In January 2018, when she first saw reports that her husband had paid off a porn star, Melania Trump was furious. She jetted off to Palm Beach, leaving the president to languish in Washington. She eventually returned, only to take a separate car to Donald J. Trump’s first State of the Union address.
As a criminal trial against Mr. Trump opened on Monday, on charges that he had falsified records to cover up that sex scandal involving Stormy Daniels, Mrs. Trump did not appear. She has long privately referred to the case involving Ms. Daniels as “his problem” and not hers.
But Mrs. Trump, the former first lady, shares his view that the trial itself is unfair, according to several people familiar with her thinking.
In private, she has called the proceedings “a disgrace” tantamount to election interference, according to a person with direct knowledge of her comments who could not speak publicly out of fear of jeopardizing a personal relationship with the Trumps.
She may support her husband, but Mrs. Trump is bound to see headlines involving Mr. Trump and Ms. Daniels that could reopen old wounds. On Monday, Justice Juan M. Merchan, the judge presiding over the case, also said that Mrs. Trump could be among the potential witnesses as the trial gets underway.
All of this could put Mr. Trump on shaky ground with his wife, who has defended him in some critical moments — including when he bragged on tape about grabbing women by their genitals — and withheld her public support in others, like when she did not appear alongside him as he locked up victories on Super Tuesday.
“At the end of the day, she can make or break his candidacy,” said Stephanie Grisham, Mrs. Trump’s former press secretary who resigned on Jan. 6, 2021, and went on to write a memoir. “And at the end of the day, she could probably make or break him.”
Some of the more personally damaging details of Mr. Trump’s behavior may not come up in court. On Monday, Justice Merchan barred some testimony related to the timing of a reported affair between Mr. Trump and a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal. The National Enquirer, which has longstanding ties to Mr. Trump, bought the rights to Ms. McDougal’s story for $150,000 and then never published it — a practice known as “catch and kill.”
Jurors may hear about the relationship between Mr. Trump and Ms. McDougal, Justice Merchan ruled — but not accounts that the affair continued while Mrs. Trump was pregnant with their son, Barron. (If the court proceedings bring up Barron, whose privacy his mother fiercely guards, Ms. Grisham said, Mrs. Trump is likely to be “not happy” with her husband “all over again.”)
The trial is nonetheless all but certain to examine a timeline that Mrs. Trump would prefer not to revisit. Mr. Trump and Ms. Daniels met at a 2006 celebrity golf tournament, at a time when the Trumps had been married for a year and Mrs. Trump had recently given birth to Barron.
Mr. Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Ms. Daniels. But prosecutors say that when Ms. Daniels looked to sell her story a decade later, Mr. Trump directed Michael D. Cohen, then his lawyer and fixer, to pay Ms. Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. The reports of a payoff blindsided Mrs. Trump, who responded to the initial reports by getting out of town.
She canceled a trip to Davos, Switzerland, with Mr. Trump, made an impromptu visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and then she jetted off to Mar-a-Lago, the Trumps’ beachside fortress in Palm Beach, Fla., where she spent part of her trip relaxing at the spa. She eventually reappeared, only to take a separate car to Mr. Trump’s State of the Union address and appear on the arm of a male military aide.
By now, allies of the Trumps say, Mrs. Trump has lumped the trial into all of the other legal problems her husband faces, and she is steelier than she was before.
Last month, she appeared next to Mr. Trump to welcome Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, during a visit to Mar-a-Lago. Weeks later, she voted alongside Mr. Trump in Florida, where she responded to a question about whether she would be campaigning more often with a cryptic “stay tuned.”
