Watch live as Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York enters fifth day

Watch live as Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York enters its fifth day on Monday (22 April)

Mr Trump will today hear prosecutors explain why his alleged cover-up of a hush money payment to a porn star during his 2016 campaign broke the law, as the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president starts in New York.

Lawyers for the Republican presidential candidate will also make their opening statement in what may be the only one of Mr Trump’s four criminal prosecutions to go to trial before his 5 November election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden.

Prosecutors say Mr Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Mr Trump a decade earlier deceived voters in the waning days of MrTrump’s 2016 campaign when his candidacy was struggling from other revelations of sexual misbehavior.

Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and denies having had a sexual encounter with Daniels.