then at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, sights and sounds from inside the ballroom before the festivities began. watch the white house correspondents dinner live saturday, april 27, on the c-span network. an update from the campaign trail as former president donald trump has begun his first criminal trial in new york city. according to cbs news, former president is in a manhattan courtroom as jury selection has begun on a case involving alleged falsification of bune records as part of hush money payment to stormy diels. shortly before the start oth trial, the president spoke outside the courtroom calli a political persecution and referred to the case as an attack on a political opponent. >> c-span is your unfiltered

view of government. mediacom. >> we believe here or here, you should have access to fast, reliable internet. >> mediacom supports c-span alonwith these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. taking your phone calls this morning on donald trump's hush money trial in new york. it's set to begin today on the 50th floor of a manhattan courtroom at 9:30 a.m. eastern, little over an hour from now. that's when jury selection will begin. we want to hear your thoughts on this trial. we have the phone lines as usual by political party, republicans (202) 748-8000, democrats (202)

748-8001 and independents (202) 748-8002. as you call in, to set the scene of what will take place in new york, we are joined by usa today justice department corresponded mark jensen. good morning. guest: hello. host: remind viewers what donald trump is actually accused of here in the 34 counts indictment that this case is about. guest: it's 34 counts, all of them are falsifying business records. the additional accusation is that he was falsifying those records to hide payments that he was making to a woman, poin actress stormy daniels who claim to have sex with him and was trying to prevent word of that episode from being broadcast before the 2016 election.

there is the additional accusation that the hiding of the payments was effectively a campaign contribution in excess of the allowable amount because it prevented disparaging information from getting out before the election. host: what is the defense the donald trump team has put out ahead of the trial? guest: trump has said he was paying his personal lawyer, michael cohen, money, he called it a retainer michael cohen said there was no retainer. michael cohen's lawyer was the one who arranged for the payment of $130,000 to stormy daniels. trump says he just paid his lawyer and the lawyer was executing a nondisclosure agreement with daniels. it was just a personal contract and had nothing to do with the campaign. cohen and daniels are potential witnesses for the trial to

discuss what they considered a payment to keep her quiet before the election. host: 34 criminal charges if convicted of any or all, what punishment will the former president possibly face? guest: there are four year terms for each of the 34 counts. that's what you may have heard. trump will sometimes say that he is threatened with 136 years in prison and that if he is convicted him all of the counts and they would run consecutively. typically, even if convicted as a first-time offense, it's a relatively shorter term for a felony charge and the range would be somewhere below four years and the counts would run concurrently rather than consecutively. there could potentially be some prison time but not as long as what trump has been warning about. host: backing up to the big

picture, in today's washington post, the headline says for trump's trial, the first cut is the weakest of the trial. she is referring to this trial to the other three criminal trials he is facing. what is your assessment of strength of case compared to the other trial? s? guest: it's a little more direct than some of the other cases. the accusation is that there are these misdated financial documents, there are these payments to cohen, the 11 payments, nine of them are checks that trump signed himself and you can have the testimony from cohen and daniels and perhaps others talking about how he was trying to silence the information from getting out3 it's a fairly straightforward case. the problems or potential problems for the prosecution are

that the main witness, michael cohen has been convicted of a finance violation which is basically in the shadows of this case for making that payment to daniels. he has also been convicted of lying to congress. he has been disbarred. trump says he's an unreliable witness and he was giving this information to prosecutors to shorten his own three year sentence for his felony. there will be many accusations going back and forth during the trial and that's where it's a little messier and perhaps it's a potentially weaker case. host: do we know who will take the stand in his trial in new york? guest: decides cohen, the lawyer arranging the payments and stormy daniels, the woman receiving the payments, david packer, an executive for a company that oversees the

national enquirer was also in the wings of this incident with another woman who has also claimed to have received a payment, karen mcdougal, received 150,000 after making a similar accusation, that payment was arranged through the national enquirer which cohen then reimbursed. you could potentially hear from pecker and there are other people such as trump's former director who picks as a possible potential witness. she was dealing with cohen quite a bit as: arrange the payments. she contends she did not know payments were being made. she knew cohen was trying to stifle the news and prevented from coming out but she was on the phone repeatedly with him as the payments were arranged in october and then as the news began to break about payments to

karen mcdougal in early november of 2016. host: jury selection begins today at the trial and directly after that, what's the timeline for jury selection and the trial and does the former president have to be there for every day of jury selection and trial? guest: trump is expected to be at the trial every day for both jury selection and the actual trial getting underway. it's important to have the defendant participate in these charges that could potentially take away his freedom. estimating the time of the tribal, the overall estimate is 6-8 weeks. it's also a little difficult to predict how long jury selection will take. there have been estimates of two weeks and they are taking wednesdays off.

how do you find this group of dozen people plus alternates who probably are familiar with trump because his name recognition is almost universal. he was a longtime fixture in new york before moving to florida. it's not so much finding people that don't know about trump or don't know about the accusations in this case but to find people who have not yet made a judgment about that. both sides will be asking how much do you know, where'd you get your news, can you be impartial in judging this case? host: what is your sense of the atmosphere in new york and how this is being handled by the city? guest: so far, it looks calm this morning. there were some crowds of protesters in earlier court trials he had come in civil cases that were tried in the federal and the same courthouse. police have set up barricades around the courthouse.

