Ex-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker first witness [Video]

A prosecutor on Monday told jurors that Donald Trump led a criminal hush money scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election, while Trump’s attorney argued there was nothing criminal — or even unusual — about the former president’s actions.

“This case is about a criminal conspiracy” by Trump to “corrupt the 2016 election,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told the jury in his opening statements in Manhattan Supreme Court.

“Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again,” he said.

“We’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter, if this conspiracy was a difference maker in the close election,” Colangelo told the jury. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Once Colangelo finished, Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche shot back, saying, “The story you just heard, you will learn, is not true.”

Blanche began by noting that Trump is not only a former U.S. president, but also the presumptive Republican presidential …