses. Falsifying a company’s records is a misdemeanor crime.

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15. But doing so in connection with other wrongdoing is a more serious felony crime.

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16. Trump is accused of falsifying records to keep information from the public that could have affected the 2016 election results.

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17. Each of the charges carries the possibility of a four-year prison term.

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18. The New York case is one of four criminal indictments Trump is facing, 88 charges in all. Trump has denied all of them.

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19. Two of the other indictments accuse Trump of trying to illegally overturn his 2020 election loss.

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20. The third says he illegally took hundreds of highly secret national security documents to his Florida home when his presidential term ended, and then refused to return

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21. them. No trial dates have been set in the other cases.

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22. Pre-trial hearings and legal arguments have delayed the process. Trump has looked to push the start dates until after the election in November.

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23. If he wins office, he could seek to have the federal charges dismissed.

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