Trump trial set for opening statements as his legal fees eat into campaign funds: Live

After a tense week of jury selection, Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial truly gets underway in earnest on Monday morning with opening statements from the prosecution and defence.

The 12 jurors and six alternates will then begin hearing evidence against the former president and his counter-argument before ultimately deciding his fate.

The defendant spent much of the weekend complaining about the case on Truth Social and angrily posting his presidential immunity claims — on which the Supreme Court will hear arguments this Thursday.

He was also forced to cancel a planned rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, due to bad weather while his wife Melania Trump returned to the campaign trail, helping a conservative LGBT+ group raise $1m at a Mar-a-Lago dinner.

Meanwhile, figures released by the Federal Election Commission on Saturday revealed that legal fees had eaten up three-quarters of the cash brought in by the pro-Trump Save America PAC, a key fundraising group.

Elsewhere among the myriad legal issues engulfing the former president, Monday will also see a hearing on whether to cancel Mr Trump’s $175m bond to appeal the civil fraud trial ruling and the public filing of witness statements in the classified documents case.

Posts like these seem extremely unlikely to endear the defendant to Judge Merchan and Alvin Bragg but Trump keeps right on “truthing” them anyway.

The first – invoking the right’s favourite liberal bogeyman, billionaire financier George Soros – finds him dabbling in antisemitic conspiracy theories to suggest the Manhattan DA is a puppet of shadowy and sinister forces. Entirely without evidence, of course.

That doesn’t stop him calling, with remarkable gall, for the removal of the gag order imposed on