Welcome to the beat, I'm Mari Melbourne. We begin this program at a historic moment.

Here's how we learn the news from the court. The judge who is presiding over

Donald Trump's criminal trial,

said what you see on the screen.

Words maybe Donald Trump never wanted to hear,

let alone hear while he was stuck sitting silently obeying the rules in court

as a defendant. quote, this trial is starting.

We can tell you they have the full jury, they have all the alternates, they are fully

impaneled, they are raring to go and it's gone down faster than expected. Four full

court days is all it took to get the full jury going and that means these

opening statements begin Monday. Donald Trump's efforts to delay, in this case have failed.

And I've told you in other cases, those efforts have worked.

So you never really know with all the lawyers and all the money and all the tricks of the

trade and his large following, what's going to happen.

Well, tonight we can tell you something we couldn't tell you at the

start of the week. All delay requests rejected. All delay tactics fail.

Prosecution defense will now clash. They will lay out their vision in front of this jury and to the extent

the nation in the world watching starting Monday about whether Donald Trump

is innocent as he is legally presumed whether all of this has sort of just been cooked up against him in ways that ultimately cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to that jury.

That's what the defense will say, something to that effect.

Or whether he is guilty for this scheme.

Late today, we also saw a pretty dramatic demonstration of how this is going to work because so far it's all been questioning juror candidates and the defendant sits there.

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