5 key questions as Trump's first criminal trial begins

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

57% : Trump could argue Cohen was indeed rendering a legal service.
55% : Trump is virtually certain to hold impromptu press conferences on a regular basis.
54% : New York law requires Trump to be present throughout the trial.
53% : Trump can also take hope from an unexpected quarter -- the case of a once-prominent Democrat.
49% : Trump could still hold campaign rallies on weekends -- and those events might engender even more interest than usual in the middle of his trial.
47% : The schedule for the trial has one obvious impact on the presidential campaign -- it curtails the amount of time Trump has available to hit the campaign trail.
44% : Trump, through his company, then reimbursed Cohen with payments that were officially classified as a retainer for his legal services.
41% : Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
41% : Still, once the trial process begins with jury selection on Monday, Trump might want to get it all over without delay.
40% : Trump is the first former president to be charged with a crime.
35% : But even legal experts who are broadly unsympathetic toward Trump have misgivings about Bragg's strategy.
34% : An acquittal could be used by Trump to suggest that all the cases against him are flimsy.
31% : Trump is under a gag order in the case thanks to public criticisms of Judge Juan Merchan and the judge's daughter, Loren Merchan.
26% : Some facts are undisputed: Trump's then-fixer and attorney Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election to keep her claims of having had sex with Trump a decade earlier out of the public domain.
26% : But Biden, in the midst of a tough campaign, has begun to mock Trump for conduct around the edges of his legal woes.
24% : The offense with which Trump is charged is usually a misdemeanor rather than a felony.
23% : The choice then is a binary one: Trump will be found guilty or acquitted.
22% : Daniels and McDougal say they had sexual relationships with Trump, which he again denies.
22% : For a start, Trump has not been charged with any such election law violation.
20% : That sounds fair, doesn't it?"Trump will be loath to back down from his trademark attacks.
19% : "Trump duly shot back on social media, complaining, "They can talk about me, but I can't talk about them???
16% : Late last month, as Trump struggled to raise a massive bond in order to appeal a $355 million civil fraud penalty, Biden told a fundraising crowd a tale about "this defeated looking man" who had come up to him asking for his help to escape "crushing debt.
11% : Trump recently accused Loren Merchan of being a "rabid Trump hater," apparently alluding to her work for Democrats as a political consultant.
5% : Trump has frequently attacked Merchan himself, who was not covered under his own initial order that prohibited Trump from attacking witnesses, prosecutors or jurors.

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