there are people with flags and signs this morning but that is sparse and outnumbered by the number of reporters waiting to get into the courthouse. so far, it looks calm and the secret service, the new york police department boat issued a statement friday saying they were prepared to offer the highest security they have dealt with in these type of cases in the past. they are confident they can provide security while still allowing pedestrian traffic around the courthouse. host: we have live pictures of some of the security coming in from new york ahead of that trial. the jury selection is starting at 9:30 a.m. on the 15th floor of the house there in manhattan. before you go, what is the most interesting aspect of this case for you? what angle will you be looking at as this plays out today in the days to come? guest: we have already seen

michael: testify about many of these accusations. i was in the room for that in february 2019. it will be interesting to see how he holds up under cross-examination, basically how the accusations are portrayed if stormy daniels is called. i will be interested to see how she testifies. this will be her first chance to make your case in a case she argues she never wanted to be a participant in. she wanted it to go away by signing a nondisclosure agreement so i will be interested to see how the witnesses testify and how they hold up under cross-examination. host: don't go away just yet. you mention michael: testifying on capitol hill. i want to play a minute and a half of michael: testifying -- michaelcohen testifying. >> can you carefully explained

to america how the hush-money payments to karen mcdougal and stormy daniels worked? can you explain what catch and kill is? >> i received a phone call regarding both karen mcdougal as well as stormy daniels obviously at different times, stating there were issues that were going to be damaging to mr. trump. with the stormy daniels, it started in 2011 when she wanted to have something removed from a website. that was the first time i spoke with keep david and her, her acting attorney and we were successful in having it taken down from the website. years later, around the time of the campaign, they came back and they asked what are you going to do now because she is back on the trail trying to sell the story. at which point, david pecker on

behalf of the national enquirer reached out to her and her attorney in order to take a look at lie detector tests that would prove she was telling the truth. they then contacted me and told me she was telling the truth at which point >> she took a lie detector test? >> she was seen by an employee of the national enquirer is when i went into mr. trump's office and explained why this time it's different than another time. >> where there are other women given hush money by donald trump or his organization? was the standard? >> no. i'm not aware of any other cases that mr. trump had. he was supposed to pay karen mcdougal. he was supposed to pay 125,000 dollars for the life story of karen mcdougal. for whatever the reason may be,

he elected not to pay it. davidecho was very angry because there was other money he that was expended on his behalf. david never got paid back for that either. >> so davidpecker has done this in other cases? >> in other circumstances, yes. not all of them had to do with women. host: that was michael cohen from 2019. help put that into context here and how that testimony might play into what you were just talking about. guest: at that testimony, it's five years ago now but it was very dramatic at the time because he had copies of the canceled checks so you could see the checks with trump's signature on it. that was quite dramatic. it was paid in monthly installments over one year. that was to be reimbursed for

the things he passed along to stormy daniels for karen mcdougal. the mcdougall case was a little more complicated because it went through the national enquirer. there was this accusation that the national wire was paying for her life story under this catch and kill strategy and never published anything about her life story. the newspaper executives denied that happened. they say they were going to make payments for fitness columns she would write. the thing about the stormy daniels payment is that cohen set up a company that he transferred the money through as an intermediary company because he was worried about his own wife finding out about these payments and having a probm with that. it was quite a detailed story and i'm sure we will hear all of

those details again and maybe have trump's lawyers taking apart that inconsistencies or flaws they see in the narrative. he will be arguing that he didn't know this large chunk of money was going to stormy daniels and cohen will testify that he knew. host: all of this will play out in the coming weeks and that meant courtroom. go to usa today for coverage. thanks for the preview this morning. guest: thanks for having me. host: until the end of our program at 10:00 a.m. eastern, we will take your calls on the hush money trial. the trial itself will begin at 9:30 a.m. with live pictures starting to come in out of new york and we will see -- show you those as we hear from you about this case. this is john in california, republican, good morning. caller: good morning.

you've got a prosecutor whose daughter is a democrat activists whose taking money from adam schiff, who is a nemesis of donald trump set on two congressional hearings of impeachment for trump. you got a prosecutor who is george soros sponsored, you've got a district that went over 70% for joe biden. there is no way that donald trump is going to get a jury of his peers. the prosecutor maneuvered and manipulated a minor misdemeanor campaign contribution into 34 felonies. the judge put a gag order of donald trump that violates his first amendment rights and violates his fourth amendment rights. these people should be charged and violating the civil rights of donald trump. this is trumped up, forgive the

pun, i do think equal time to trump, he is guilty of the mishandling of classified documents. i take they've got him dead to rights on that. i hope they punish him as severely as they did joe biden and hillary clinton who committed the same offense. in hillary's case, maybe more so. i hope they punish him just like they did joe biden and just like they did hillary clinton. i don't know why you don't get alan dershowitz on their to explain these legal terms. he's probably the greatest legal scholar of our time and i'm sure he would talk to you guys. he's nowhere to be found. instead, you get these people from the liberal media organizations to put the spin on it that this is a viable case. the reason is the weakest case because there's nothing to it. all these