In July 2006, Donald Trump met Stormy Daniels at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. He was 60 years old and had found a new vein of fame with The Apprentice, his reality TV series that had premiered two years prior and turned the notion of his business bona fides into an article of pop culture faith. Daniels, born Stephanie Clifford, was 27, a blonde porn star from Baton Rouge who was between a cameo in Judd Apatow’s directorial film debut The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and an appearance as a pole dancer in a Maroon 5 music video. The pair connected on the course and, according to Daniels, had sex in Trump’s hotel suite that night. In the morning, Trump golfed with NBA and NFL hall of famers Ray Allen and Jerry Rice.

Trump has denied sleeping with Daniels, and, nearly two decades after they met, pleaded not guilty to charges of falsifying business records to conceal how he covered up her claim en route to his 2016 presidential victory. On Monday, jury selection will begin in a case that may bring a strange coda to an incomparable chapter in the American political-celebrity nexus. The Manhattan district attorney’s office accused Trump last year of obscuring a payment made to Daniels in exchange for her not speaking about the alleged encounter. The claim was somewhat technical and granular, but it led to the first criminal charges of a former president—and the only of his four indictments for which he is sure to stand trial before the election in November. The witnesses are expected to include several of the figures who, through their affiliation with Trump, have become tabloid characters unto themselves: Daniels, his former fixer turned public adversary Michael Cohen, and his former aide Hope Hicks.

“The case—the core of it—is not money for sex,” Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said in a radio interview in December. He was objecting to the media’s use of the phrase “hush money” to describe the charges. “We would say it’s about conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York business records to cover it up. That’s the heart of the case.”

Perhaps, but for the huge contingent of Trump observers who have followed his political ascent in all its tumult, it remains the hush money case. The particulars are by now so familiar they’re rote. In the final weeks of Trump’s first run for the White House, the Access Hollywood tape surfaced. In 2005, less than a year before meeting Daniels, the future president told Billy Bush in a conversation about women that, as a “star,” Trump could “grab ‘em by the pussy” with impunity. Soon after, as the scandal metastasized and Trump’s political viability hung in the balance, Daniels threatened to reveal what she said was their affair. Cohen paid her $130,000 not to disclose it. According to prosecutors, Trump lied on 34 business records to camouflage the reimbursement he made to his longtime lawyer. The judge in the case, Juan Merchan, has ruled that the Access Hollywood tape won’t be played for the jury, but that the prosecution can question witnesses about it.

All of this—the unlikely and often seamy details of Trump’s still-surreal rise to national office—will be the focus of a Manhattan courtroom for weeks and possibly months. Trump is required to attend the trial, which will take place four days a week excluding Wednesdays. It will inevitably draw a media circus as the former president simultaneously wages his effort to regain the presidency—presumably using, as he so often has, the scrutiny of his criminal charges as evidence of a supposed conspiracy against him. The announcement of his indictment in this case immediately stoked his fundraising efforts.

The trial brings together yet a new set of figures rising to prominence via their place in Trump’s orbit, willing or otherwise. His lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, kept an even tone while he clashed with Merchan during a hearing last month. Blanche was a registered Democrat in New York until last year, The New York Times recently noted, but moved to Palm Beach County as he took on what is probably the most high-profile role a defense attorney could imagine. Trump has repeatedly attacked Bragg, Manhattan’s first Black DA, on Truth Social, calling the mild-mannered prosecutor a “thug,” an “animal,” and a “racist.” Trump has taken a similar approach to Merchan’s daughter, who previously served as president of a digital strategy firm that worked with Democratic candidates, leading to a gag order against him.

Merchan, like Trump, is from Queens; Bragg is from Harlem. They will be adjudicating and watching as the former president is tried in the city where he first accrued fortune and recognition—and where he was first investigated over a land acquisition in the ’70s. He has, until now, avoided a criminal trial.

“It’s a rigged state,” Trump told reporters in February. “It’s a rigged city.”

Last month, the documentary Stormy premiered on the streaming service Peacock—Apatow is an executive producer. Daniels sat for interviews with director Sarah Gibson during which the adult film star described her experiences with Trump and how they’ve shaped the trajectory of her life through the last few years, as she’s been alternately villainized and lionized. She said she was ready to testify at the trial but seemed at least a bit conflicted about it.

“I won’t give up because I’m telling the truth,” she said. “And I kind of don’t even know if it matters anymore.”