A test for US justice as Trump's criminal trial begins

He has been businessman, TV showman and president of the United States. This week, in the sobering surroundings of a New York courtroom, Donald Trump played yet another role in American history when he became the first former White House occupant to stand trial in a criminal case.

- David Smith

The case, involving hush money paid to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, carries profound political and legal ramifications. It is a jury trial not only of Trump but of the US, testing its checks and balances and sacred promise that no one is above the law.

Trump joins the ranks of Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Imran Khan of Pakistan and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil as a world leader in the dock. For the US, this is uncharted territory: even Richard Nixon was not put on trial over his role in the Watergate scandal.

"The historic nature of the first ever trial of a former president will only be matched by the outcome," Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics tsar, said at a briefing hosted by the Defend Democracy Project. "The verdict is more likely than not to be one of guilt and the sentence more likely than not to be a sentence of imprisonment."

Trump is accused of arranging a $130,000 payment made by his lawyer Michael Cohen to Daniels during the 2016 presidential election campaign, buying her silence about an alleged sexual encounter at a hotel in 2006, and falsifying records to cover it up.