Trump criminal trial wraps for the day after opening statements and first witness

"At the end of the case," Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo tells the jury, "we are confident you will have no reasonable doubt that Donald Trump is guilty of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of a presidential election."

Colangelo said the allegations will be backed up by testimony from from witnesses like David Pecker and Keith Davidson, and an extensive paper trail including bank records, emails, text message, phone logs and business records.

Donald Trump is still sitting back in his chair and not reacting to most of what Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo is saying.

He is writing a lot and passing notes to his lawyers.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo tells the jury in former President Donald Trump's first criminal trial that they will need to keep an open mind when assessing Michael Cohen's testimony.

"You’ll need to keep an open mind and carefully evaluate all of the evidence that corroborates Michael Cohen’s testimony," Colangelo said.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo acknowledged the jury will hear that Michael Cohen, like other witnesses who will testify at trial, “has made mistakes in his past."

"During this trial, you will hear a lot about Michael Cohen," he said.

"I suspect the defense will go to great lengths to get you to reject his testimony, precisely because it is so damning," Colangelo said.

Jurors will hear about Cohen's criminal conviction for campaign finance violations, tax crimes and lying to Congress, Colangelo told jurors during his opening statement.

The jury will also see that Cohen is "publicly committed to making sure the defendant is held accountable for his role in this conspiracy."

As prosecutor Matthew Colangelo gives his opening statement, Judge Juan Merchan is closely watching him.

Through the payments, Donald Trump "intended that nobody learn about the Stormy Daniels payoff," prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said that when it came time for Donald Trump to pay Michael Cohen back for the "catch and kill deal" involving Stormy Daniels, "you’ll see he didn’t negotiate the price down. He doubled it. And he doubled it so they could disguise it as income."

Colangelo noted that Trump, Cohen and Allen Weisselberg agreed that Cohen would be paid back in monthly installments by sending fake invoices to the Trump Org each month.

It was a "clever way to pay Cohen back without being too obvious about it," the prosecutor told the jury.

The repayment to Cohen, as recorded in the business records, was "a double lie" because there was no retainer agreement and Cohen was not getting paid for legal services in 2017.

Here are key things to know about Cohen, and his role in the case:

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo is walking the jury through the $130,000 payment Trump made to Michael Cohen, and how they reached that number by including funds for taxes because the money was being listed as income and not as a reimbursement.

He notes former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg wrote down all of these figures in the Cohen repayment.

Jurors will see in Weisselberg's handwriting how they calculated Cohen's reimbursement payments. Weisselberg's notes show that it was "a grossed up way to disguise” the payment, Colaneglo said.

Colangelo said jurors will see, "Donald Trump was a very frugal business man who believed in pinching pennies."

In his opening statement on Monday, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo sought to reframe the case against Donald Trump - saying it was about much more than the hush money he allegedly paid to cover up negative information about him.

Instead, Colangelo said, Trump, along with his attorney Michael Cohen and David Pecker, the former chairman of the National Enquirer’s parent company AMI, “formed a conspiracy … to influence the presidential election.”

“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” the prosecutor said. “Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again."

“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Colangelo told the jury.

The scheme was three-pronged, Colangelo said: the trio sought to help Trump kill negative stories about Trump - a process known as “catch-and-kill” - publish favorable stories about Trump and publish negative stories about Trump’s political opponents.

He laid out three different instances where the trio allegedly conspired to prevent harmful information about Trump from becoming public prior to the 2016 election.

The first, prosecutors said, was a $30,000 payment to a former Trump Tower doorman who alleged Trump fathered a child - an allegation that ended up not being true: “It was the first time that David Pecker had ever paid anyone for information about Donald Trump,” Colangelo said.

Pecker, the prosecutor said, was “not acting as a publisher. He was acting as a co-conspirator.” Even after the allegation was determined to be false, Cohen instructed the Enquirer’s parent company not to release the doorman from a non-disclosure agreement until after the presidential election.

The second catch-and-kill deal involved Karen McDougal, who alleged she had an affair with Trump. Trump, Colangelo said, “desperately did not want this information about Karen McDougal to become public because he was concerned about the election.” AMI paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story, the prosecutor said.

"The real reason Pecker directed AMI to make this payment to McDougal was to make sure she didn’t publicize" her account of her affair with Trump before the 2016 election, Colangelo says.

The third alleged instance involved the much-publicized payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she also had an affair with Trump. Trump has denied both affairs with McDougal and Daniels.

“Another story about sexual infidelity, especially with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo told the jury. “So at Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated the deal to buy Daniels’ story," and prevent it from becoming public before the election.