A criminal trial is often a contest between competing stories. In the trial of Donald Trump that’s just begun, prosecutors used their opening statement yesterday to tell a story about a man they say lied — and broke the law — to get elected president. The story that Trump’s lawyers offered in their own opening statements had two main features. Second, Trump’s lawyers argued that his attempts to affect the election were ordinary politics. “There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election,” Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s lawyers, said in his opening statement.

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