Former US president Donald Trump has said it is a “very sad day in America” as he spoke before heading into court for his historic hush money trial.

Trump said his trial is an example of “election interference”, describing it as “very unfair”.

“People understand what’s going on,” he said, describing the trial as a “witch hunt”.

Trump, who has secured the Republican nomination for the 2024 US presidential election, said outside court: “I’m here instead of being able to be in Pennsylvania and Georgia and lots of other places campaigning and it’s very unfair.”

The former US president says the trial is “in coordination with Washington” and “done for the purposes of hurting the opponent of the worst president in the history of our country”.

Trump will run against current US leader Joe Biden when the election gets under way in November.

The statements set the stage for weeks of testimony about Trump’s personal life.

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A panel of New Yorkers – 12 jurors and six alternates – were sworn in on Friday after four days of jury selection, and will hear what is the first-ever criminal trial against a former US commander-in-chief.

Trump is accused of falsifying internal business records as part of an alleged scheme to bury stories that he thought might hurt his presidential campaign in 2016.

At the heart of the allegations is a $130,000 (£106,000) payment made to porn actor Stormy Daniels by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, to allegedly prevent her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump from surfacing in the final days of the race.

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Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of such payments in internal business documents.

Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, and his lawyers argue that the payments to Mr Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.

He has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

The hush money case is the first of Trump’s four indictments to reach trial.

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