Hello and welcome to our new special the state of New York versus Donald Trump on this first trial of an ex-president in American history and what we can say as we report right now what will be

Donald Trump's only criminal case that is definitely headed to trial before

this election tonight we'll hear from legal experts,

Maya Wiley and Christie Greenberg. And over the course of the hour for

perspective on the history, Michael Bessloss, on a literally

unprecedented trial and reckoning for the nation.

We begin right now with the facts how we got to this momentous and significant trial as jury selection

is set to begin Monday.

We don't know how it will end, but we know it will be marked in history and in

law schools and in many other conversations for decades to come in this nation.

The New York DA, Alvin Bragg, made legal history

as the very first prosecutor to ever indict any former president,

any decade, any century, any state, this is the first.

He was the first to indict Trump and the case is based on what is in many ways a set of proven hush money payments that we all now know occurred in 2016.

What is new and the reason that Donald Trump could be facing a felony conviction or a jail sentence is that this DA indicted those now known payments

and scandals as criminal lies.

He has charged Donald Trump for falsifying business records and how he handled those payments,

orchestrating a scheme to distort the election, purchasing negative information, and intentionally

mischaracterizing those then recorded payments.

Now let me tell you something right up top here as we get ready for this trial of the

decade of the century.

This is ultimately about facts and by the standards of say whether you have the

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