Members of Donald Trump's legal team, speaking to reporters outside the courthouse prior to the start of the trial, called the fraud allegations against the former president "election interference."

Trump's attorneys said that Democrats were using the case to fight Trump's efforts to retake the White House in 2024.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has arrived at the courthouse in lower Manhattan.

"No matter how powerful you are, no matter how much money you think you may have, no one is above the law," James said to the cameras before entering the courthouse.

"Today we will prove our case in court," she said. "Justice will prevail."

Demonstrators across the street from the courthouse cheered and applauded as the AG arrived.

Former President Trump is in a motorcade on his way to the courthouse in lower Manhattan where his fraud trial will get underway this morning.

Opening statements in the case are scheduled to get underway at 10 a.m. ET.

-John Santucci

New York Attorney General Letitia James released a statement on Monday just hours before the first day of trial in her fraud case against former President Donald Trump.

"For years, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth to enrich himself and cheat the system," James said. "We won the foundation of our case last week and proved that his purported net worth has long been rooted in incredible fraud. In this country, there are consequences for this type of persistent fraud, and we look forward to demonstrating the full extent of his fraud and illegality during trial."

"No matter how rich or powerful you are, there are not two sets of laws for people in this country," she added. "The rule of law must apply equally to everyone, and it is my responsibility to make sure that it does."

On Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former lawyer and self-described "fixer," Judge Engoron wrote in his ruling that he found the star witness to be a credible witness despite having been convicted of perjury.

"His testimony was significantly compromised by his having pleaded guilty to perjury and by some seeming contradictions in what he said at trial," Engoron wrote. "However, carefully parsed, he testified that although Donald Trump did not expressly direct him to reverse engineer financial statements, he ordered him to do so indirectly, in his 'mob voice.'"

Engoron continued that although the "animosity between the witness and the defendant is palpable, providing Cohen with an incentive to lie, the Court found his testimony credible, based on the relaxed manner in which he testified, the general plausibility of his statements, and, most importantly, the way his testimony was corroborated by other trial evidence."

A "less-forgiving factfinder" might have come to a different conclusion and not believed "a single word of a convicted perjurer," Engoron wrote.

"This factfinder does not believe that pleading guilty to perjury means that you can never tell the truth," he continued. "Michael Cohen told the truth."

Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress about the Russia probe, addressed the passage on social media, writing on X, "Judge Engoron's determination regarding my veracity at the NYAG Trump civil fraud trial. Michael Cohen told the truth!"